I stared down into the hatch for a long moment.
The darkness below had the smell of stale air and the residual warmth of a system that had been running faithfully for a very long time. Whatever was down there had the power to turn on many wards across the wasteland. That was something.
Coco leaned over my shoulder and looked down into the dark.
"Are we going in?" he asked.
I didn't answer immediately.
I was thinking about the part of Eric's notes that didn't survive. The damaged pages between the technical entries and the personal ones. He had disconnected the coupling himself. Eric seemed careful, he was the kind of person to write detailed manuals and keep organized notebooks.
He had disconnected it on purpose.
Why?
