The Girl Who Dared to Think Bella Forrest (best classic literature txt) 📖

I looked as well, but still couldn’t make heads or tails of the chart.

“You said they used a gas, right?” she asked, her eyes still darting around.

I thought of the woman with blood streaming from her eyes and nodded, stomach knotted. “Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

She seemed to find what she was looking for, then, because just after I asked the question, she started folding up the chart. “I’m not sure yet, but I think that if it’s coming out as a mist, they might have hijacked a water pipe to make the system do that. It’s not designed to, so they had to modify something somewhere. They’re probably using the pipes that put a small amount of humidity in the air.”

“Oh. Wait, so they are using the humidity controls to distribute the poison?” I frowned, considering that approach and puzzling out the rest of what she was telling me. “What good is that going to do?”

“I’m not really sure, yet,” she said with a tired sigh. “I have to see how they modified the system before I can figure out a plan of attack. But... I have a theory, and if I’m right, then I can make it so the poison is never introduced into the water in the first place.”

God, I loved Zoe, but she clearly thought more highly of my cognitive abilities than was realistic. “Girl, can you please dumb it down for me?”

“Literally no appreciation for what I do,” Zoe muttered as she began folding up the chart. “I think I can make it seem like the poison gas is coming out, but without any of the poison.”

I blinked, considering her words. “So I press the button, but he doesn’t die?”

“That’s the idea,” Zoe said, her eyes now glued to the pipes overhead as she began to crawl forward on her hands and knees. “There’s only one place they could do it from, and it’s in the junction up ahead. Did his cell have a designation number?”

It did, now that I thought about it, but I had glossed over it both times I went in. I forced myself to remember the walk down the hall, and the door, and after a moment, it came to me.

“5D,” I informed her, following her through the crawl space.

The space went on for some twenty feet before it opened into a wide circular room, awash with pipes—both glass and lead—electrical boxes, wires, and cables. Zoe clicked off her light and looked around. The room was well lit with a bright white light... and she was already frowning.

“Some of these pipes are lead,” she commented, consulting her chart. “But they shouldn’t be.”

She was right, although it took me a minute to recall why. It was from one of our classes with another Diver, named Lester, several months ago, when he was explaining how to identify which pipes did what. The only reason to use lead was when the water was toxic, or lethal. Those pipes were only used below, in Water Treatment. No toxic water was allowed past floor forty, as a safety protocol.

“Do you think that’s where the poison gas is?” I asked, eyeing the pipes.

“No,” she said, lowering the chart and studying the pipes. “If it were already in gas form, they’d need a way to vent it in. I don’t see any sign of a machine to help them do that.”

“They could be piping it in with the air?” I asked. “The mist is already coming through the vent.”

She immediately shook her head. “Can’t be done without some serious overhauls to the ventilation system, as they are all connected. Besides, it wouldn’t be coming out as a mist if they were—the system is specifically designed to eliminate moisture inside of it to prevent it from deteriorating. The humidifiers are the only way they could pump it in and keep it contained.”

“So then...”

“Give me a second,” she said, taking a step forward and running her fingers against one of the pipes, following it. I fell silent, trying to be patient enough to let her work. I was grateful she was here, because it was unlikely I was going to make any sense of these pipes. And I needed to know what was going on. Grey’s life depended on it.

“Ah, so that’s what they’re doing.” I looked over to see her kneeling by some wires, her homemade pad connected to them.

“What are they doing?” I asked as she disconnected.

“Well, the good thing is that there is water in those lead pipes.”

“What’s the bad?”

“I’ll get back to that,” she said. “In the meantime, we have to get up there.” She pointed to a wide lead pipe, and I could see now that most of the other lead pipes connected directly to it. The pipe in question didn’t even look right; it looked more like a collection or drainage tank than anything else, the way it dangled from the ceiling.

We clambered up to the pipe in question, Zoe climbing up other pipes while I used my lashes. She squeezed into the space overhead, lying across the pipe, and began examining it, cocking her head this way and that as she read the mechanical notes on the side.

I couldn’t help but feel useless as she worked. It wasn’t my area of expertise, of course, but I wanted to be involved somehow. I tried to recall more of my education in Water Treatment practices, but those had been basic, and this seemed far more complicated. Presumably, this was the sort of thing they would only teach to someone who had been fully accepted into Water Treatment.

Zoe smiled. “I think I figured it out,” she muttered. “This isn’t a collection tank, although it’s meant to look like one. The pipe leads to a heating element, where the water inside is turned into steam. This other pipe is where the water comes from.”

She pulled a wrench from her satchel and began turning a bolt on the pipe, and I held up my hand to stop her. “Wait!”