The air inside the Sub-Abyssal Cryo-Archives of Sector 2 was preserved at a razor-sharp negative twenty degrees, dry and clean, free from the humid stench of the cloning drain pits above. Thousands of massive stone server towers, built from brushed black silver-steel and anodized light metal, rose toward the forty-foot vaulted ceiling in endless, sharp-angled rows of stone pillars. Fiber-optic cables as thick as a man’s torso ran beneath heavy glass floor tiles, pulsing with faint, rhythmic currents of pale blue light that lit up the dust-free underground silence.
Arthur Vance walked down the central aisle. His combat boots left crisp, white imprints in the fine dusting of frozen cold air frost that coated the floor. The chill bit through his heavy diving trousers. But the rhythmic warmth streaming from his five companions kept his inner body heat perfectly stable. Behind him, Grimm trotted with measured, heavy steps, his breath billowing in thick white plumes against the freezing air. The jet-black hound kept his single scarred ear cocked forward. His amber eyes reflected the cold blue LED banks that flickered along the server faces like artificial star-patterns.
“These aren’t contemporary federation databases,” Valerie Koslov observed, resting her gloved hand against a server rack. “Look at the manufacturing plates. They bear the serial numbers of the Global Petrochemical Board, stamped in early 2080. This hardware has been running continuously for over a century and a half beneath the Atlantic seabed without a single human technician replacing the coolant pumps.”
