Something was coming down the corridor.

Last night, I finished cleaning up after dinner while Katia and Hassan sat on the sofa playing some kind of word game. I watched them for a few minutes. Katia would provide a definition, then he would attempt to identify the word she had defined. At times Hassan seems very much like a tiny adult, though his vocabulary is still fairly limited and his motor skills aren’t remarkably different from those of any other infant.

I left them to their game and with a fist full of keys returned to the other end to check out the additional rooms beyond rooms C and D. I was surprised that the keys opened the locks without effort. C1 opened to reveal a small room about 3 meters wide and 5 meters deep. Seven unmarked barrels were set against the far wall. I didn’t disturb them. Behind door C2 was a room about the same size as C1, only this one was lined with industrial shelving. The shelves were mostly empty, but a pallet of wooden crates sat in the center of the room. They were marked: DOT HAZMAT 1.1: Mass Explosion Hazard.

C3 opened into a third room, again with the same dimensions, only this one had yet another door in the opposite wall. I mentally labeled this door C3A. C3A was absent from the plans for the bunker I had found several weeks ago and a brief visual inspection confirmed it to be a modification to the original design. What my inspection did not reveal was a handle or other obvious way of opening it.

I turned to leave the room, but as I passed back through door C3, a key-activated switch to the left caught my eye. The switch had three positions: Open, Close, and Auto. The current setting was Close. It made sense that it would control the opposite door, and the key marked “Emergency Use Only” slid in perfectly.

Before I turned the key, my first question was what constitutes an emergency? Fire? Flood? My boyfriend’s kidnapping and torture by agents of a hostile organization? My second question was what would the door open to reveal? We were far underground, so the options for that seemed limited. Yet another bunker? The fire escape? An old missile silo? Gollum’s lair?

I turned the key to the Open position and the door began to disappear into the ceiling. On the other side was our mystery corridor, which could lead to anything. So my second question remains unanswered.

The corridor is, as it turns out, impossible to reach at the moment. The door to sickbay is sealed again, as is the door between sickbay and the other end. Likewise, door C3A is closed. It turns out that there are cameras positioned throughout the bunker, about half of which are still operating, mostly at the other end. I am not surprised by this, but it raises the possibility that our activities have been monitored.

The something that activated the motion alarm turned out to be a small vehicle. Katia reported that it stopped in front of the camera, paused for a few moments, then reversed direction. There was no audio. If the cameras has microphones at one time, they were no longer working.

I talked to Hassan briefly, then as I reported my findings to Katia she told me that he had fallen asleep. We conversed a while longer, then said goodnight. I returned to the gym to investigate the water leak I had noticed earlier. The mirrors had all shattered, but the machines, which were bolted to the floor, all remained upright. They gym was a mess, but it seemed the least damaged.

It was simple to determine the cause of the leak. One of the sink faucets had been smashed; I was able to stop the flow with the shut-off valve. The good news is that I still have water, for now.

I took a shower to wash the dust and dried blood off, cleaned and bandaged my wounds, then returned to the living area to inspect the ceiling. It had completely collapsed into the corner where the monitor and sofa were. The beds were partially buried. Still, there has been no movement or further intrusion of exterior material since I regained consciousness. For now, it appears stable.

I pulled some bedding out of the closet and cleared an area next to the blast door. It is not the safest place to sleep, but I want to be as close to Katia and our son as I can.

It is Saturday morning and they are awake now. It’s time to work on getting the door to the medical lab open.

Katia and Hassan are safe and sleeping a few meters away. This gives me time to write and think.

A few hours ago, I was staring down the seemingly endless passageway behind door C3. It was too late to venture into it, but extremely tempting. In the end, I decided to wait.

As I turned to close the door, a blast wave slammed into our underground home. The deep, concussive thud briefly shook the bunker (I initially thought it was another earthquake) but didn’t result in damage. That happened over the next 60 seconds as five additional blasts hit us, each apparently closer and more powerful than the preceding one. With the second “hit,” cracks rapidly spidered across the ceiling and walls. The crash of dishes, equipment and tools on the floor rang from sickbay.

The sounds carried me back 14 years to when mom, I and several of her neighbors were cowering in her Mill Valley home as the American bombs rained onto San Francisco. The windows rattled and loose objects crashed to the floor but the town fell silent except for the distant firework-like thud thud thud of the larger impacts. My memory of that event is still so clear - the fear, anger and sorrow everyone felt. The profound sense of loss. My heart sprang into action. Hormones flooded my body. I sprinted back to our end of the bunker.

An alarm began to sound. The lighting flashed.

“Get Hassan into the library!” I called out over the din. Katia moved without asking questions. During the ten-second intervals between blasts, I grabbed everything I could think of - bedding, baby formula, bottled water - and tossed it in after her. “Hurry,” she kept repeating.

After the third concussion, chunks of concrete began to rain from the ceiling and the massive blast doors at each end of the tiny library began to close. The alarm continued. The lights strobed. Katia screamed out my name. I scrambled back to the kitchen, snagged a box of energy bars and more water, and was returning to the library when a fourth impact threw me to the floor. The food bars and bottles scattered across the carpet of the living area.

“Rabiyya!” Katia screamed again.

I struggled to my feet only to be struck in the back of the head by a foot-sized chunk of ceiling and knocked down again. Then a fifth blast struck with such power that I found myself flying into the middle of the hallway, rotating in mid-air, and watching as some irresistible force twisted the corridor, which was filled with shards of concrete flying in all directions. Time seemed to slow down. I felt like I was floating in a field of asteroids and can even remember seeing the individual chunks of concrete spin as I passed through them.

Incredibly, the lighting continued to strobe but the alarm had stopped. In fact, I don’t remember hearing anything at all. Nor do I remember hitting the floor.

When I regained consciousness, my ears were ringing. I was face down. The air was thick with dust. The lights steady at about 50%. I performed a quick physical integrity check and despite a fair amount of pain in multiple locations, all of my parts seemed intact. I tried to speak, which initially resulted in much coughing, but I finally managed to force out Katia’s name. There was no response.

I sat up and oriented myself. I was in the hallway between the gym and the computer lab. The corridor had indeed twisted clockwise approximately 25 degrees at the elevator end, the entrance of which was half-buried in rubble. Massive cracks spiraled along the hallway toward the living area and sickbay. Most of the floor was covered in shattered concrete.

My initial thought: Pacifica’s defense system has been compromised, the country attacked, and our location specifically targeted. Nothing but repeated, direct hits could achieve this level of damage.

I stood and made my way to the entrance of the computer lab. Amazingly, the door opened with little effort, but the lab was in shambles. The monitors were smashed and scattered across the floor. None of the computers remained upright. The passage through the library to the living area was gone of course, replaced by the blast door that protected it. Except for the box of “Many Useful Things” under one of the tables, the room was unrecognizable.

There was no obvious way to raise the blast door and the fact that they remain down worries me.

Back in the hallway, I saw that water was now running out from under the door to the gym, but I decided to deal with it later. I stepped through the debris-filled corridor to door 3, which remained open.

Much of the ceiling of the apartment has collapsed. The sleeping and lounge/entertainment areas are buried beneath concrete and natural rock. This last detail indicates that whatever explosive devices were used against the bunker were able to completely penetrate all the way to the bunker’s shell.

My next thought: the explosives have been buried between the surface and the bunker for years or decades and were remotely detonated. This now makes no sense, however. If someone wished to booby-trap the bunker, why not place the explosives in the walls, ceiling or floor?

Twisted rebar hung from the ceiling and protruded from the larger chunks of concrete. I looked to my left and saw that the blast door on this side had been unable to completely close because of a thick metal beam lodged between the door and the floor. It left a gap about two centimeters high. I could communicate with Katia and Hassan.

“We are lucky that beam fell where it did,” I said after we had assured one another that everyone was relatively uninjured.

“Not lucky,” her muffled voice said from under the door. “I put it there as the door closed.”

Clever or foolish? “Risky, but I’m glad you did.”

The blast doors were designed to protect the interior from the ground detonation of a multi-megaton nuclear device. Without a seal, the contents are vulnerable to any number of hazards, which thankfully do not exist at the moment.

“There’s more to this little room than we were aware of,” Katia said.

“What do you mean?”

“There are written instructions and a computer terminal of some kind embedded on the inside of this door. It can support one person for six months. It has self-contained air, water and waste systems.”

“Is the terminal working?” I asked.

“Not that I can tell.”

“Describe it to me.”

“Well, there’s an interface panel but it seems to be dead or just off. A column of five recessed buttons is to the right of the panel. Nothing is labeled.”

“Physical buttons?”

“Yeah.”

“Touch one of them,” I told her.

“Oh. Everything lit up. The buttons are now marked. Top to bottom, they read System, Status, Secure, Standby, and Grant Remote. The screen is glowing but blank.”

“Touch the system button.”

“Touching … okay, I think I have a UNIX prompt.”

“Just a command line interface?”

“Looks like it. This really isn’t my department.”

A UNIX prompt. “That’s user friendly,” I said sarcastically. “How about the status button?”

“Okay. Wow. There is a lot of information about the entire complex. Video feeds, power levels, water recycling, radiation levels, network status, structural integrity … the list goes on.”

“Does anything stand out?”

“Not other than structural integrity. The indicator is red. Do you want me to request details?”

“Not right now. How about the video feeds? Do any of them work?”

“Yeah. Oh, it’s really a mess out there,” she said. For the first time I detected a hint of worry in her voice.

“I noticed.”

“Wait … the border around one of them is flashing. The window shows a long, dimly lit corridor. It must be on the other end, I haven’t seen it before, but…” She paused.

“But what?” I prompted.

“A motion detector has been set off. Something is coming down the corridor.”

Cara and Jorge returned a few days ago sans Yenner, claimed they needed my help to rescue him, then disappeared again to “make preparations.” But before they left, Cara reported that she had provided the government with the “antidote” I had developed against my weapon - and the weapon itself. She told me she would give me the details of her “debriefing” later. Will they implement the fix? Time will tell.

Katia continues to improve and is able to walk around unassisted. Now that she is able to spend time with Hassan, I have been practicing my Spanish with the tutor avatar as well as exploring the other side of the bunker.

The “other end,” as we call it, is larger but not as self-sufficient as our side. There is no library, no exercise room, no laundry facility, no living area. There is a restroom and shower, a barely serviceable kitchenette, and four large empty rooms.

The rooms lie behind heavy polished metal doors with small sound-proofed glass windows at eye-level. I have labeled them (literally, using a marker) A through D. The rooms are, like most of the bunker, concrete. The floors, ceilings and walls are all unpainted and appear to be heavily reinforced concrete. Doors A and B, which are opposite each other, both open to four light gray walls, uninterrupted save for the single doorway and a large whiteboard mounted on the far wall. Doors C and D lead to similar rooms except that the far wall of each features three additional doors.

My best guess at this time is that they were once briefing or class rooms. Any furniture that presumably had occupied the rooms has been removed. Closer inspection revealed old-fashioned electrical outlets, alternating current, in each wall and in the floor in the center of each room. Our end of the bunker has both the old 120 volt A/C and modern outlets - it was obviously upgraded at some point after the war.

The three doors on the far walls of both room C and D are locked. I marked them C1, C2, C3 and D1, D2, D3, then returned to the computer room and reviewed Cara’s inventory of the box labeled “Many Useful Things.” She had found two sets of manual keys, each with three unique keys, and one solitary key labeled “Emergency Use Only.”

As I searched the box for the promised keys, I overheard Hassan asking Katia a question. She had been on the sofa reading a story to him when he interrupted her.

“Did the dog live?” he asked.

“Which dog is that?” she asked in response.

“The dog that was hit by the car. The one you found on the way to school.”

There was a pause in their conversation. I pictured Katia blinking in surprise at Hassan’s knowledge of the event, which implied that I knew about it somehow and had communicated it to him. Finally, she simply said, “yes, he was fine, Hassan,” and resumed reading aloud. I imagined her filing the incident away so that she could question me later.

I found the keys and was beginning to return to the other end of the bunker when Katia called my name. She was hungry and offered to make dinner, which she is doing at this very moment. Or was doing, she just notified me that it is ready.

I guess the other end can wait.

“You want her to wake up,” Hassan said to me as he looked up from inside his makeshift crib.

“Yes.”

“Will you give me to mommy?” he asked.

Babies don’t talk. They certainly don’t ask questions, and yet here was a new request. He didn’t say he was hungry. He didn’t need a diaper change. He apparently just wanted to be with Katia.

“Of course, Hassan.” I lifted and gingerly set him on the thin blanket, belly-to-belly with her. He squirmed briefly, then spread his tiny arms, as if he were trying to hug her.

I started to think about how cute he looked - attempting to hug his mommy - then felt a shock pass through my body. My heart raced. “Wake up, Mommy,” Hassan said in his soft, alto-pitched voice. He squirmed again and another shock, stronger this time, hit me. “Wake up!” Hassan repeated.

The air smelled faintly of licorice. I could feel adrenaline flood my body. Somehow, Hassan was attempting to wake Katia. I didn’t know if it would work, but I could easily imagine him waking me. My heart was racing. I was wondering how he could know to even try this - waking someone via airborne chemicals - when he turned his head slightly to look at me. “Help,” he said. “Help me wake Mommy.”

I looked helplessly around the room as if I would find the answer to my question on one of the stainless steel countertops. “How?” I finally asked my ten-day old son.

“Imagine the wake-up color,” was his response.

The wake-up color? What is that? Couldn’t he just name it? Certainly the vids we’d watched had mentioned the more common colors.

I thought of morning colors. Colors of the sun and citrus. Yellow. Orange. A barren, desiccated landscape withering beneath a relentless sun … no. Perhaps the colors of life, Spring… Golden Gate Park in bloom, before it burned away. Deciduous trees with tender, young leaves…

Green.

You used to take us to the park for picnics on the lawn near the Conservatory of Flowers. The days were warm and clear. Everything was in bloom. A million trees, thousands of varieties of flower and plant, countless animals all preparing for a summer that never came. But until the third Friday of April 2032, it was so green, so alive.

Green. The back of my neck and upper shoulders began to tingle. I resisted the urge to scratch. Hassan asked Katia to wake up again and I cupped my hand against her cheek. I closed my eyes.

She floated in a sea of green. I could see her body in minute detail. Her warm, gentle eyes were closed, resting, her hair fanned out gracefully and waved in the current. I could see the stretch marks around her abdomen - evidence of her pregnancy with our child.

Wake up, Mommy! Did he say it out loud that time? Or did I just feel it? A day later, I’m still not certain.

Time began to slow. My heart shifted from fast-forward to pause. She drifted peacefully before me, suspended in a licorice-scented ether. I reached out to hold her arm. Wake up, Katia.

In my imagination, her eyes opened. “Rabiyya,” she said. Or tried to say. Her voice was a croak.

“Katia,” I said to her serene image.

The sound of her clearing her throat. “Water,” she rasped.

“Katia?” The green ether transitioned into sickbay. Katia was on the table before me, holding Hassan and squinting at me.

“Mommy’s awake!” Hassan nearly squealed.

It’s Monday night. I continue to stamp the day and date at the beginning of these entries, despite the fact that both are meaningless down here. Still, it helps me keep track of time, which reminds me that Cara and Jorge have been gone for five days now with no word. No Cara, no Jorge, no Yenner.

No Mom.

Earlier today, after cleaning Katia’s sutures and looking for infection, taking her vital signs and checking her tubes and fluids, I sat down next to her and began to talk. Her blood pressure continues to rise slowly; her heart rate continues to drop slowly. Slowly, but things are moving in the desired direction. I have spent a fair amount of time reading to Katia, I’ve only talked to her briefly while she’s been unconscious. Just a few random comments and questions spoken only for my benefit.

Hassan spent most of the time sleeping in his “crib,” really a large plastic bin with blankets at the bottom. When I’m in the clinic, I place his crib against the wall where I won’t accidentally run into it - but can still keep an eye on him.

I pulled up a stool at the head of the bed and began to sponge her off. And talk.

“You don’t remember the first time I saw you,” I began. “Because you didn’t see me. It was months before we ever talked. You had just moved to Mill Valley and we were both walking to school. I was about 50 meters behind you. To be honest, I didn’t really notice you until after the car drove by and hit that small dog. It was surreal. The dog had leaped into the street toward you, directly in front of the car. I don’t think the driver would have been able to avoid it, but he didn’t stop afterward. I could see the dog roll under the car, then remain sitting in the middle of the road after it passed.

“You didn’t hesitate. You ran to it, examined it briefly, then picked it up and set it on the sidewalk. I slowed down as I watched you. Got close enough to see you check its tag and ping a few people before I stopped. The dog continued to sit on his hind legs and pant, but didn’t move otherwise. I felt like a voyeur despite being in plain sight, because you never seemed to notice me. I just observed you with the dog for a few minutes until a car pulled up, then you picked it up and climbed in. The last thing I remember of you was the morning sun on your hair as the door closed.

“It’s funny. I never asked you about the outcome. If it was okay. Whose dog it was. I was too embarrassed. I didn’t want you to know. But I was fascinated with you from that moment on. You cared about a creature you had no connection with. It was love at first … observation,” I chuckled, “if there is such a thing.”

I finished the sponge bath and washed my hands. Hassan was awake again and mumbled happily to himself in his crib. I checked on him before returning to Katia’s side. I picked up her hair brush and paused….

“Please wake up, Katia. Please. I need to have you back.” I ran the brush through her hair, still soft and deep brown. “Please wake up,” I said more quietly.

Her chest continued to rise and fall. The tubes continued to feed, hydrate and relieve her. I sat there passively, trying to decide what to do next. Hassan fell silent.

I turned and looked into his box. He was pumping his arms and legs under the white towels we were using as baby blankets. I smiled. For a moment he didn’t look different than any other infant. Then he locked eyes with me and stopped moving. “Connec … connec-shon,” he said.

“What?”

“You told mommy that she cared about an animal she had no connec-shon with.”

Every time he speaks, my heart picks up the pace a bit. It’s been ten days. I’m still not accustomed to it - and his last sentence introduced a new level of complexity. He was listening to and fully comprehended at least part of what I had been confessing to Katia. Goose-bumps formed on my arms and torso. “Yes,” I said slowly. “She helped an injured dog.”

“But she was connected,” he said. “We are all connected.”

Katia lost nearly one-third of her blood volume and has been unconscious for four days. We have her on an IV now, but more on that later.

Hassan, now a week old, has not displayed any new unexpected abilities. He continues to make very simple sentences and observe everything around him. He uses three words more than any others: what, why, and hungry. He does cry occasionally, which I eventually realized means that he has soiled his makeshift diapers.

I spend time with him when I’m not playing nurse for Katia or talking to her motionless form. He loves to watch programs on the monitor and seems to have a preference for nature and science vids. He doesn’t ask questions when the monitor is on and I don’t know how much he is absorbing, but he watches with rapt attention. He seems to listen when I read to Katia, but again, he doesn’t ask questions.

Katia has been reduced to a milk-generating machine. Tubes run in and out of her. I bring Hassan to her when he tells me that he is hungry (a week later, this is still surreal). He will suckle for a time, then look up at her face. I always wonder what he is thinking. I haven’t asked yet.

I discovered that the doors from the clinic leading to each part of the bunker can be manually controlled from the inside. I’ve locked the door to my underground home for the past few months open and the door to the new section of the bunker closed. I continue to be isolated from the world above.

I have my hands full caring for Katia and Hassan, a task somewhere between heart-breaking and soul-satisfying. When Cara and Jorge left three days ago, I felt overwhelmed with uncertainty and responsibility, but now it is routine and even comfortable. I just wish Katia would wake up. Four days ago, I was begging her to not die…

“Her pulse is weak and rapid,” I told Cara as she closed Katia back up again. Cara had stitched her up after Hassan was born, but we later discovered that she continued to bleed internally. Cara drained the pooled blood and successfully deduced the source, but not before Katia began to lose consciousness.

“Don’t die,” I pleaded with her. “I love you. I need you here. Our baby needs you here.” Tears ran down my face, burning messengers of helplessness and despair.

She couldn’t speak. She struggled to keep her eyes open, but the blood loss was too great. She met my gaze one last time, then faded away.

“No! Please stay with us!” I yelled. “Please….”

“She’s just unconscious,” Cara said softly. “Take her pulse again.”

It was the same - fast and thready, but at least she had a pulse.

When Cara finished, she stood up straight and looked at me. She appeared, uncharacteristically, almost apologetic. “I’m winging it the best I can, but I’m not surgeon.”

“I know.”

“Knowing how everything works is one thing,” she continued. “But lacking experience is another matter completely.”

“It’s okay, Cara. I know you are doing your best.”

“We have to get some Ringer’s solution or she’ll likely die. I’d prefer to get her to a hospital, but we can’t afford that exposure.”

Either way, this meant we had to get to the surface.

Once Katia was stabilized, Cara and Jorge began to explore the new section of the bunker. They found the larger elevator. They called it. It came. We had a way out.

By the end of the day, they had brought down two weeks worth of medical supplies for Katia - and formula for Hassan - just in case.

“If we aren’t back in a week,” Cara began, then stopped. “No, you’ll know what to do.”

“I will?”

“Trust yourself,” she said.

They left.

That was three days ago. There has been no word yet.

Katia held Hassan against her bosom. Her increasingly pale face was placid and content though covered with sweat. She was strangely calm and apparently oblivious to the stream of her blood spilling onto the floor. However, Cara was well aware of it and desperately tried to identify the source.

“Try to find some Ringers,” she said. “I’d like to set up an IV drip. She needs fluids and electrolytes yesterday.”

I didn’t have any luck, but they probably would have been long-since expired. We would have to replace her lost fluids the old-fashioned way.

Blood was everywhere. Cara and Katia were covered with it. Cara’s clothing soaked with it. Somehow, I had gotten blood on my shirt and forearms. It had begun coagulating on the floor. Deep, dark red and gelatinous, it only made me feel more helpless.

After his birth, Hassan didn’t cry. This initially worried us, but before Katia discharged the placenta, Cara announced he was okay. She had cleared away the mucus and fluid and after a few gurgles, Hassan’s breathing was fine.

He didn’t cry.

As Cara examined Katia, who was fully conscious if rather loopy from the pain killers (and loss of blood?), I watched our child carefully from about two meters away. He was clearly focusing on our voices. When Katia first spoke, he bobbed his head in her direction. When he heard Cara’s voice, he tried, with limited success, to look at her. As I observed this, I felt my pulse quicken.

“Found it,” Cara announced suddenly. “Damn! Now to try and stop the bleeding.”

I moved closer and passed my hand gently over Katia’s sweat-soaked hair. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Are you in pain?”

She nodded.

“Which?” I asked.

“Both,” she said weakly. “But the pain is much better.” She looked down at the infant against her breasts and I followed her eyes. Hassan was watching me.

“I wish I could have done that for you,” I said. “You know, given birth.”

“Didn’t we have this conversation already?” she asked. She was trying to grin, but it was a struggle for her.

“It’s just not fair,” I complained. My eyes returned to Hassan. I was certain he was consciously studying me.

“He’s watching me,” I said to Katia under my breath. My son gurgled as if in response then, still looking at me, pronounced “Rab - bee - ah” with perfect clarity.

Cara bolted upright, her eyes wide. Jorge, who had been silently observing from the other side of the room, collapsed to the floor. Katia didn’t seem the least bit fazed and in her mommy voice said, “that’s right Hassan, this is your daddy, Rabiyya.”

I was holding my breath.

“Has - san,” he said slowly.

Katia looked at me, “he shouldn’t be talking, should he?”

“Kah - tee - ah,” little Hassan squealed at the same time I said “no.” He looked up at his mother’s face.

“Go check on Jorge,” Cara ordered. “I’m still trying to stabilize her.”

Hassan turned to look down at Cara. His mobility and coordination were surreal. “Hore - hay,” he repeated. Then, his eyes still focused on Cara, he said, “you are Cara.”

She whitened visibly. “A complete, declarative sentence.” She paused, staring at him. “I’ll panic later. Right now I’m too busy trying to save your mommy’s life.”

“Trying to save your mommy’s life,” she said. I forced myself not to ask for clarification.

Jorge was okay. “Pupil response nominal, ” I announced for Cara’s benefit as I examined him. “No external bleeding. Other than a nice-sized lump on the back of his head where it had struck the edge of a cabinet, he seems to be fine, if unconscious.”

“I wish we could keep him that way,” Cara muttered.

“Maybe we can trade him for Yenner,” I half-fantasized, half-joked.

“I can feel the love,” Jorge said unexpectedly.

“Aren’t you supposed to be unconscious?” Cara asked.

“Your son, Señor Covas, is not normal.”

“I noticed.”

Our son was born three days ago.

We accessed the medical lab. Opening the door proved ridiculously easy. The trick to do so popped into my mind as I listened to Katia whimpering and Cara trying to comfort her.

Jorge had claimed that the door would open on its own on January 1st. We couldn’t wait that long, so it occurred to me to fool the system. I reset the network time to 23:59, 31 December 2046, waited sixty-one seconds, and was rewarded by the sounds of a brief hiss of air and the roll of large bearings. It was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. Although the door was completely open by the time I returned to Katia, Cara said it opened like the aperture of a camera.

Behind the door was a large room that appeared to be an operating theater. I saw a closed door to the left that I knew from the schematics led to the larger part of the bunker. Smaller doors set into the far wall appeared to lead to examination rooms or offices. Stainless steel and glass cabinets lined the left and right walls.

The operating room contained two tables. We lifted Katia and placed her on the nearest then I began a hasty search for a surgical scalpel as Cara washed her hands. Minutes later, she was between Katia’s legs. “Take her hand,” she told me, then turned to face Katia. “This is going to hurt, but I’ll try to be quick.”

It did hurt. As Cara cut from Katia’s vagina toward her rectum to make the opening large enough for our baby’s head, Katia shrieked and squirmed but somehow remained on the table. “Is that all?” she asked, her voice breaking. A feeling of panic and helplessness washed over me and I looked at Cara, who was suddenly splattered with blood. She met my eyes. “Pain killers,” she said. “She’s going to need them.”

I searched the cabinets without success. My panic grew. Cara called out that the baby was crowning. She ordered Katia to push, but it seemed like all she could do was scream. “Oh, God it hurts!” she yelled. The screaming didn’t help.

“Just push!” Cara yelled before barking another order, this time directed at me, “meds!” I looked around frantically, but my vision had begun to blur. I remember seeing a growing pool of blood on the floor. Part of my mind estimated that Katia had already lost 10% of her blood volume as another part tried to analyze my failing vision and the rest of me felt as if a mountain had fallen on my chest. My heart was being crushed. At some point I ended up on the floor.

The sound of Cara’s strident tones and Katia’s cries of pain echoed and blended together until they merged into a single atonal siren. The pain spread from my chest into my head. I felt a hot liquid running down my cheeks. I briefly imagined it was blood. I was staring at what I think was the concrete floor, then the overhead lights. Someone threw cold water on my head; slapped the left part of my face. I was flat on my back.

I found myself being pulled to my feet and a blurry Jorge in my face telling me to pull myself together. My chest was still tight, but I ignored it and opened the last cabinet on the right side of the room. My vision was clearing. The top two shelves held an array of orals. I scanned the names of the drugs. A few old but strong analgesics caught my eye, but I was afraid they would take too long to work.

“How about these?” Jorge asked. He held three vials in front of me. Alcohol wipes. Syringes. Needles. How much? I had no idea, but filled up a 3 cc syringe and showed it to Cara.

“What is it?”

“Twenty-year old demerol. 50 mg per cc.”

“Great,” she said sarcastically. “Dump one cc then stick the rest in her thigh.”

Katia had lost about a liter of blood, but was now only grunting and screaming when she pushed. “Good job, Katia. He’s coming,” Cara said. “Now PUSH!”

Screams filled the room again. Katia gasped for breath. I desperately wanted to end her pain. I forced back tears as I prepared the injection site but Cara stayed my hand. “Wait. Do we have orals?”

“Yeah, but I was afraid they would take too long to kick in.”

“PUSH!” Cara ordered Katia. She multitasked seamlessly. “Get them. The injectable is old and could be contaminated. I won’t risk it.”

I returned with the orals and Cara glanced at the bottle. “Give her three now.”

I did. A few minutes later, our son fully emerged into Cara’s blood-drenched hands. She cut the umbilical cord and abruptly smiled - a disarmingly sweet and completely unexpected expression of pure joy. Tears ran down her cheeks. She nodded. “You do have a little boy!” Then a few moments later, “and a placenta.”

“Hassan,” Katia said weakly. Rivulets of tears and sweat ran down her face. Her shirt was soaked. “His name is Hassan.”

She named him after you.

Katia’s water broke this morning. We were sitting in the entertainment alcove watching a vid when she yelped.

“Contraction?” I asked.

She nodded. “Wait,” she tried to say. It sounded like a grunt. About a minute later she could speak normally. “That’s the fourth one in the past thirty minutes, but also the strongest. Go tell Cara.”

I felt useless as I obediently fetched Cara. When I am with Yenner, he usually seems to be in control. When Cara is around, she is. The only person I’ve spent significant time with lately other than Mom is Mark, and we both defer to one another so often that no one is really the lead dog.

I wonder how he and Kelley are doing fairly often. What do they think of our disappearance? I wonder how Mom is doing all the time. It gets both easier and harder with time to be apart from her. Easier because she is no longer part of my day to day life, harder because the more time passes the higher the probability that something will happen to her. I can’t wait to get out of here so I can try to contact her. I tears me up to think I didn’t even try when I did have the chance. I kept thinking it would just happen.

I entered the computer lab. “Katia’s contractions have become more regular,” I reported.

“Frequency?” She asked without pausing in her work.

“About eight per hour.”

“Let me know when they are five minutes apart.”

I remained there for a minute but Cara acted as if I no longer existed. She was occupied and I was a distraction. It was difficult to not take personally, but I know her primary goals were to get into the medical lab and get us out, not pander to my feelings.

I returned to Katia and helped her lie down on the sofa. “Do you need anything?” I asked.

“Just some juice - and a towel.” Her brow furrowed.

“A towel? Do you need to go again?”

She looked at me apologetically. “My water just broke.” Then she grimaced - another contraction.

When I returned she was still in bed, but on her hands and knees. She had removed her wet pants.

“What’s wrong?”

“My back hurts. This seems to help.” She grinned, but the smile quickly became another grimace.

For an hour we timed the contractions. They were nearing five minute intervals. Jorge had been watching with a detached expression then sprang to his feet, frightening both of us.

“I’ll let her know,” he said, but Cara was already entering the room. And already giving orders.

I helped Katia to her feet and Jorge placed the mattress on the floor. She did lie down, but soon had me help her up so she could walk around. She’d sit, squat on all fours, roll around on the mattress, all the while pausing every few minutes as she endured the force of a contraction. “I had no idea they would be so intense!” She said to me more than once. We did talk some, but mostly I just held her hand.

“I wish I could bear this for you,” I said after some time, referring to the burden of pregnancy.

She looked at me with tired, smiling eyes and shook her head. “That’s very sweet, but I assure you that you don’t.”

Hours passed. Cara was again working furiously at the computers in the lab. Every now and then a subdued “Damn!” would come from the room. She had asked me to let her know when Katia had dilated nine centimeters, but that did not stop her from checking for herself periodically.

I did feel completely helpless. I wanted to comfort Katia and tell her everything would be fine, but what did I know? What could I do to help? During the time her cervix dilated I did nothing but think about what could go wrong. What if he was in a breech position? What if his head was too big to be delivered naturally? What if he were strangled by the umbilical cord?

He. I knew it was a he. Katia said she could tell the fetus was a he early on and she was right. As I crouched down beside her I could smell him. He was trying to come out.

“Oh, God!” Katia said. Her eyes were wide. Surprise? Fear? Pain?

I started to call for Cara but she was again already running back in. In seconds she was between Katia’s legs, examining her cervix. She looked up at me. “I need you to do two things. One, go boil the sharpest knife we have. Two, get that door open.” She motioned toward door two. “I’m very close. Check the Lenovo first, then work on the minicomp via the Mac. You’ll see where I’m going.”

I searched the kitchen, but there were no sharp knives. The scissors in the bathroom weren’t very sharp. The safety razors weren’t suitable for cutting. I even asked Jorge if he carried a pocket knife. I ran back to report the bad news and stood so that Katia could not see me. I shook my head. Cara nodded and pointed at door number two, eyebrows raised.

I knew why she needed a knife. The baby’s head was too large to pass through the birth canal and she needed to perform an episiotomy. Jorge was still searching, but unless he found something suitable, we had one remaining option.

I examined Cara’s method of accessing the various control ports for the bunker. There were several and I could not easily determine without testing which port controlled which device. I didn’t even know what the options were. The ports might control systems that we were not even aware of. I expanded the window monitoring the Lenovo and as promised Cara had meticulously and concisely documented her efforts there. I scanned her notes then donned the control cap.

While I worked, I could hear her and Katia in the other room - Katia’s punctuated breathing, Cara’s soft but direct instructions. I could also sense her trying to sedate Katia and I knew why. Cara was attempting to delay the birth until we could get the door open. If we failed at either, we could lose both of them.

Cara believes she has discovered the driver programs that control the various systems in the bunker and is now trying to determine which program controls which system. If she is successful in doing this, there is still the problem of interacting with the programs directly, which of course the design of the access application attempts to prohibit.

I am not clear about why she doesn’t want to break into the access application directly - this seems to me to have a higher chance of success, but for some reason she dismissed this suggestion without explanation.

Other than for hygienic purposes she has not left the lab. Katia has been hovering over her to force her to eat with a surprising amount of success. When I asked her how she was able to talk her into eating Katia said, “she hates having someone hovering over her. I refused to leave, and Cara did her best to make me.”

“What did she do?” I asked.

“Used those little chemical factories in her skin. It did make me want to leave, but I knew what she was trying to do and I resisted.”

“I don’t know if I can do that. Scent like that.”

“Just ask her,” Katia said.

I had no response. The truth is that I don’t want to embarrass myself because I either can’t do what she can or simply don’t know how.

But Katia has not been in any condition to feed Cara lately, as she has been resting on her bunk for the past several hours. I’ve been taking turns bringing food to Katia, who continues to have apparently random contractions, and hovering over Cara.

We decided to let Jorge out of the gym. He’s been alternately staring at the monitor, which is not displaying anything, and trying to engage me in conversation, which I am avoiding. He still seems broken, but I don’t trust him. Cara, however, apparently does.