"That's your date of birth." JP said. "Oh, you don't like that thought."
"I really don't" Riley said and nodded. Autumn held her hand.
"Could just be a coincidence." Marigold looked closely at the gaps in the drop ceiling, where the tiles overlapped. Moss had creeped in.
"Vanishingly small chance," Jacob threw in. "Not with everything else that's happening right now."
The reception area continued behind a glass door into a dark hallway. It was intact, but cracked. Abby shone her light through the glass panes - the beam disappeared into the darkness. The hallway curved slightly to the right, following the contours of the rock. Coloured lines painted on the wall led the way to different areas, she presumed - parts of the drop ceiling had fallen, revealing the bare granite behind them.
"How deep does this go?" She whispered. "This is... insane."
Sadie opened the door for them, careful to not break the glass. The rusty hinges creaked, but it held together.
They moved into the corridor as a group, sticking together tightly. Jacob held his lantern, Abby held the flashlight. Soon, the hallway split, opening into an office space with desks and chairs. Paper was strewn across, scientific equipment had collected a decade's worth of dust on the shelves.
The camp walked slowly along the perimeter of the office. Doors to individual rooms were placed along the back wall - Abby swept the light over the name plates. She stopped, and tapped Riley on the shoulder. "Ri?"
"What?"
"That's your dad's office." She rubbed the dust off the name plate - Room 21.A, Dr. Allen Truman.
"Your dad... worked here?" Sadie asked, but Riley was already trying the handle. It was locked.
"At this point, I'm not surprised."
"Mari, hair pin?" Jacob asked. Marigold reached into her hair and undid one of the clips, part of her hairdo falling from where it had been kept. Jacob straightened it out and picked the lock.
"You really think we should go inside there?" Abby whispered, goosebumps exacerbated by the stale, cold air in the tunnels.
"Whatever's in there, I have to know."
"Don't think there's anything in there" Jacob said and jiggled the pin. "It's been abandoned for as long as the rest of this place has been."
The door swung open with a creak that echoed through the empty office space. The beam of Jacob's lantern swept across the small room, revealing a desk covered in dust, filing cabinets along one wall, and a cork board with faded papers still pinned to it.
"This is... surreal." Riley whispered, stepping into her father's abandoned office. The air was thick with dust and the musty smell of forgotten paper.
Autumn floated in behind her, keeping close. "You okay?"
Riley nodded, but her hands were shaking as she approached the desk. A nameplate, covered in dust: DR. ALLEN TRUMAN - LEAD RESEARCHER. She wiped it clean with her sleeve.
"Look at this," Abby said, pointing her flashlight at the cork board. Seismograph readings, geological surveys, all connected with red string in a way that reminded Riley of conspiracy theory boards she'd seen in movies. But these were official, scientific. Real.
Jacob was examining the filing cabinets. "Most of these are locked. But..." He pulled open one drawer that had been left unlocked. "Here's something."
He lifted out a leather-bound notebook, similar to Riley's own log but older, more worn. The USGS logo was embossed on the cover.
"That's... that's dad's handwriting." Riley said, taking the book. She recognised the neat, precise letters immediately. Opening it revealed pages of notes, diagrams, and calculations.
A polaroid fell from between the pages as Riley opened the notebook. Autumn caught it before it could flutter to the floor, and floated it back onto the table. In the dim beam of the flashlight, Riley could make out two figures standing on the viewing platform of Mount Rushmore - her father, looking much younger, back when he still had hair - and her mother. She was heavily pregnant, wearing a flowery summer dress, one hand resting on her belly while the other shielded her eyes from the sun. They were both smiling.
Riley's hands trembled as she turned the photo over. On the back, in her father's precise handwriting: Sarah and me, June 28 '98. Last trimester!
"Ri..." Abby put a hand on her shoulder, but Riley was already flipping through the notebook, looking for entries around that time.
"Here." She found the right page and began reading aloud:
June 28, 1998
Seismic activity continues to increase. Readings show regular pulses at 30-minute intervals, coming clearly from the RC. Dave wants to open it up.
Sarah visited base camp today. Couldn't show her the labs, obvious reasons. Had to lie about what we're doing.
Riley turned the page.
June 30, 1998
Pulses increasing in frequency and intensity. 15-minute intervals now. Equipment showing impossible readings - gravitational anomalies, electromagnetic interference. Going inside it out of the question, so he requested a GPR, Iowa is sending a plane.
Sarah called - contractions started. Too early. Trying to arrange transport back to Des Moines but weather's terrible. Storm came out of nowhere. If I didn't know better I'd say they're connected. NWS says it's normal this time of year.
Riley swallowed and turned the page again. She was getting closer to the end of the notes, where the pages weren't slightly crinkled.
July 1, 1998
Something's happening. GPR suggests a cavity deep in the rock. Device is faulty, maps the cavity as perfectly spherical, impossible. Dave believes it's functioning correctly, but probably doesn't wanna wait for another one.
Sarah is being flown back to DM tonight, USGS plane. Doctor says the baby could come any time. I should be there but Dave insists that we need all the hands we can get. They're leaving Keystone at 11 tonight. Not ideal, but what can you do.
"She was here." Riley said. "The day before I was born, she was here."
"Where is your mother now?" Sadie asked, and JP winced.
"Don't ask that." He said. "She's-"
"-dead." Riley completed her own thought, quietly. "When I was a child. Never go to meet her." She flipped the page around. The next entry was written in shaky handwriting, barely legible.
July 2, 1998
Sarah is gone. She had to give birth on the plane. When they landed, there was nothing they could do.
Tears shot into Riley's eyes.
Riley is healthy. Dave says I should leave, take some time for myself. He's right.
"Is that why... they all left? Because of him?" Marigold whispered quietly. She held Sadie's hand, sidled up close to her. Neither of them seemed to mind, or even notice.
5:10 AM
GPR not faulty. Dave was right. Not safe here
The rest of the pages were blank. Riley put the polaroid back and closed the book.
"Riley..." Abby started, but Riley wiped away her tears and shook her head.
"No. I'm not doing this. Not right now." She put the book under her arm and nodded towards the other hallway. "We keep going. We look for whatever they were working on."
"Whatever they were working on made them leave in a hurry." Jacob stepped closer to one of the cork boards, looking at the seismograph printouts, trying to make sense of them. "That's not a good idea, Riley."
"These rooms have been here for fourteen years." Sadie replied. "They'll stay intact another few hours."
"Fourteen and a half." Riley said. "Let's go."
The hallways seemed to stretch endlessly into the mountain, each turn revealing more identical corridors lined with office doors and fallen ceiling tiles. Despite Jacob and Abby's lights, the darkness felt thick, almost physical - as if the mountain itself was pressing in around them.
"How did they build all this without anyone noticing?" Marigold wondered aloud, her voice oddly muffled by the close walls. "I mean, this is a national monument. There must've been tourists, rangers..."
"Construction noise would've been noticed," Jacob agreed, running his hand along the wall. His eyes glowed faintly as he calculated. "These tunnels... they're old. Pre-date the offices by decades. The original sculptors probably dug them."
"But all this?" Abby gestured at the dropped ceiling, the electrical conduits, the modern fixtures. "This is way more recent."
"Government's good at keeping secrets," JP muttered. "Especially when they want to."
They passed more offices, labs filled with dusty equipment, storage rooms with shelves of geological samples. Everything looked like it had been abandoned mid-project - coffee cups still on desks, papers scattered as if their owners had left in a hurry and never returned.
The air grew colder as they went deeper. Riley could feel the weight of the mountain above them, millions of tons of granite pressing down. The thought made her skin crawl.
"Look at this," Autumn called from where she was floating near the ceiling, examining an electrical panel. "These power lines... they're not connected to the outside grid. They must have their own generator somewhere down here."
"Still doesn't explain how they got all the equipment in," Sadie said. "Some of these machines must weigh tons."
"Maybe there's another entrance?" Abby suggested. "Something big enough for trucks?"
"If there is, we haven't found it yet," Jacob replied, consulting a rough map he'd been sketching. "But we're definitely going deeper into the mountain. These tunnels are sloping down."
The corridor opened into a larger space, and both beams of light swept across what appeared to be some kind of control room. Banks of computers lined the walls, their screens dark and covered in dust. In the center was a raised platform with what looked like observation equipment.
"This is it," Riley said quietly, examining a nameplate by the door. "Dr. David Vassos. Dave."
The room was circular, with multiple levels connected by metal staircases. Jacob stepped up to the windows, covered in dust, and wiped it with the side of his sleeve. It came right off.
"Holy shit," Jacob breathed. "Guys?"
The rest of the camp moved towards him, looking out of the glass panes into an enormous cubic chamber carved from the living rock. It must've been at least a hundred feet wide, tall, deep - somehow, seeing a space this open unnerved Abby even more than knowing they were under millions of tons of rock.
Steel beams reinforced the walls, and powerful floodlights - long since dead - were mounted in the corners. In the middle, a perfect sphere of dark granite, held in place by thick steel cables that disappeared into the walls. A lone metal catwalk connected the sphere in the middle to the observation room they were in.
"What... is that?"
"It's what they found here."
Riley pressed her face against the glass, trying to see better in the dim light. The sphere was maybe twenty feet in diameter, its surface unnaturally smooth. Despite being made of the same granite as the rest of the mountain, it seemed to absorb their flashlight beams rather than reflect them.
"You're telling me this thing is... natural?" Riley shuddered. "What were they doing down here?"
Autumn had floated away, gently hovering down the metal stairs to the lowest level. "There's a door down here," she called up, her voice reverberating off of the walls in a way that made Abby flinch. Sadie climbed down the stairs, and the others followed her.
Downstairs, a massive circular vault door set into the wall of the observation room led out into the cave. The words "ROOSEVELT CHAMBER" were engraved into the steel.
"That's... heavy security. For a cave." Sadie said and turned the handle. Even with super strength, it didn't move an inch.
"Don't bother." Jacob said and pointed at the cables running to the door. "Magnetic lock. Won't move without power." He looked around the lower level, tried to follow the cables. They just went into a box on the wall, with no way to just turn the power on. There was a machine in the corner though - a large cone, almost like a satellite dish, mounted on wheels.
"What's that?"
Jacob stepped closer. "That's the thing he requested. The GPR." He looked for a button to turn it on, found a large handle, and pulled it. The device whirred to life. There still was some juice left in the battery. "The ground-penetrating radar."
The machine's display was ancient, covered in dust, and flickered like an old TV. It probably was an old TV, repurposed for this task. Jacob pressed buttons on the side, going through the machine's saved images. "They must've used this to look inside the sphere." Abby suggested, and Jacob nodded. Everyone gathered around the faintly flickering screen.
The pictures all looked grainy, staticky, nothing they could do anything with. Maybe readable to a geologist, but not much else.
Except for one image.
The image on the screen made Abby's blood run cold. At first glance, it looked like a simple cross-section of the sphere - a perfect circle of white against the dark background. But in the center, a single point of light.
No, not just light. As Jacob adjusted the contrast, the point resolved into something else entirely. Something that made Abby's skin crawl.
It looked like an eye.
Not a human eye - there was no iris, no pupil in the conventional sense. Just a perfect circle of radiance that seemed to stare directly through the screen at them. The longer Abby looked at it, the more certain she became that it was looking back.
"Turn it off," she whispered, backing away from the machine. "Turn it off now."
Jacob quickly killed the power, and the screen went dark. But Abby could still see that eye burned into her vision, like when you look at a bright light for too long.
"We should go," Sadie said quietly, and for once, no one argued. They made their way back through the tunnels in silence, moving faster than they had on the way in. Riley clutched her father's notebook to her chest like a shield.
The presidents' faces were exactly as they'd left them - staring straight ahead, showing no sign of the movement Abby and Jacob had witnessed earlier. But somehow that was worse. Like they were pretending now, waiting until the group's backs were turned.
When they emerged from the cabin, the weather had turned. Dark clouds had rolled in while they were underground, and thunder growled in the distance. Big round drops of rain were already beginning to fall.
"Everyone get some rest," Sadie ordered as they climbed back to their treehouses. "We'll... we'll figure out what to do tomorrow."
Abby couldn't rest. She lay in her bed, listening to the storm rage outside and Riley's steady breathing from across the room, occasionally flipping the pages of her dad's notebook. She didn't want to talk.
Every time Abby closed her eyes, she saw that point of light staring back at her. Around midnight, she gave up trying to sleep. Carefully climbing down from her bunk, she made her way across the swaying bridges to Jacob's treehouse. She wasn't surprised to find his light still on.
He was at his desk, surrounded by papers covered in calculations. He looked up when she knocked softly on the doorframe.
"Can't sleep either?"
Abby shook her head and stepped inside, closing the door against the wind and rain. "Keep seeing it. That... thing in the sphere."
"Me too." He pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes. "Been trying to make sense of the mathematics of it. The dimensions, the gravitational readings from the old equipment... none of it adds up."
"What do you mean?"
"The sphere, the... Roosevelt Chamber, it shouldn't exist. The way it's perfectly round, the way it seems to absorb light instead of reflecting it... it defies every law of physics I know."
Abby sat down on the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest. She was still wearing her costume under her hoodie - somehow it made her feel safer. "Maybe that's the point. I mean, we all kind of defy physics, don't we?"
Jacob smiled slightly. "True. But this is different. This feels... older. Like it was here long before the mountain, before anything."
"You think it knows we're here?"
"I don't know anything right now." He sighed. As he noticed that that answer didn't seem to calm Abby's worries, he elaborated. "I mean, there's nothing to suggest that whatever is in there is even... conscious. Can know anything. I mean, a mountain isn't alive."
"I hope you're right." She inched closer to the table and pulled herself up onto a cardboard box full of books. "What's all this?"
"Just... notes." He put down his pencil and rubbed his eyes. "You know what's weird? The readings the USGS took in there were... well, they're almost exactly what Autumn does. Gravity just sort of... works differently in there. If it even does at all.
"Is that why I can't teleport us out of there?"
"Probably. Whatever that thing is, it's powerful enough to mess with space itself." He paused, then added quietly, "Like you do when you teleport."
Abby felt a chill run down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold. "You think there's a connection? Between that thing and... us?"
"I think there has to be. The timing's too perfect - Riley's birth, the evacuation, the way the mountain seems to respond to us..." He trailed off, lost in thought. "And something about that... doesn't feel right. About her."
"About Riley?"
He shrugged. "Just a thought."
They sat in comfortable silence for a while, listening to the storm. Jacob's treehouse creaked and swayed in the wind, but somehow Abby felt safer here than in her own bed.
"You know," Jacob said finally, "most people's eyes glaze over when I start talking about physics."
"Well, I did say I liked math." Abby smiled. "Even if I can't calculate the gravitational constant of mysterious spheres in my head."
"It's not that impressive. Just practice." But he was smiling too, a slight blush colouring his cheeks.
"Still. It's kind of amazing, the way you see the world. All those patterns and numbers..."
"Yeah?" He looked at her curiously. "Most people just think it's weird."
"I think it's beautiful." The words came out before she could stop them, and now they were both blushing.
Another crack of thunder made them both jump, breaking the moment. "You should try to get some sleep," Jacob said softly. "We're probably going to have a lot to deal with tomorrow."
"I don't wanna go back to SF house." Abby said and adjusted her glasses. "Riley's... obsessed with her dad's notebook."
"Are you asking if you can stay here?"
Another lightning bolt struck somewhere around the mountain, startling Abby and sending the colours to her cheeks again. "I- I mean, if- if it's fine with you, I-"
Jacob cracked a smile. "Course you can."