Chapter 64 Chapter 64

The dive to the M&E area was smooth, even mesmerizing.Juliet slid down in the rippling green water, carefully dodging the railing of the stairs, all the way there was only the "hissing" sound of air entering and leaving the helmet, and only seeing the continuous bubbles coming out of the side of the helmet. up. Juliet watched the bubbles go up all the way, as if she was watching naughty children playing among the stair treads.Some bubbles shatter as soon as they hit the railing, turning into countless small bubbles that cling to the railing and continue to slide upwards, rolling and intertwining all the way.Other air bubbles gathered in the depressions under the stairwells, forming a large flat pocket that quivered and shone brightly in the light of her helmet.

At this time, she almost forgot where she was and what she was doing.The stairwell in front of her seemed to be no longer the stairwell she was familiar with, but a strange dream world.Looking outside from the helmet, everything seemed to grow bigger, and it was easy for her to think that she was not sinking at all, but that the stairs broke through the ground, all the way up, stretching out into the sky.Her hands and legs clamped the rope, and the rope kept rubbing against her belly and slipped out of her gloves. It felt as if she was not sinking, but more like a huge force was pulling the rope above.

Then she looked up and realized how deep she had gone.Looking at the emergency lights on the platform above, the green light had grown dim even though it was only a floor or two away, and the flashlight on top of her helmet wasn't much better.Juliet was breathing heavily.She tried desperately to remind herself that there was nothing to be afraid of when the air supply was constant.She deliberately didn't pay attention to the heavy water pressure on her shoulders, and didn't think that she was buried under the water now.She told herself that in an emergency, she could cut off the load-bearing bars tied to her legs at any time.With just one stroke of the knife, she can immediately float to the surface.She sank all the way, comforting herself constantly.She let go of the rope with one hand and patted the knife on her chest to see if it was still there.

"Slow down!" She suddenly heard a call from the radio. Juliet quickly grasped the rope with both hands and held it tightly, and the slide stopped after a while.Those were orphans, she reminded herself.The air pipes and wires that were piled up in a bundle were gradually being pulled apart by her, and the orphan watched from above to prevent the pipes from becoming entangled.She could imagine that the orphan must be in a hurry at this moment, jumping back and forth between the pipelines.Numerous air bubbles emerged from the vent hole of the helmet, surging upward in the dark green water and floating towards the surface.She looked up and saw the air bubbles running up the rope, wondering why he had taken so long.She noticed large air bubbles accumulating beneath the spiral treads, which at first glance looked like blobs of quicksilver.Because her body moved in the water and stirred up the water flow, those big bubbles also kept shaking with the water flow——

"Okay." The voice from the radio behind her neck came again, "It's all right here." Startled by the deafening sound, Juliet cursed secretly for putting the helmet on without first adjusting the volume on the radio.There was nothing she could do now. So, she continued to sink, and there was silence all around, except for the buzzing in her ears, and she went down another floor like this. She slowed down and paid attention to whether the pipeline was too tight.Later, she descended to the platform on the 139th floor. At this time, she suddenly saw that one door panel was missing, and the other door panel was also skewed.Apparently, the entire floor was flooded, which meant they had more water to pump.And just when she was about to descend below the platform, she suddenly saw several black figures floating in the water in the corridor inside the door.The flashlight on her helmet was dim, but as she sank, she could barely make out the bodies, the pale, swollen faces she saw.

It never occurred to Juliet that she would see a dead body.At this time, she thought about it carefully, and thought that those people could not have drowned, because the seepage speed was very slow, and it was impossible to drown them all at once, so those people should have been beaten to death.The water here is very cold, and the bodies may not have decomposed yet.At this time, she began to feel that the coldness had begun to penetrate her protective clothing, but it might be her hallucination. She kept looking up to see if the rope wasn't too taut, and suddenly she felt her feet touch the ground and realized that the stairwell had bottomed out.At that moment, she was caught off guard and stepped on the ground, causing her knees to hurt a little.Descending directly from the water is much faster than going down stairs.

Juliet held the rope with one hand to maintain her balance, swung the other hand twice in the stagnant water, and then pressed the call button with her chin. "I'm here," she told the orphan. Then, she lifted her feet with great difficulty, and took a few tentative steps, waving her arms while walking, advancing in a half-swimming posture, and walked towards the electromechanical area.The light in the stairwell was so weak that it could barely see the revolving door, which looked so deep and dark, so familiar yet so strange. "Understood." The orphan answered after a while.

As soon as he heard his voice reverberating in the helmet, all the muscles in Juliet's body tensed up suddenly.Not being able to adjust radio volume really drives people crazy. After a few strenuous steps, she finally figured out the trick.On this grid iron, one should move forward with dragging heavy shoes.The inflated protective clothing is like a balloon. It feels as if the hands and legs are moving around in the balloon, pushing it forward with the body.After a while, she paused, turned her head to see if the air pipe was not stuck on the stairs, then looked at the rope, one last time.Although the distance was not far, she felt that the rope looked so thin, like a straw standing upright in the stairwell, swaying gently with the water she stirred up, as if saying goodbye to her.

But Juliet told herself quickly, don't think about it.She turned around and continued to walk towards the door of the mechanical and electrical area, still thinking in her heart: You really don't need to do this.She can add two small water pumps to it, or even install three, and then connect a few more water pipes to the hydroponic area.It might take months, and years before the water can be drained, but when the water is dry, she can go down to the bottom and see what the orphan said about the buried diggers. How about it.This way is less dangerous, but the disadvantage is that she may go crazy.

Why is she going back?If the motive is purely for revenge, then she may choose to wait and choose a safer way.Now, she felt the urge to cut the bars off her legs and float up the stairwell, just like she had seen in her dreams as a child, with her arms outstretched, floating up and up, across the floor. Floor after floor, flying to freedom— The thing was, Lucas had told her that after she was gone, her friends had rioted to avenge her, and now they were in danger.In the secret room under the server room, a radio was installed on the wall, and every time he and Juliet talked on the phone, day or night, Juliet could hear the piercing gunshots coming from that radio.There's a similar radio in the orphan's room below, but that only works in the seventeenth bunker.Juliet didn't really want to know how the radio worked.

Deep down, she was secretly thankful that the radio here couldn't hear those gunshots.She just wanted to go back quickly and stop that.It had become an irresistible urge: she must go back to her bunker.Sometimes she would think that it was not far to walk back from above, but the problem was that the gate had never been opened for people to walk in.That door will only open when you want to kill someone.Thinking about it really drives people crazy.Also, even if she goes back, what can she do?If the people in the bunker saw her go out to clean the camera and come back alive, would the conspiracy between Bernard and the information area be exposed? Since she couldn't go back from above, she had no choice but to think of a more dangerous way.Maybe that might just be a delusion, but at least it would give her a glimmer of hope.Her dream is to go to the bottom of the bunker, dig out the drilling machine buried there, repair one of them, and then use that machine to drill a passage to the bottom of the eighteenth bunker and penetrate the outer wall , and then took her friends from this passage to the Seventeenth Bunker, to make this deserted place work again.Her dream is to build a bunker without lies and deceit. Juliet walked forward step by step in the stagnant water to the revolving door, immersed in these dreams as she walked.She suddenly found that these dreams gave her an inexplicable power, supporting her to move forward more firmly.As she slowly approached the revolving door, she suddenly realized that this would be the first obstacle she encountered.It might not be that easy to get through that revolving door.So she turned her back against the revolving door, put her hands on the pillars and pushed hard, kicked her feet under the pillars, and finally sat on the top edge of the pillars. The problem was, her legs were so heavy they were hard to lift...not high enough to get across.At the beginning, I miscalculated the buoyancy of the protective clothing, and the bars tied on the legs were too heavy.She struggled to sit back, and sat firmly on the pillar so that she could turn around later.Then, she supported the bottom of the knee joint with one hand, leaned back, lifted her legs up and placed them on the door panel with all her strength, and then took a rest, panting, feeling a little proud, and couldn't help laughing.I didn't expect such a simple movement to take so much effort, it's a bit ridiculous to think about it.Now that one foot has been stepped up, the other foot is relatively simple.She felt the muscles in her abs and thighs tense, and before long, her other foot came up.In the past few weeks, I have been climbing stairs desperately, and my muscles have become stronger. She shook her head, relieved, sweat running down the back of her neck.Thinking of climbing again when I came back later, I couldn't help but tremble with fear.Now, it's easy to flip over to the other side, just jump off.She checked the wires wrapped around her wrists, checked that the air tubes on the helmet mounts were secure and not tangled, and started walking up the central hallway.Now, the only source of light here is the flashlight on her helmet. "Are you all right?" The orphan's voice startled her again. "No problem." She pressed her chin on the call button and said, "I will take the initiative to talk to you when I need your help. The radio volume in my helmet is too loud, and every time you talk, it scares me half to death. " She let go of the call button and turned her head to see if the wires and air pipes were entangled.Countless air bubbles floated to the roof, shining brightly under the light of her helmet, like little gemstones— "okay, I get it." As she advanced, her feet barely left the ground, but she shuffled, one foot after another, slowly down the central corridor and past the great dining room.If it was in her own bunker, then two more turns down the corridor to her left would lead to Old Walker's workshop, but would that room be a workshop here too?she does not know.Here, maybe it's a storage room, or a home. If you go into the corridor on the right, you will come to where she lives.She turned her head to look down the hallway when a beam of light overhead suddenly caught sight of a corpse floating on the ceiling, tangled in plumbing wires.She turned her head and couldn't bear to look.It was a sight that reminded her of George or Scott, or anyone she cared about.They are all dead.She preferred to imagine that the corpse was her own. She shuffled toward the stairwell.Moving underwater feels heavy and stagnant, but the water itself is exceptionally clear.Her shoes are heavy, but the protective clothing has buoyancy. Under the interaction of these two forces, she will never fall down.When she came to the entrance of the stairwell, she stopped suddenly. "I'm going to keep going down." She put her chin against the call button, "Pay attention to the pipeline, remember to refuel the compressor. Also, unless there is something wrong, don't take the initiative to talk to me. Last time you finished talking, My ears are still ringing." Juliet lifted her chin and let go of the call button, and took the first step.She thought he would say a word or two to her, but she didn't expect him to say nothing.She held on tightly to the wires and air pipes, dragging them around a ninety-degree turn, step by step toward the dark bottom.The water was pitch black, with only the beam of light above her head sweeping back and forth, and there was silence, with only the sound of "cracking" bubbles. After six turns, the gas pipes and wires became harder and harder to pull because of the frictional resistance of dragging on the stairs.So, she stopped, pulled hard on the pipeline, pulled down a long section, tied it into a large roll and carried it on her back.Fortunately, the water is buoyant, so it doesn't feel too heavy.Then she continued down, letting the tubing slowly slide out of her hands, pausing occasionally to check the tape at the junctions of the tubing, especially the air tubing.Later, she noticed tiny bubbles emerging from a joint in the air pipe, which looked like a row of thin dots bobbing upward in the dark water.Still, it's not a big deal. Later, she finally reached the bottom of the stairs.The length of the reserved pipeline was enough, so she turned and walked towards the water pump.The toughest part is done.Cool air poured into her helmet continuously, "hissing" in her ears, and the valves of the vents released countless bubbles, and every time she turned her head, those bubbles were like a curtain Cover her view.The air pipe and wires are of sufficient length, and it is absolutely no problem to pull them to the water pump, and the tools on her are also complete.Now, she feels much more relaxed because she doesn't need to go any deeper.Now, the only thing she needs to do is to connect the wire to the water pump, a simple action, and then she can go out. With the destination in sight, she began to feel more and more confident that she could really do it, restore the mechanical and electrical section of the bunker, get the generators running again, and then start a drilling machine.The whole thing went well.It won't be long before she can set off to save her friends.After weeks of desperate frustration, it now seemed that this dream was not far away, and that everything was within her grasp. It wasn't long before Juliet finally came to the sinkhole.The location of the sinkhole in this bunker was exactly the same as her bunker.She walked to the edge of the puddle and bent forward, the beam on her helmet shining on the numbers on the side of the puddle.That number shows how deep the standing water is.Thinking that the current water depth is at least more than 100 meters, the numbers by the puddle suddenly seem so small and ridiculous.Ridiculous and sad.The bunker was not even capable of protecting human life. But after thinking about it, Juliet knew that she was wrong: the people in the bunker didn't protect the bunker well. "Orphan, I'm already at the water pump, ready to connect the wires." She carefully looked at the water pump at the bottom of the pit to see if the water outlet was blocked by debris.The water here was crystal clear, unlike the puddles in her own bunker.In the past, she always stepped in waist-deep puddles, wrestling with oily mud, but the water here was infiltrated groundwater, about tens of thousands of liters, so clean that it could almost be drunk directly. Then, she shivered, and then suddenly realized that her protective clothing had begun to be unable to block the bone-chilling cold in the deep water, and her body temperature had begun to lose.She told herself that it was almost there.She walked towards the huge water pump step by step.The pump was mounted on the wall, and several water pipes ran all the way to the edge of the puddle.Those pipes were almost as thick as her waist.On the other side of the water pump, there is another water pipe of the same thickness, which extends upwards along the wall to the electromechanical area above, where it meets countless pipelines.Standing in front of the huge water pump, she untied the wires wrapped around her wrist, and suddenly remembered the last job she did in the mechanical and electrical department.At that time, she was repairing a similar water pump, pulled out the shaft, and found that the turbine blades were completely rusted.But now, she picked up a screwdriver from her pocket, loosened the screw on the positive wire connector, and secretly prayed that the turbine blades of this water pump would not be completely rusted like the last one.Hope it works smoothly after power on.She didn't want to risk her life to come down for repairs.She wasn't afraid to fix the pump, but she didn't want to do it in the water. The screw on the positive connector came loose easily, which was beyond her expectation.Then Juliet locked the wires, and as she did so, she could hear her own breathing echoing through the helmet.She used a screwdriver to tighten the joint, and halfway through it, she suddenly realized why she could hear her own breathing.Because the "hissing" sound of air pouring into the helmet is gone. Juliet was petrified.She tapped the side of the helmet and noticed that the vent valves were still bubbling, but at a slower rate.There is still air pressure in the protective clothing, but there is no more air to continue to pour in. She pressed her chin on the call button and felt the sweat trickle down the side of her head and down her chin.Her feet felt cold, but her head began to sweat. "Orphan? I'm Juliet. Did you hear that? What's going on up there?" She waited for his answer, and at the same time turned her head to shine the flashlight on the air pipe, to see if it was kinked.She could still breathe air, but it was the air left in the suit.Strange, why didn't the orphan answer? "Hello? Orphan? Why don't you talk?" The flashlight on top of the helmet had to be adjusted, but a voice in her head told her there was no time to adjust.She could not determine when the air delivery was interrupted, so how much air had she had left since that time?Just got off the top, and it's been at least an hour now.But the orphan should be able to fix the compressor before the air runs out, right?She still has a lot of time.Maybe he was just refueling.She told herself that there was still a lot of time, and then aimed a screwdriver at the negative connector, turned it, and unexpectedly slipped off.The negative connector is stuck. She didn't have time to deal with problems like this anymore, to fix things that were broken.The wire from the positive connector is already locked.She reached out to move the flashlight on the helmet.The angle of the flashlight is high, which is convenient when walking, but it is very inconvenient to work.She pressed the flashlight down a little, and pointed it at the huge water pump. The ground wire should be connected to the casing of the water pump, right?She tried to think back.The whole case is the ground, right?right?Why can't she remember?Why is thinking suddenly so taxing? She straightened the end of the black wire, and then bent the copper wire at the end with great effort through thick gloves.Next, she moved closer to the vent spoiler at the back of the pump, and pressed the small piece of copper wire onto the spoiler.This small piece of metal plate is obviously integrated with the entire casing and can conduct electricity.Then she wrapped the wire around a small screw cap and tied it in place.That should help, she told herself, to start the pump.Old Walker must understand.Damn it, where was he when she needed him the most? At this time, the radio behind her neck suddenly went "beep", a static noise, and then she seemed to hear someone calling her name, but the sound sounded very far away-then the sound was gone. Juliet's body floated and swayed in the icy dark water.The static noise just now made her ears ring again.She pressed the call button with her chin to tell the orphan not to get too close to the radio. At this moment, she suddenly found that the air bubbles were no longer coming out of the vent valve of the helmet.The air pressure inside the suit is gone. Now, she felt another kind of pressure.