Clouds wander the sky above the surface and bring the rain.

Their waters first granted life. Then, they turned bad and took it.

The Manuals of the Bunker, Vol. 3, Verse 2

We stood in a corridor. Smooth, white walls met the ceiling above, where small lamps glowed with a gentle light—weak but steady.

Electric light.

The corridor wasn't longer than one of the compost heaps. It ran straight between a door at one end and an ascending stairway at the other, with us halfway between them. More doors were set into its sides, most of them closed. A soft hum vibrated the air.

"Smooth fer reals." Amy moved a hand over the flawless wall. "Must be engineer stuff."

Made by engineers, no doubt. I hardly dared to breathe. Their work is perfection, just like the Manuals said.

Brown stains marked the floor—the only blemish I saw.

"Look at that!" I pointed at them.

She shrugged. "Well, the garbage people should clean this place."

I didn't rise to her challenge. Whatever this place was, we broke all the Manuals' laws by just being here.

Death awaits those who enter the realm of the Engineers and the machines. That's what the Manuals said.

I looked up and down the corridor, expecting someone—or something—to come after us in rightful wrath.

"Let's check this out." Amy took a step towards a door opposite.

"Wait. What if there's something beyond these doors..." I said. "Something bad?"

She stopped. "True... If the Gaths are anywhere, it would be here, I guess." She nibbled a fingernail.

For a moment, we stood in silence.

I knew we should turn back. Turn ourselves in. Hope for the mercy of the Church. But then, I doubted that the bishop would be inclined to show mercy.

For us, there was no turning back. The only way was forward.

"The weak ones hide, the strong ones explore," I said.

"Smart man." She grinned.

"These are your words."

"I know. That's why they make ye smart. Ye're learning from the best." She gestured at a closed door opposite to the one we had entered, still grinning. "So, would ye like to explore?"

She looked pretty like that, her mischievous brown eyes almost glowing.

"With you by my side?" I said. "Yes!"

She snorted.

As I pulled the door open, warm air washed over me, accompanied by a sound akin to the hum in the corridor but strong enough to make my belly tingle. And that belly told me to run, to get away from there. Yet I stood my place, curiosity overruling my instinct to flee. And I didn't want to show Amy how scared I was.

Darkness claimed most of the room beyond the threshold. No real lamps were burning here, just tiny, colored pinpricks of red, green, yellow, and blue on machinery. Some were steady. Others went on and off.

"This is a big place, ye can hear it," Amy said.

She was right. The deep echoes sounded more like a cavern than a room. The ceiling and most of the walls hid somewhere in the gloom. Structures as large as the houses of the city crouched and lurked in the shadows. Pipes or bars ran between them.

The Engineers' machines, tireless and unfailing, just like the Manuals said. They watched us from their beady, colored eyes.

I took a step back into the corridor behind me. She did the same, and I closed the door with a sigh of relief.

"Just some machines." She gave the door a dismissive gesture. "This can't be the control room. Way too dark. The control room is full of light."

Just some machines? My heart was still thumping with the dread of their powerful droning. "At school, our preacher told us that machines are neither dead nor alive." I silently wondered if the door could be locked from this side.

"Sure," she said. "But anyway, let's go elsewhere. I'm sure the control room is here somewhere."

I eyed the door we had come from, the one that would take us back to the shaft.

Back to the world I knew. Not the world of machines I couldn't even name.

I shook my head, dismissing the thought. "Let's try another door." Without waiting for her reply, I headed for the next door, located in the wall opposite to the machines. It stood open, and the room beyond wasn't dark, hot, or noisy. Just like the corridor, it had small lamps in its ceiling. They cast their pale light onto two tables and some chairs.

At one side of the room, a tap projected from the wall, similar to the one they had at the loo house in the upper cavern. It was located between a waist-high closet and a cupboard reaching all the way to the ceiling.

"What's this place?" Amy asked.

I stepped to the cupboard and opened its door. The dishes and bowls neatly stacked on its shelves didn't surprise me.

"Looks like a kitchen," I said.

My dry throat made me try the tap. With a sigh, air escaped from it, stirring the dust in the sink underneath.

"No water," I said.

"What's a kitchen?"

"A place where you prepare food."

"Then where's the fireplace?"

"Maybe they eat their food cold." I shrugged and turned to the tables. One chair was on its back, its white paint stained with brown. A bag or backpack lay next to it.

Amy picked it up and peered inside. "Empty." She sounded disappointed, but she still pulled one of its straps over her shoulder.

The stains continued from the chair across the floor and to a door in the wall opposite the entrance.

The whole place was dusty but neat, and these stains didn't fit. Curious, I peered into the next room.

No light was burning inside. Two wide, unmade beds stood side by side—a bedroom. A musty smell hit my nostrils.

The sheet on the one furthest from the door formed a bulge, familiar in its shape and size—a human.

I froze.

The contours of two legs and a torso prone on its back were unmistakable. A pillow blocked my view of where the head would be.

"Hey, check this out," I whispered.

Fighting an urge to run, I stepped inside.

The head rested in a nest of long, black hair. It gazed at the ceiling from two sightless holes. Its dry skin spanned a nose missing its tip. The mouth stood open in a silent scream of exposed teeth—teeth larger than life. The flesh that had held them and the lips that had covered them were long gone or shriveled into nothing.

More brown stains marred this side of the bed and the gray shirt on the body's chest. This person must have bled to death here.

I tore my gaze away. Amy stood next to me, biting her knuckles.

"A Gath," she said.

"It's only a body. Dead. The stains outside and here, they must be blood."

"Gross." Slowly, she stepped next to the bed, reached out, and tugged at a strand of hair. It came free. "I think 'twas a woman." She held the hair before her face and studied it, cross-eyed.

"Eww! Put this back."

She let it fall and inspected the body—the woman—once more. "Hey, isn't that the same one as you have? The bird-thing?"

The woman wore an amulet on a string around her head—black, with a red phoenix.

"Yes, it looks the same."

She seized it and gave it a tug, making the head nod. The string broke into the skin around the neck, tearing it open, but the amulet didn't come free.

That was too much.

Moments later, I stood over the sink, gagging. My spittle left dark marks in the dust at its bottom.

I had seen death before, the day my mother had died. Her lips had been pale as she lay there after her last coughs. But she still did have lips and smooth skin. She looked as if asleep—still human.

The person next door wasn't asleep. She must have been human, but not anymore. Not for a long time.

"Ye're pale." Amy appeared at my side. "Ye okay?"

I wiped my mouth and looked at her. She frowned.

The amulet dangled around her neck.

My throat constricted once more.

I gazed back at the door to the bedroom, avoiding the sight of her grisly trophy. I didn't want to know what Amy had done to get it. "What do you think about that? That woman?"

She shrugged. "She might be the last one of the Engineers. As I told ye, the church snuffed them all. I still believe that even if the moving images didn't say so." She frowned. "Whatever, maybe the woman got hurt, probably by some priests, but she was able to flee. So she ended up here, unlocking the door from the shaft with this bird thing." She patted the amulet on her chest. "But 'twas too late fer her."

She fumbled with her prize, studying it. "I like it. It makes us kind of partners, ye and me. And it goes well with my mom's ring." She held up her left hand. The metal of the strangely shaped bird glittered in the light.

The end came with the birds. The verse of the third volume sprang to my mind. But the smile on her face stopped me from saying it aloud. Instead, I opted for a safer statement and pointed at her ring. "It doesn't look like a phoenix, though."

"Because it isn't. It's a butterfly."

"A fly?" I didn't like flies. They were a nuisance on the compost heaps even though the craner had told me that they helped to turn the waste into earth.

She shrugged. "Yeah, a fly. But not a regular one. A butterfly."

"What's a butter, then?"

"I don't know." She tapped her lips, looking at the soiled sink. "Maybe, it's what comes out of yer butt?"

I couldn't help laughing.

She nodded, still grinning. "Good to see ye happy. And I've got something to make you feel even happier." She reached into her backpack and pulled out a small, black book. "The shrivelled lass in that bed was clutching it. I thought you'd like to show off your reading skills."