They passed through Gerlach and drove another thirty miles to a state route that wound toward the mountains and turned at a cattle gate that hadn't seen cattle in a hundred years. Stone quarries dipped along one side, then the black skeletons of cranes and train tracks reclaimed by the local flora. A company store sat at the end of the town's one paved road, and parking the car Dean stepped out and pulled on his jacket and tapped the hood wondering if he ought to pack a gun. The worm stuck to the inside of the jar like a question mark.
"It's just through there," said Dean, pointing to the thicket behind the store.
Sam went to the trunk to tuck a gun away in his jacket and a sheathed knife at his belt, then walked up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Dean.
"So this is it, huh?" Sam asked. Something about it tugged at him, telling him yes, this was it. And something about it repelled him, maybe some as-yet-unsurfaced memory, maybe some instinct, and he knew he'd rather stay outside with Dean and say hollow, pointless things than pass by the store and into the thicket.
It was just as Dean had said, corrugated steel half-buried in mud and curving downward with a ladder running inside. Flashlights clamped between their teeth, they descended and arrived at a rough-hewn entrance with miner caps and lockers lining the wall, the door unlocked. Dean pushed it open and threw up his hands.
"Awesome."
Their lights shown on black water. Had it flooded over years of neglect or was this a security measure? Dean had a vague recollection of a U-shaped corridor dug far below with the other end opening into a staging area, but how to get there...
Dean snapped his fingers. "The lockers."
He opened the one nearest here, inside of which hung scuba gear with oxygen tanks. Not a lot of oxygen.
"How long you think we could stay underwater with these things Sammy?"
Sam crowded in close to get a look at the levels. "Fifteen, twenty minutes? It'll give us a little time, anyway."
Sam dropped his backpack on a bench and began peeling off his jacket, quietly mourning the loss of his gun.
"Wait, I got something in the trunk," said Dean back and returning with two plastic trash bags, "No way am I walking around some haunted missile silo in wet jeans, I will frikkin chafe."
They stripped down to boxers, boots tied around their belts that cinched the bags. Dean dipped his hand in the water, yanked it back. "Ugh it's cold, frikkin hate the cold."
"We've been through worse," Sam said before he fitted his mask over his face. He grabbed one of the waterproof flashlights that were mounted to the side of the lockers and waded into the water. After a few steps there was a steep drop-off, and Sam took a deep breath of oxygen and dropped in.
His whole body shuddered at the immersion in cold water. His flashlight made a ghostly greenish cone of light in front of him, and after a second, Dean's joined his, searching.
They swam through an office, papers hanging in the water, fluttering as they passed. Through a doorway, luckily open. Another office and they reached an airlock. Together they spun the wheel and floated backwards as the porthole opened into another space full of water.
Sam glanced at Dean, tilting his head in a question, and at Dean's nod, they went through. It went deeper, the ceiling pressing down on them at an angle.
A current pulled them along a steel tunnel, lichen dripping at the seams, their flashlights shining crazily in observation windows behind which sat hulking outdated security cameras. A generator kicked in and the cameras whirred to life. Were they still hooked up to the grid?
They kicked along, Dean ignoring the pressure headache behind his eyes and listened for trouble. Listened to the hiss of oxygen. The hiss became a church by the sea, a woman on her back, hair fanned across the altar, breathing in his ear as waves gently creamed on a black sandy beach.
The current changed direction and a trunk of light appeared as Dean grabbed Sam's wrist and they were sucked upward. Breaking the surface, Dean pulled himself on a tile floor by his elbows and yanked off his mask, shaking with cold.
"He-e-re," he stammered, helping Sam up, "Th-there sh-should be..."
Dean stood and cast around the room, startled when his light fell on the machine guns bolted into the ceiling, trained on his path. He swallowed. He took another step, and when the guns followed but did not fire, he fumbled with the door of a medical storage locker and searched inside until he produced two mylar blankets.
"Here," said Dean, unfolding what appeared to be candy wrapper the size of a circus tent and wrapping Sam in it, "Keeps your body heat from leaking out."
Dean wrapped himself in one and sat toe to toe with Sam, lips blue, smiled. "Dude we look like baked potatoes."
Sam huffed out a shaky laugh but couldn't say anything yet, not liking the way Dean looked, cold and wet and pale. The ride through the current had disoriented him, had triggered sense-memories of underwater, green and dark with ripples of light shining down through waving black hair. Running out of breath. Language he could almost understand in his head. He still felt claustrophobic from it, could still hear the disturbing echo of alien words.
He spoke just to get rid of the sound, teeth chattering. It echoed off the water and the metal walls. "After this, we get a m-motel room. Heater on full b-blast, I don't care if I sweat. Lots of coffee, too."
Untying the bag, Dean pulled out his flannel shirt and began drying Sam's hair. "Here, stand up."
Dean's blanket crinkled to the floor, busily toweling off first Sam's legs and then his thighs and wicking water from his arms, so intent on his brother that he almost missed the clink of glass against the tiles.
Dean shined his light. "Hello?"
Several doors led out of the room, unfinished concrete painted black with exposed pipes rising past hooded fluorescent bulbs, a few filing cabinets, hospital smocks in a laundry bin. The glass worm jar lay silent, propped against a door with large block letters over the lintel. AMNIOTIC TANKS.
He rushed back. "I found something, how ya doing Sammy?"
"Better," Sam said, pulling on his jeans, his wet boxers in a puddle on the floor. Goosebumps still pebbled his chest and arms, but he felt almost warm, would feel good once he had all his clothes on. "Thanks. Hurry and get dressed before you freeze," he said, tossing Dean's bag to him.
They finished dressing quickly, and their wet boots made squish squish sounds as they approached the door. "Worm led you here, huh?" Sam tried the knob, found it unlocked.
The door opened to an unbelievably large room filled with rows upon rows of upright glass and chrome tanks full of bodies floating in glowing blue fluid, countless tubes and wires running in tangles along the floor. That sight alone was enough to leave Sam breathless. Then he took in the sheer size of the room, ten times, twenty times as big as the basement of the bombed-out Vegas hotel, a hundred times. The light from their flashlights couldn't penetrate the darkness far enough to reach the ceiling.
Heart beating hard from the sheer shock of it, Sam asked, "What the hell is this place?"
Dean ran his hand along the wall until he found a breaker box and start flipping switches. No lights came on, but the clank of machinery echoed at the far end, followed by an ominous 'BEEP oooooo BEEP oooooo'.
"Shit, sidearms out Sammy."
They aimed at the shadows, flashlights over their guns, bodies angled sideways, tensed as the noise grew closer. It sounded like an electric drill...or a bulldozer. Just as it closed the gap, a low sputter buzzed in the ceiling and hummed to life and straightened out into...Christmas music?
"Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, / Ring-ting-tingling too, / Come on, it's lovely weather / For a sleigh ride together with you."
A bot the size of a horse rolled into the light. Sam and Dean craned their necks. It had two eyes, one white and one red, tractor treads, shoulder-mounted laser cannons, and a nametag that read, 'Hello! My Name is BOWIE'. Several more bots like it watched, clinging to the tanks like crabs, but they were smaller and seemed preoccupied with scanning barcodes and dropping dipsticks into the water.
Bowie's face-plate rotated toward Sam, a steel lobster claw pinning his wrist and pressing a sensor to his hand. He gasped at the jab of a needle, but the robot made a soft 'ding' and greeted him in a high chipmunk voice. "Hello...Mister Winchester...It has been...3,293 days since your last check-in...I was getting worried about you...Would you care...for some salad?"
The Christmas music abruptly switched to Fleetwood Mac, and Dean raised an eyebrow. "Seriously Sam? 'Rumors'?"
His question was punctuated by a 'sonuvabitch!' as the bot identified him and the music switched yet again.
" Why do stars fall down from the sky, every time you walk by?
Just like me, they long to be close to you."
Sam coughed behind his hand, barely hiding the laugh as Dean frowned so hard the lines of his mouth hit his chin.
The absurdity of it had snapped Sam out of his shock, but now he couldn't even process it. "Dean, this is seriously weirding me out," he said under his breath, finger still on his trigger though he knew it wouldn't do much against this tank of a robot.
However, it might have some of the answers they sought.
"What are you?" he asked it. "How do you know us?"
"I am head of hospitality and information services...Mister Winchester...I know all the personnel...Would you like to ask a question?"
"Did we have a job here?"
BEEP oooooo BEEP oooooo "Dean Winchester, level 5 enforcer, specialized in search and rescue. Sam Winchester, level 5 enforcer, specialized in occult combat."
"Enforcers huh," said Dean, tapping the nearest water tank, a woman suspended by tubes inside a thick white caul, "So why are you growing people?"
BEEP oooooo BEEP oooooo "Uterine replicators are a necessary addition to Class Object Impala."
The boys looked at each other. "What's Class Object Impala?"
BEEP oooooo BEEP oooooo "Classified."
Dean attempted to move around the bot. "Well take us to your file rooms and-"
Bowie moved impressively fast, hind quarters unfolding like a grasshopper and suddenly doubling in height, laser cannons training red dots on Dean's forehead as it continued in that little girl voice. "I would not recommend that...Mister Winchester... Any unauthorized personnel found in the classified cell blocks will be disciplined. Any unauthorized personnel found hacking into classified files will be tracked, located, and detained. Any unauthorized personnel found with classified materials will be terminated. If you wish to research Class Object Impala, please submit your request to base command and wait upon security clearance approval." said Bowie, making a tinkly bell sound, "Ah your quarters are ready...Mister Winchesters...This way please."
The brothers watched Bowie return to its previous form, and they shared a tense look before turning to follow him. The wall was on their right, the glowing amniotic tanks on their left, and Sam studied them as he followed the metallic sounds of Bowie's treads on the concrete floor and the seemingly random songs he kept cycling through. The tanks were filled with all shapes and sizes of people, from infants to the elderly, men and women of all races and colors.
After a few hundred yards, they reached a large set of doors which slid open with a quiet whoosh. Bowie made a series of beeps, and the dark corridor they faced flickered to light as fluorescents powered up overhead and wall fans spun into life, showing concrete walls painted institutional gray and dozens of doors lining the walls on either side.
"Your quarters," Bowie said in its unnaturally high voice, pausing outside of one door.
The room was cramped, big enough for two beds reminiscent of the cot in Bobby's panic room, a small table with two chairs, and a pair of closets. Sam opened one closet door to see several uniforms hanging. He tugged on a pair of dark, stained coveralls, noted that it was his size, and that S. Winchester had been stitched onto a patch at the chest. He didn't doubt Dean's closet would be any different. He glanced at the cup-rings stained on the table, the scuff-marks on the floor.
"How long did we live here?" Sam asked.
But he turned to find Dean gone, his clothes-boots, jeans, flannel, undershirt-dropped onto the floor in descending order on the way to the shower. A yelp sounded from within the open door, and the top half of Dean's head peered around the frame. "The, uh, the hot water works."
The bathroom was utilitarian but clean, a mirror cabinet full of soap and shaving cream and half-empty boxes of sleeping pills and pain meds, with a second door connecting it to the neighboring bedroom. No personal effects. No graffiti on the walls. On a hunch, Sam lifted one of the mattresses and found a copy of Busty Asian Beauties still in the cellophane. Okay, almost no personal effects.
A few minutes later Dean emerged pink and clean with a towel around his waist. He stepped on a bed, lightly bouncing the springs as he plucked the magazine from Sam's fingers. "Hey Sammy, I think I got something stuck to my shoe."
Sam's brow knit, then he followed Dean's eyes as they flicked to an air vent in the corner. Bugs.
Sam looked away casually in case there was visual feed as well as audio. If anyone was monitoring the feeds, they'd realize that their secret, the full extent of which Sam still didn't know, had been found out. If anyone was manning the feeds, they might be on their way. If they weren't already there in the building.
As quietly as he could, he whispered, "Dean, we gotta get out of here."
The Carpenters played on in the hallway, and zipping up his bluejeans Dean turned to Sam and said, "Boy I do love me some Leon Russell don't you?"
Tearing little strips from the towel, he rolled the world's tiniest earplugs and handed them to Sam. "But you can't appreciate the piano solo..." he said, putting in his own earplugs and screaming in the hallway, "...UNLESS YOU REALLY CRANK IT."
Suddenly the music changed, so loud they could feel the bass through their feet, and the first little microphone exploded in a puff of smoke like someone had tucked a lit cigarette in the air vent.
"Yeah, the colonel said that women are for loving, not fighting,
But that didn't clear the air
'Cause Junior's still living in the blackboard jungle
With his Elvis Presley hair."
Let's go. Dean mouthed, and together they ran to the bathroom where the second door stood unlocked. All of the rooms were connected thus, the doors opening easily until they arrived at one with a meat locker smell inside and a plaque reading HIGH COMMAND. It was a cheap lock in a rotting wooden frame, but Dean had no luck. Can you get this? he mouthed.
Heart beating overtime with adrenaline, Sam slammed his foot into the door, which burst inward with a satisfying crash and a shower of splinters. They rushed inside, and Sam quickly took in two dessicated bodies slumped in chairs, their upper halves draped across panels covered in dials and keypads. There was a large, heavy metal locker to his left, and with Dean's help he shoved it in front of the door with a squeal of metal on concrete. The doorway was small enough that it could keep out Bowie, but Sam didn't know what other devices might be prowling the complex.
Leon Russell was still thumping through the floor, and he could hear a small, tinny version of it playing through a speaker in the command center. It was a large room, the walls a lighter shade of gray than the corridors, and there were banks of file cabinets along one wall, half a dozen neatly squared-off desks, a row of lockers, and the panels of electronics which the corpses were slumped against. Above these were a dozen monitors cycling through various rooms in the facility.
Breathing hard, Sam's eyes flicked from one monitor to another. He saw himself and Dean standing wide-legged in the command center, shoulder-to-shoulder, their stances those of men ready to fight. He saw Bowie in the corridor, nearing their end. Movement caught his eye on another screen, and displayed there was a bot half the size of Bowie treading between rows of amniotic tanks, blue light glistening on the steel of its four arms.
Sam touched one of the bodies, lifted it so that rows of bars and stripes showed on its chest.
"I wonder if one of them could have gotten us into the file room," he said, fishing the plugs out of his ears.
Dean rummaged through the men's pockets, unearthing a motley of ID badges with code names-Orange Crush, Dirty Rider, Pink Satin-until he came upon one with a key ring the size of a grapefruit. He wondered how much of his brand of humor had spread through the department. He wondered if he had a cool code name too. "Here," he said, tossing Sam the key ring, "The really important ones are usually magnetized, see if you can find-"
Crack. The lights went out. Somewhere an engine whined and a small red dot appeared on the wall nearest the door they'd just blocked, slowly turning orange and then yellow and then traveling down in a white vertical line. The monitors flickered to life behind them, Bowie's mismatched eyes filling all twelve screens at once.
"Hello...Mister Winchesters...A Class-A personnel breach has been reported...Please stand by for Emergency Order 292 Disciplinary Action."
A rectangle glowed in the wall and clattered to the floor, the four-armed bot from the video skittering inside and vanishing into a corner.
Bowie continued. "Records forbid the termination of any mobile task force units...But as your action constitutes a national threat, you will be neutralized...until further notice from High Command."
Two steel pincers lifted Dean off the floor, the other two stretching several feet to pin Sam against a wall.
"Have...a nice day...Mister Winchester."
The screens fizzled out to snow. Dean sneered at the bot holding him by the biceps. "Come on if you're hard enough."
The bot's head swiveled to Dean. "Is that...a joke?"
Sam held his breath, and for answer the bot held out Dean's left arm and wrenched it until Sam heard the pop of dislocation.
"Ha...ha."
Dean howled, tears in his eyes as the bot held him in place and let him kick the empty air. Unable to escape its steely grip, something stirred in Sam's memory, something Bowie had said earlier. Specialist: Occult Combat.
Sam closed his eyes and tried to ignore Dean's pained noises, tried to ignore the metal pressing him against cold concrete. He buried himself in his mind, focusing on those strange words that had taken him deep into memory, focusing on the strong sense of deja vu he'd had since they stepped foot in their quarters, the sense of barely-repressed memories.
Grasping, clutching, straining, something finally snapped into place.
Heat, the sound of metal screeching on metal, and the sudden, stomach-dropping feeling of weightlessness. The elevator they were in was in free-fall, and they landed at the bottom of the shaft with a deafening crash. The doors crumpled under the impact.
Sam took a deep breath, concentrated, raised his arms, palms outward, and recited one of the scores of spells he'd painstakingly committed to memory. The battered doors vibrated and twanged. They bent themselves inward, leaving a space large enough for Sam and Dean to escape.
Sam opened his eyes. Dean was still struggling and cursing. Sam raised his hands toward the arms pinning him and recited the incantation, felt a cold burn in his chest and stomach and watched the metal warp and bend, huffed out a breath when he was dropped to the floor. He recited the spell again directly toward the bot this time, and blood dripped, then streamed out of his nose as the robot collapsed with metallic pings and clangs while smoke poured out of its joints. Dean fell to the concrete as the last arms crashed to the floor.
The bot tried to turn over, one claw grazing Dean's cheek. "404 system error...My arms...hardware parity malfunction, please notify...I can't feel my arms."
Sparks arced, the bot's voice falling in pitch until it sounded like an old man, then stopped altogether. Dragging himself across the floor, Dean curled up against the wall beside Sam, breathing hard through his nose. "Damn. Damn. We almost got killed by a toaster oven. How...?"
He turned to Sam, relief and fear playing over his features, and turned back to the bot. It looked like an elephant had stomped on it. The first question was on the tip of his tongue, but Dean tucked it back for later and lifted the hem of his shirt with his good hand and spat on it and said, "You got blood on your mouth Sammy."
Sam held still and let Dean wipe the blood away, feeling a tightness in his forehead and sinuses and a thunderstorm of a headache forming behind his eyes. He hated the angle of Dean's other shoulder and the way Dean's face was pale with pain, a dark red cut welling up with blood along his cheekbone in stark contrast, but he knew Dean wouldn't let him do anything about it until he was able to take care of Sam.
Finally, Dean stepped back, apparently satisfied. "It happens," Sam said, the feel of blood clotting in his nose all too familiar. "Now we gotta fix your shoulder, then figure out what to do. Come here."
Gingerly, Sam took hold of Dean's arm, feeling the abnormal separation in the joint of the shoulder with his hand and not missing Dean's wince. "Okay. On three. One… "
"NNNN okay," said Dean, rolling his shoulders, "I'm gonna feel that in the morning."
Dean turned to say thank you, the words still ringing long after Sam had said them, and for a moment there two Sams overlapped beside him. One clapped his shoulder and made concerned noises. The other was trapped with him in an elevator, scared he wouldn't be able to get past the soldiers with Dean's semi-conscious body. Smoke poured from under the elevator doors. The floor light dinged. Sam opened the doors with a thought, and draping Dean over his back and touching his fingers to his brother's bloodied mouth, Sam drew three lines across his face, his warpaint bending itself into an UnWord that saw the soldiers approach and reached out and stove in their skulls in puffs of red mist. More were coming, but Dean wasn't scared. It would take more than bullets to stop his Sammy.
Dean blinked, nodding to whatever present-day Sam had asked, and studied the key ring. "The file room can't be far...dang there's gotta be more than fifty keys on here."
He looked up at the monitors, as if the answer might be read in the snow. "The music, the code names, Ziggy Stardust's exoskeleton, we're all over this place like a bad rash. It knows us, but we've forgotten it. So what kind of key would unlock the basement at the bottom of the world?"
He flipped to one larger than most, and the boys looked at each other and said in unison, "A car key."
They stared at it for a few seconds. It was an old-fashioned one, plain metal without the plastic grip or buttons or beepers of a modern car key.
In the hall outside, they could hear the hum and clang of the big bot rolling along the corridor on its massive treads.
"We've still got to deal with Bowie," Sam said, standing to help Dean to his feet. He swiped at his upper lip, nose filled with the smell of dried blood and head aching. "I think I've still got the juice. But whatever weapons he has aren't going to be easy to dodge. Any ideas?"
Dean ran a hand over his mouth. "Okay, um..."
Casting about the room, he ran to the monitor station and ripped open a panel, fans whirring and lights flashing red and green within. "There's a crawlspace back here. It's hot, but it's good cover."
Sam was about to protest, but Dean said, "I'm gonna climb over the top of the door. I can buy you, maybe, five seconds, then you do your thing when I yell."
Sam nodded, framed against the constellation grid of blinking lights as Dean shut the panel and took off his boots and ran on silent feet.
For a while it seemed as though Bowie had changed direction, perhaps decided to recruit other bots for back-up. And then a familiar voice echoed down the passageway...
"Deeeeean honey."
Sam balled his fist into his mouth. Of course they would have gotten a hold on old phone calls from Lawrence...
"You're so quiet. Are you still there?"
The sound of metal scraping as Bowie widened the hole in the wall. Lasers swept the room.
"I brought you some pie."
CRASH. Mary's voice vanished, replaced by a high keening like a driver pressing the gas and brake pedals at the same time. Risking a look, Sam kicked open the panel and rushed out.
Holding fast to a pipe he'd driven into Bowie's eye, Dean moved with it like a bull rider, one arm in the air and legs locked around the robot's neck while it whipped round the room to shake him off. Chairs smashed beneath its treads. One of the sprinklers popped off and they were doused in a cone of rain. Unable to train its sights or fire a plasma beam for fear of triggering an electromagnetic pulse at such close quarters, Bowie stretched itself to its full height and Dean disappeared in a cloud of ceiling plaster.
"Now Sammy!"
Sam's hands shot out and he yelled the incantation, putting all of himself into it, headache exploding behind his eyes. Bowie imploded, crumpling like a can crushed by a huge invisible hand, sparks flying and arcing off metal surfaces. Dean dropped from the ceiling and rolled to the floor with a grunt that Sam could barely hear above the squeal of metal as Bowie continued to warp inward, its voice small as it said in Mary's voice, "Dean, help me."
Sam fell to one knee, feeling the blood gush from his nose again. His head throbbed like a rotten tooth. He wiped his face on his sleeve and pushed up to his feet, then rushed to Dean who was still being rained on by sparks.
Through the clouds of smoke, Sam could see Dean clutching his shoulder, trying to raise himself off the floor. He took Dean by his good arm and moved him away from the bot, who was still slowly being destroyed, gibberish words and bits of song being emitted in bursts and crackles from its speakers.
He led them toward the door, coughing. "Dean, are you okay?" he asked, his voice rough.
Dean nodded, buzzed from the fight. Water dripped down his heaving chest and soaked him through. "Yeah I'm good. Let's bolt before Optimus Prime here calls in the honor guard."
Leaning on each other for support, they made their way through the exit to an elevator that only went down and required a separate key for each floor and had little office party notices taped to the wall. HAPPY BIRTHDAY AGENT STICKY FINGERS, CAKE IN THE MAIN LOBBY at 21:00, D-CLASS WEAPONS PROHIBITED.
Dean shoved the car key into a slot the same size and dropped his head on Sam's shoulder and closed his eyes. Pearls of water clung to his lashes. "You hurt? You don't look hurt."
The elevator hummed and began its slow descent into the earth. Dean opened his eyes, tired and grateful and a little bit scared of Sam's expanded vocabulary. Words were weapons. If a monster word could kill with a thought, what might the monsters do with human words, like 'city' or 'moon' or 'sky'? Or 'brother'?
Sam pressed his arm around his brother's waist, snuffling, drying blood coating the back of his throat. He could see their blurred reflections in the metal doors of the elevator, slumped and clinging together, bedraggled and soaked. Red still streaked his face.
"I'll be okay," he said thickly, knowing that wasn't a real answer. It would have to do. His vision was blurred, his head felt like it was going to split open, but having Dean this close to him helped. It always helped.