Liam didn’t try to open the vault. The fear in that painted message was contagious. He backed away, retraced his steps through the bunkhouse, up the tunnel, and back out onto the sunlit cliff.
He descended the mountain faster than he ever had before.
When he got home, he reported the site anonymously to the Bureau of Land Management, mentioning the radiation and the abandoned structures.
[readalso]
Three days later, he received a single email to his burner account. It had no subject line and no signature.
“We appreciate your report. For your own safety, do not return to this location.”
Curious, Liam checked the online satellite maps a week later. The trail he had taken was gone. The area around Eagle Ridge was now blacked out, labeled simply as “Restricted.”
The government had scrubbed it from the map. But Liam still has the photos, and he knows that high up on that cliff, the door is still there, waiting for the next person to find it.
[readalso]