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He could feel nothing down here.

On the upper floors he’d felt humans, squatters from the feel of their light. He’d counted around thirty living and sleeping above the ground floor, separate from the half-dozen or so they’d already scared off upon entering through the back portico with their rifles.

None felt like anything but civilians. He got no ties to SCARB, to Shadow, to any of the militaries whose imprints he knew.

Their lights felt haphazard, disorganized.

He knew those characteristics could be faked, of course.

Still, no seers appeared to be living here, meaning in the White House or its surrounding environs. The humans had been easy enough to push, which Loki ordered his team to do mainly to avoid unnecessary deaths, and to save time. He knew using their light in such a way posed a different set of risks, making them visible to anyone watching from the Barrier, but Yumi agreed the risk was an acceptable one, perhaps even a small one.

Anyway, the Sword told Loki to use his own discretion.

He could only hope the Sword would agree with the decisions he made so far.

Down here, in the sub-basement levels, he felt no one.

Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise him.

The elevator had required some skill from Anale and the others to crack. No stairs led to these floors from the levels above, and only the one elevator went this deep. A secondary exit existed below, according to revised plans provided by the Sword, and emergency stairs provided access between the lower sub-basement floors and that exit, but they were cut off from the upper structure totally without the elevator.

Additionally, the Sword warned Loki they’d likely be cut in half by force fields triggered by motion sensors if they tried to rappel up or down the shafts without first neutralizing all the secondary security measures. Many of those measures would come equipped with independent power sources in the event of a power cut during a breach.

Suffice it to say, the sub-basements made an unlikely refuge for human squatters.

Changing channels on his headset, he pinged Yumi’s team again.

“Still nothing?” he queried.

“Nothing, brother,” Yumi confirmed. “The construct is dead. I just ran the imprints by Balidor, and he found nothing remotely like what Shadow had in either New York or Argentina.”

Nodding, Loki motioned for the others to begin leaving the elevator car in pairs.

They walked out, two by two, with him and Anale holding the elevator car and its organics for the others.

There was a very long-feeling silence.

Illeg’s voice rose first on the comm.

“Clear.”

“Clear,” Ontari seconded from further down the hall.

“Clear,” Holo confirmed, from an open doorway closer to the elevator doors.

A few moreall-clearssounded in his headset as Loki felt the seers in front of him begin to fan out and explore secondary corridors and attached rooms. He monitored the careful touches of their light, sending the mobile construct a snapshot of the offices at the end of the hall, with particulars of the room that most interested the Sword.

He motioned for Anale to follow him, then entered the pitch blackness of the cement block corridor.

Once the elevator doors closed behind them, it got significantly darker.

Physical darkness did not handicap seers the way it did humans. Seers could use their Barrier sight to compensate, as long as enough imprints lived on the surrounding surfaces to allow them to discern outlines. Ordinary seers got no insight into the objects themselves?but they could at least avoid walking into them.

An utter darkness like this still affected them psychologically, however.

Like now, Loki couldn’t see the corridor walls.

He could feel imprints, some in the shape of fingerprints, handprints, but most just vague touches of life and light, including those left behind by the air breathed out by human and seer bodies. Compared to a city street, or an area where animals and insects proliferated, the imprint layer was light, a faint glow, but the sheer accumulation over time left a blurred outline approximating the walls, floor, and ceiling for him to follow.