Without a second thought, Milo blew the whistle. Ezra covered his ears, expecting a grating trill to ring throughout the warehouse, but nothing happened. Turning the whistle around, Milo blew into the other end, this time even harder. Still, nothing but a hollow puff of air and saliva came out the other end. Feeling it was safe to finally approach, Ezra navigated the rubble from the fallen shelves. By the time he made it across the room, Milo was still persistent in making the artifact work.

“You’ve used an artifact before. How’d the Thorin-sphere respond to you when you first got it?” Milo said between attempts.

Ezra stared curiously at the whistle. “I just touched it, and the light on the top turned a different color. Then it said I was authenticated. Whatever that means.”

“I’m not seeing any light.” Milo flipped the tiny piece of craftsmanship to view it from every angle. It looked to be made out of ceramic, or at least it had the shine of ceramic. “And it's not as high-tech as the Thorin-sphere.” A new thought lit up his eyes. “What if it still sees the guy I knocked out as the owner?”

Wilfred glanced away from the box. “Idiot kid, when were you going to tell me? If he’s not dead, what’s stopping him from waking up while we’re still here? Rushing over to the body in the supply crate, he squatted to check the man’s pulse. Sighing, Wilfred pulled his fingers away from the man’s neck and upholstered his gun.

“Wait,” Ezra yelled as Wilfred clicked his gun to take a shot. “We don’t need to kill him.”

Wilfred glared as if Ezra’s plea was an enemy itself. “What's made you go soft? If he’s not dead, he’s going to blab about this to whoever sent him.”

Ezra paused for a moment. I’ve killed too, and I have someone I want to kill, so what right do I have to stop him? Yet killing never felt good. He had never been satisfied by it. Not once. “We should tie him up. Ask him what he knows. The fact that he’s still alive means he could still be of use to us.”

Wilfred’s finger wrapped closer around the trigger, and his grip twitched. The silence, waiting for the ring of vibro-crystal, was overbearing like a thick pool of water holding Ezra down. A loud noise never came, and Wilfred clicked the safety back on. “Fine,” he grumbled.

Ezra pulled a rope from his backpack and cut a segment of it off. Flipping the unconscious body over, he tied makeshift handcuffs and cut another segment of rope. He dragged the body from the supply crate and used the second rope to attach the handcuffs to a metal pole that extended to the ceiling. Pleased with his handiwork, he faced Wilfred again. “So that box, do you know how to open it?”

Wilfred was already scrolling through the metal circles carved with numbers and inlaid into the box. “It needs a code. Six digits.”

Milo shoved the whistle back into his pocket as he returned to the present moment. “I could’ve told you that. There could be a million combinations, and if you don’t know where to start, it's a fool's errand.”

“Maybe someone wrote it down somewhere,” Ezra suggested.

“Unlikely,” Wilfred said as he set the box down. “And equally unlikely it would still be here if they did.”

“There’s no harm in searching.” Milo looked at the stairs leading back to the rest of the warehouse.

Wilfred tucked the box under his arm and walked away. His footsteps echoed on the hard concrete. “Fine, but if nothing is found, I’ll figure out another method to get into the box.”

Splitting into different directions, they scoured the warehouse. Ezra stayed in the main room while Wilfred and Milo went back into the dark. Even this far from the center of the abyss, a dim glow made its way to the building. The natural light, if he could call it that, coming from the tenth layer, dimmed in cycles of thirteen hours. Light during the night was just a pale imitation of what he could see during the day, and even though it was only the third layer, Ezra could tell the nights were brighter up here.

Wandering through rubble and a few unbroken shelves, he picked through cardboard boxes, seeing if any of them contained the secret to the black box. He dumped out the entire ream of paper from one and looked through each blank sheet for any clue. Only white stared back at Ezra, so he moved on. The tripod he had found earlier was thrown like a discarded piece of trash to the floor a bit away from its original location. Even after scanning every part of it, the shiny black surface was all he could find. No carved messages or serial numbers that he could try. The serial number would be a long shot, but it would be better than nothing.

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As Ezra put the tripod down, he spotted the corner of a magazine sticking out from under the rubble. The box that had contained them crushed underneath a rusted beam. Lifting the beam, Ezra pulled out the crumpled pile of magazines and began to flip through them. Just as he had observed before, all of them were business magazines from eight years ago. On one page he even spotted a report on White Rock’s earnings.

That brought back distant memories. The life he had lived for so long down in those deep, dark caverns, slaving away for a corporation that kept demanding more and more, seemed like some hazy dream. I wonder how Albert and the rest of the explosive team are doing. While thinking of the old man’s smile, he closed the magazine and uncovered the next.

Brushing the dust off, something looked different about this one. In the top right corner, a small faded stamp of a long and spiky fruit or vegetable, Ezra couldn’t tell which, marred the surface. Shaking it clean, a puff of particles dissipated into the air. He flipped through it, but nothing else stood out. It was just another business magazine published eight years ago.

Might as well keep it and see if Wilfred can make something of it. Looking through the rest of the pile, Ezra found nothing else like the stamped magazine. It wasn’t long after his search that the sound of Milo and Wilfred’s boots echoed into the room. With a distraught look, the two of them came down the steps.

“Find anything?” Ezra asked.

Wilfred shook his head in silence, and Milo gave Ezra a thumbs down. “You?” Milo replied with a less enthusiastic tone.

“It’s probably nothing, but does this mean anything to you, Wilfred?” Ezra held up the magazine and pointed to the corner stamp.

Wilfred squinted in the little bit of light afforded to them and then snatched the magazine from Ezra’s hands as he dropped the black box. “That’s a Lucetop.”

“And that is?” Ezra raised a questioning eyebrow.

“A vegetable.” Wilfried frantically flipped through the pages as his eyes darted through every detail.

“I can tell that much, but it has to be something important.” It has to be if it's got him this riled up.

Wilfred got to the last page and snapped the magazine shut. “Did you find any more like this?”

“No.” Wilfred’s intense stare froze Ezra in place and made him forget to take a breath. “But what does it mean? Why’re you getting excited over a Lucetop?”

“It’s Marlaove.” Wilfred pointed at the Lucetop. “He grew these. All the time. Even though they're not native to the third layer, he kept growing them.” He flipped through the magazine again, searching for any sign, any additional clue. “This has to be him. He must’ve marked this.”

“The lock’s six digits. Why not try the date the magazine was published?” Milo suggested picking up the box.

“It only says the month and year. I think this one was published in 868 in the ninth month.” Ezra's mind raced for a way of finding out what day it could be published.

“It can’t be long after the sixth,” Wilfred said.

Ezra shot him a doubtful glance. “How’d you know?”

“This issue has the Faulpher-tek earnings report. It says it's an exclusive report. They only release a financial report every three months on the sixth to investors, and if this is an exclusive report, it can’t be long after that.”

Milo spun each of the metal rings into place until the box displayed: 06 09 68. He jiggled the lid, but still, nothing happened. 07 didn’t work either, and neither did 08, yet once he put in 09, 09 68, a click made everyone’s stomachs jump to their throats. Slowly Milo opened the box as it creaked on its rusted hinges.

“Show me.” Wilfred crouched over the box as Milo flipped it around.

At the bottom, a single notebook bound in dark green leather rested. Taking it out, Wilfred thumbed through the yellowing pages. Over his shoulders, Ezra could see columns of numbers with a few notes scribbled on the side.

“So can you make anything of it?” Milo asked.

“It’s definitely Marlaove’s handwriting.” Wilfred flipped through a few more pages, but most of it was the same. Numbers upon numbers, all arranged neatly like an accounting ledger. “Maybe it’s a code, or perhaps it's a record of shipments.” He snapped the notebook shut and cautiously scanned his surroundings. “I’ll figure it out. We shouldn’t stay here long; others could be coming.”

“What about him?” Milo pointed to the man tied to a metal pole on the other side of the room. “We can’t drag him all the way back to the middle city.”

Wilfred paused and tucked the notebook into his coat while Ezra wondered if he would suggest killing the man again. “I know a place we can go for the night. One or both of you grab him and follow me.”