"Wow," Kara said as they entered the room. Chit nodded... the sight was
certainly impressive.

During an attempted revolution (referred to as 'the revolution' by most
squirrels, just like the other three) the emergency self-destruct for
a portion of level eight had been triggered, almost certainly by accident
since the fighting had never gotten down to level eight.

This had dropped several tons of concrete onto something. Precisely what
would never be known, since Logistics had deleted the contents from
their files when they found out it was gone, but it had been something
heavy, and the combined weight of it and the ceiling had collapsed the
floor, which was the ceiling of level nine. Levels ten through twelve
didn't have a chance.

The only thing that had kept it from ending up on the main floor of
UCirc's bunnymover terminal was that level thirteen was a solid slug
of steel-reinforced concrete twenty feet thick.

But that still left a six-level-high chamber half the size of a sector.
From the entrance on level ten (or the entrances on seven, eight, and
nine if you didn't mind climbing down the wall) a jumbled pile of rubble
sloped down to a motionless lake, out of which rose three structural
support pillars that had come through the whole thing unscathed
(fortunately for the squirrels in the levels above, not to mention the
humans living in Cutler and Pierce residence halls). The only light was
from the surviving florescents from level seven.

It was as close to a natural wonder as you got, and you might wonder why
Kara had never seen it before. She certainly did.

"This place is great!" she said, hopping down from rock to rock towards
the water, with Chit close behind. "Why didn't you ever take me here
before?"

"It's sort of a secret," Chit said, "No one knows about it outside of
maintenance."

"Why not?"

"Well, Teral didn't want to worry anyone, so he ordered Maintenance to
keep it quiet until they'd patched the leaks. The chief decided to
keep that policy in force after he left."

"Leaks?" Kara asked, jumping into a shallow part of the water to wash
off the ninja leader's blood. Chit splashed in beside her.

"Leaks," he said, when her head was back up. He pointed to the far wall,
which was riddled with cracks and covered with water stains. "Where did
you think this lake came from? We're sort of below the water table. It's
rising, too."

"So... why don't you patch it?"

"We will," Chit said, "Sooner or later. No rush." He gave a little
nervous twitch. "More to the point, no sealant. But its on order. 
In any case, I thought we could wash off and maybe plan our next step."

"What do you mean? We killed those two, and the rest of the ninjas don't
know who we are..."

"They might know who *I* am," Chit said, making little swirly motions
with his paws. It'd been a while since he went swimming. "But that's 
not what I was talking about... I was talking about why we came back 
here in the first place."

"But *they* sent the assassins," Kara said, climbing out of the water
and shaking herself dry. "They admitted it!"

"Someone hired them," Chit said, "Or ordered them."

"So you still think Loren's behind it all."

"I don't see who... shit! Get down!" Kara slipped silently back into
the water, and the two of them hunched down between a pair of largish
boulders.