*****
PROLOGUE
*****
It was dark. The entire complex was like this. There was a very good chance that it hadn't been used in ages,
yet the walls remained so very smooth, almost as if they were brand new.
He had been feeling his way around down here for days now. The labyrinthine structure was seeming to fight him
at every turn, each hall twisting this way and that before turning back in on itself. There were even cave-ins at some
spots, which cost him even more time back-tracking and re-back-tracking all over the complex, looking for a way to
bypass the fallen halls.
Many times he had needed to consult one of his many maps of the place. The maze-like facility was built to keep
'outsiders' like him out, after all. Numerous times he attempted to mark his progress on some of the walls, but it
was as if they were made out of diamond itself, or something much sterner. This fact seemed to mystify the traveler,
wondering how so many of the paths and hallways had caved in if they were so sturdy.
There were no symbols or signs whatsoever to indicate locations within the building either, which only added to the
intrigue of the place, as its previous inhabitants would have had to have memorized every inch of the building to get
anywhere.
Approaching a junction at the end of the current hallway, he once again consulted the map, checking cursorily to make
sure he had placed updates to it in all the right locations before figuring out where he was himself. The hall curved off
into two distinct paths, one on his left, and one in front of him. Down the left-hand hall, there was what appeared to
be light shining. The other, to his front, was very dark. A small sweep of the flashlight he'd brought with him down the
darkened hall revealed nothing, but he assumed the dark tunnel to be caved in, and thus began walking down the lighter
corridor.
As he walked, he passed a room to his right. Peering into the room only for a moment, the room reassured him that he
was finally entering familiar territory. The light appeared to shine brighter as he proceeded, map in hand, ready to mark
anything out of the ordinary should he need to retrace his steps. The equipment he had brought with him began to hum,
indicating that he was indeed on the right track.
It was not until the humming began that he realized he almost missed the complete and total silence of the place from
before, the only sound being his feet against the floor and his cloak against the walls. The soft note from the machine
on his back began to grow steadily louder, echoed by the walls further down, sounding to the untrained ear as if whatever
was at the end of the hall was attempting to respond.
He came to the end of the passage, and was surprised to find a room. Lit, and completely undamaged. Pristine. The sight
nearly scared him. 'Could someone be living down here?' he thought to himself. And yet even as he searched the room,
it appeared as though it had been this way for a very long time.
A round table in the center of the room, a single book lay upon its surface, with a heavy layer of dust on its cover indicated
as much. Just as the tunnels, this room had the smell of stale air, the exterior fans circulating fresher air from the surface
having fallen into disrepair long ago. The room also contained a single bed, and he surmised that this must have been a
living quarters of some kind, despite the visible lack of food, though there may have been other ways in which these people
fed themselves.
Turning his attention to the book, he blew away the ages as the particles of dust flew into the air, coasting silently, slowly
to the table's surface. He pulled up the single chair to the table, and opened the cover of the book slowly, wary of traps.
The first page was blank, which, while not exactly surprising, was not what he was expecting. He turned to the second page.
What he saw, he could not believe.