A/N: The city here is a real one in central Russia. The mine I'm reffering to, I'm not sure. I can find some evidence of it on some sites, but on other sites they say there's no mine at all. So, just pretend there is one. And the purpose and layout of the mine has been thought of by me, so it's not real. ENJOY!
Ukva/Ukhta – 10:10 – Russia
"Aren't we going to rent a car?" South-Korea asks as we walk over a paved road towards where I felt the Black October leave the forest and come onto the roads. The cars drive quickly by all around us, not really caring about four random individuals walking by the roadside. The others are all rubbing their arms or hands to try and keep them warm. The only one actually dressed against the cold am I.
"For once, I agree with him." China says and I smile down at the smaller countries.
"It is not that far, do not worry. I'm guessing we will only need to walk about thirty minutes to an hour to get to where they came onto the road. And then maybe another hour of searching in the forest itself." I say, not really bothered by long walks like this. Here in Russia, I don't always have a car with me and then I walk.
"An hour? And then another hour? I should have gone with Prussia." Korea lets his head and shoulders hang as we continue walking.
"We could always hitchhike." Japan proposes and immediately Korea cheers up. He holds out his hand and starts waving at cars and gesture for them to stop, asking to hitchhike. But they all just drive past.
"Couldn't we, like, jump out of your plane with parachutes above the forest?" China asks. "It's not like you haven't jumped out of planes like a maniac before. And there's plenty of snow around right now." China points out, reminding me of that one time I jumped out of a plane without a parachute. Ah yes, fun times. Turned out I didn't know the snow that well. I broke a few bones. But I'm all better now.
"Da, we could have done that. But isn't walking way more fun?" I smile innocently at the three Asian countries and they all ignore my smile. But just as I want to propose to them the idea of just stealing a car, a truck stops for us and Korea excitedly runs up to the driver.
"Thank you so much, sir! Could we please get a lift?" He asks and the driver blinks. Of course, he doesn't understand English or Korean. Or Korea is just speaking too rapidly. Plenty of options.
"Ah, sir, I apologize for my friend. But could you please give us a lift? We just want to get to the edge of the forest a couple of kilometres ahead. Not too far." I quickly interrupt Korea as he tries to start speaking again. This time the friendly truck driver smiles in understanding, Russian is far better to understand of course than rapid English with a Korean accent.
"Da, of course! Get in, comrades, place enough for all four of you." The man smiles brightly and we all get inside the cabin of the truck. I place myself in the other seat and the others go sit in the bed behind the seats.
During the short ride to our destination, I have some pleasant talk with the driver in Russian. He is a very nice man, a wonderful citizen of mine. It is thanks to people like him that I am so friendly and welcoming. As we arrive at the spot I know the Black October trucks left the foliage, I ask the driver nicely to stop again and he smiles as he pulls his truck to the side.
"Are you sure want to get out here again?" The driver asks and I smile at him and nod.
"Da, we are sure. We are going to have a very pleasant walk in the forest here!" I say, waving the man off as China leaves the cabin as last. I watch as the truck drives off again and then turn towards the other three again. "Alright, let's get this party started." I laugh a bit at my own imitation of America before leading all of us inside the forest.
"So, what exactly are we searching for anyway?" China asks as we walk.
"I suspect we're either going to find a base or at least some signs of an encampment that was here in the forest." Japan helpfully says and I nod.
"The coniferous forest here is not that densely populated once you get past the bush on the edge. We just have to find the path the cars took and follow that to wherever they came from." I say, pointing at the tire tracks in the snow. The other three look at the tracks too. We're lucky it hasn't snowed since three days ago so the tracks stayed inside the snow that fell before.
"Wow, I hadn't even noticed them! Well, let's go." Korea starts following the tire tracks and smiles happily. "I feel like we're doing a quest in a video game." South-Korea happily continues walking.
"That boy." China mutters, shaking his head slightly. We continue walking in silence. The only conversation that we make is either China talking with Japan or Korea. I stay mostly silent, trying to figure out where the trucks went after going outside the forest. But I lost track of them when I fell asleep yesterday. I do know that they left my country though, but that's not much to go off of. Maybe they went to Ukraine? I hope not.
"Are those train tracks?" Japan suddenly points out. We all collectively look in the direction he is pointing and I perk up. Some train tracks are sticking out of the snow, barely visible, but they're there.
"Yes, I remember now! There used to be a mine up ahead, but after discovering there isn't enough to find here to continue digging, they gave up on the mine and shut it down. Those tracks must be what's left of the mine." I say matter of fact like. I remember the mayor of a nearby town at the time being very excited about the mine. But after some years, when one of the next mayors noticed the mine wasn't worth it, the old mayor was very disappointed. I also had high hopes in the beginning, but didn't think much of it when the mine closed again. I had a lot of things on my mind at the time. Jozef Stalin had just taken lead of the country and a lot of changes were happening.
"Could it be that they used the abandoned mine as their hide-out?" Korea asks, scratching his head in thought.
"That's actually not that bad of an idea, let's go check it out." China says and gestures for us to follow his lead. I happily follow them, this should be fun! We silently start following the train tracks, every now and then losing them under the snow, but we quickly find them again after clearing some snow away. And after about ten minutes of walking, we bump onto the open mine shaft.
"That's weird, the shaft should be closed off." I look closer at the shaft and notice the tire tracks go straight inside. The mouth of the shaft is certainly big enough for that. In fact, the shaft is big enough for two trucks to pass by each other without problems here at the beginning.
"Black October must have thrown away all the barricades and cleared the opening to drive out. And they also didn't care enough to close it afterwards. They must have been in a hurry." Japan says, pointing at the broken and destroyed wooden barricades that are lying by the side. I hum in response, the barricades look like they've been rammed into with cars. They really were in a hurry.
"Let's go inside, shall we?" I propose before letting everyone walk inside before me, the gentle man that I am. And slowly, we enter the mine shaft.
"Did anyone bother to bring a torch or anything?" China asks as we peer into the dark shafts. We all look at each other, but come to the conclusion we didn't. "Great, don't tell me we have to go back to buy torches." He sighs and wrings his cold hands against each other to try and warm them up. I look up at the ceiling to see there are no lights or anything. But, if Black October made their base here, there should be some light source, right? They wouldn't just restrict themselves to using torches all the time.
"Well, maybe we just have to go a bit deeper in to find some sort of light switch, Black October wouldn't have stayed here if they didn't have a light source." Japan words my thoughts. Korea frowns.
"Yes, that is true. But if they left, they probably took all the generators and torches with them. They won't be connected to the electric network of Russia since that would give their location away." Korea points out and we all nod.
"Maybe we're lucky and we can find some torches left behind?" China says hopefully. I look around and spot a particularly fortunately placed crate.
"Maybe there's something interesting in that very conveniently placed box there?" I point out. I walk up to the box and slowly open the lid to find six or more torches. I grab one and click the button. A bright light springs to life and I smile as I look over my shoulder to the others. "How very lucky we are." I say, grabbing two torches for myself, just in case. I then toss the others the remaining four torches.
"Now we can go inside! I feel like Indiana Jones." Korea says, happily trotting ahead with two torches in hand, shining everywhere to look around. China rolls his eyes but follows him anyway. Japan and I follow behind the two, taking it a bit slower. I keep my second torch in my pocket, just in case one of the others' gives up.
As we walk through the mine, we keep following the main road and the tire tracks. There are a lot of side roads, but we decide to ignore them for now. Eventually we come across a big opening where the tire tracks all stop.
"This is where the trucks and cars must have been parked." Japan bends down to look at some markings on the ground. "A lot of boxes and crates used to stand here, but they're all gone now. I wonder what was in them?" He stands back up and we all look around the open cave to see if we can find anything interesting. But we find nothing more than the marks and tracks on the ground.
"Let's go deeper, there's nothing here." China proposes and we all gather on the other side of the cave than from which we came in. "Alright, there appear to be two roads splitting up from here on out. I suggest we split up in duos and each of us goes one way. But we cannot go alone, so always stay with two. We need to remember what Prussia said, we are possible targets so we need to be careful." China says and I smile.
"How about I go with little Japan and you go with South-Korea. That way they can never get both of us at the same time." I say to China and he looks rather reluctant as he glances towards Korea who is already half-way down the first path, looking at the ground and the walls.
"Alright, but keep your phones on hand, just in case we keep having a signal down here. And meet back up here in half an hour." China agrees and Japan and I nod. "Be safe." China says before walking after Korea. "Hey, wait up you idiot. My old bones can't keep up with those young limbs of yours." He complains and I smile as I watch him go. I then smile down at Japan who doesn't meet my gaze.
"Let us also go, da?" I say and Japan nods curtly.
"Hai1." He confirms before we start walking down the other path. For a while we just walk in silence. As we walk deeper, we start seeing doors and other roads splitting off of ours. But we agree to first stick to the main road to map out the place a bit first. The deeper in we go, the staler the air gets and the warmer it also becomes. But it doesn't really bother me.
We start checking rooms and find nothing but bare rooms and sometimes some left-over chairs or some empty cabinets and desks. But nothing more. After a while, we come into a hall where there's nothing but one firmly locked and closed door at the end of the hall. It looks very suspicious.
"I wonder what's behind it?" Japan asks, inspecting the lock of the door.
"I don't know, why would it still be locked if everything is empty?" I ask myself. "Do you think I can kick the door in?" I then ask Japan and the smaller Asian man looks up at me with a questioning expression.
"I am not sure. The door is very thick, judging by the sound it makes when I knock on it and it's bolted into the rock walls. Let us search for a key first before injuring ourselves in trying to open this door." He says and I reluctantly agree. I was really looking forward to beating down this barricade. I could rip one of the pipes from the wall here and use it as a battering ram. Although I doubt it would really help, it would surely look cool.
So we leave the hall behind us for now and continue searching through the other halls on our side of the cave. There's really nothing interesting in most of the rooms, just some rubbish and here and there a fun desk or cabinet to punch open.
After a while, we approach our last hallway, having checked every other one already. There are three doors here. The first two are just empty rooms. But the third one opens to a big and spacy room. The room still has some cables hanging from the ceiling and a single broken TV screen laying on the ground. There are also some desks and chairs. It looks like this was the central room. We start opening every drawer and cabinet we can find, look under every desk and even behind the screen. That is until Japan suddenly perks up.
"I found a key." He says and I look up from shaking a desk upside down to see if anything jingles inside the drawers and put the desk down again.
"What do you think it's for?" I asks and Japan inspects the key.
"It's from the same brand as the lock of the steel door we encountered earlier. Do you think it's for that door?" He asks, looking up at me. I smile softly and excitedly.
"Only one way to find out!" I cheer before kicking a desk out of the way and dragging Japan towards the steel door again. It doesn't take me long to find the door again, since the halls aren't all too similar, we can navigate easily. Once in front of the doors again, I let go of Japan and he looks really relieved that I do. "Now, let us see if we can open this door." I step aside so Japan can reach the door well and watch patiently as he sticks the key in the slot. The small man turns the key and the sound of a lock unlocking resounds through the silent hallways.
"It's open." Japan helpfully points out before pushing the door open. Once the door is open an awful odour wafts over us. An all too familiar scent too.
"Someone died in here." I say as Japan opens the door all the way. I lift my torch to point the bundle of light at the interior of the room. In the middle of the room is a single dentist's chair. And in the chair, there is a rotting corpse. The corpse is covered in cuts, bruises and blood. It seems this person did not have a peaceful dead. The skin has become purple already.
"Oh dear." Japan says as he shines around the corpse to see another corpse shackled to the wall. There are other blood stains in the room, but only two corpses. There's also a lot of torturing material. Or room for torture material, everything seems to be gone. Except for the occasional knife and here and there a saw or an iron rod. To be fair, it looks like they cleared this room in a rush. Otherwise, they would have bothered to take everything with them. Especially those knives, they look very new and sharp.
"Be careful." Japan says as we step inside the room. I hum in confirmation and go to pick up the nearest clean iron rod. It's a rod like any other, nothing special about it. "I wonder why they were tortured?" Japan asks, leaning over the corpse in the chair with his sleeve in front of his nose. I don't drop the rod as I walk over to the corpse too and hide my nose in my scarf, inhaling its scent instead of the vile odour of the corpses.
"I recognize this man, he was a politician for my country. He went missing two weeks ago." I say as I look at the man's face. Although his face has been bashed in and wounds are all over it, I would recognize that scar on his forehead everywhere. He was in fact a very friendly man. I liked him.
"A politician? Why would they torture a politician?" Japan asks himself as he looks at the other corpse. I sigh as I realize why.
"He was, along with my president, the only other person who knew of my status as a country. This must be how Black October got to know of us. He must have given Black October the other names too." I say, closing the man's still opened eyes. "But I wonder how they knew he knew. Even Putin doesn't know he knew." I mutter to myself. But I cannot find any answer to my question. I then walk over to the other corpse too. The receptionist of the building where we always hold our meetings when in Russia. She must have spilled some names too. Or at least recognized some faces. I already wondered where she went when I noticed a new receptionist yesterday evening.
"There's nothing in here for us to take or find. Let's go meet back up with China and Korea." Japan says, already walking out of the room. I look one last time at the politician in the dentist chair and notice a card sticking out of his pocket. I carefully grab the card and notice it's the card that grants one access to the archives and other important rooms in the Russian government building. I quickly take the card, it's not safe to let this lay around somewhere. Black October must have left it because they got all the information they wanted.
"Alright, let's go." I say and together we walk away. I close the door behind me, not wanting the whole mine to smell like corpses and to at least preserve the corpses a bit longer. I'm going to call the police to come recover the corpses once we're outside the mine. They deserve a funeral.
When we approach the meeting spot again, Korea and China are already there, Korea is holding a map and China is listening to the former ramble on about films and games.
"Let us return to Moscow." I say, not bothering to wait to see if the others are following.
1 Japanese = commonly translates as 'yes', can have other but similar meanings