A shotgun pointed at their faces, Theodore and Lila stared at the man wearing what looked like a soviet style gas mask as he eyed them, the light obscured his eyes.
Theodore called out again, his voice lower, "Who are you?"
This time, the man responded, demanding them to stand up, and slowly Theodore stood up from his spot, defensively pushing Lila behind him as she stood up with him.
Ordered to step out of the flat, the two did, Theodore keeping Lila close to him as they're shuffled into the hallway.
There's three more people with similar gas masks and torches, weapons drawn, and they eyed the two with curiosity.
"Are you suicidal or just an idiot?" Theodore heard a raspy question coming from one of the people in front of him and he snorted at the question before seeing the business end of an old MP5 pointed at him.
He reiterated with, "Occasionally, why're you asking?"
Immediately, Theodore heard back a raspy, "Either someone up there likes you or you're just lucky. Nobody walks around the Ruins without a gas mask!"
The group's mystified that Theodore and Lila don't have gas masks, they're shocked that they hadn't stumbled upon a hotspot much less gotten radiation sickness from indirect exposures.
"Wha-well, it'd seem we've forgotten ours, say, I don't suppose you have any jelly babies on you, do you?" Theodore showed them his pearly whites as he tried to smooth things over like his father did before him and to his disappointment, it not only went over their heads, they don't know anything about jelly babies.
Which is a crime unto themselves!
"What'll we do with them?" One of the group members asked the raspy voiced man and he let out a heavy sigh before telling them to bring the two along, they'll be dead within an hour without them.
There's a small protest, but the raspy voiced man warned them that if there's fresh bodies out in the open, it might attract 'them,' and he doesn't need to tell them twice how much they don't want happening.
A grumble among the group before they fall into line and agreed with the raspy voiced man, he ordered them to give two of the gas masks they salvaged to Theodore and Lila.
It took adjustment of the straps and help of the group members, but they managed to fit the gas masks on their faces.
Theodore asks for their names, the only one who told him's the raspy voiced man. Cyrus, he's called, and he wanted Theodore and Lila to follow him and do as he tells them.
Turning his head towards Lila as she weakly shrugs, Theodore agreed to Cyrus' orders, and they went down into the basement of the building. In the basement, there's a hole in the wall, where the group came through from, through it there's a tunnel that went underneath the buildings on the block.
According to Cyrus, they're lucky they weren't outside at this time of night, he's surprised they even lived this long, considering.
Theodore asks him what he meant and he told him that at night, worse things come out, things that don't like the sunlight very much, and much more dangerous than the things that come out in the daylight.
Lila murmured, "Where have I heard that before?"
She dreaded the chances of running into the freakish bird man from prior adventure, worse the chances this' the universe it originated from, oh, she hopes that isn't the case!
"What'll we do with them?" One of the group members asks Cyrus as he led them through the lit tunnel with lanterns on the circular walls.
As he walked ahead, Cyrus answered with a raspy, "We'll take them back to camp, tonight. Tomorrow, we'll deal with them. Until then, we survive."
Penguin marching through the tunnel, Theodore glances around, Lila safely behind him as she held onto his coat, and he sees the tunnel through the gas mask.
It's large enough for them to walk through without getting uncomfortably close to each other, held up better than the subway tunnel, no structural damages that he can see, almost a surprise that it's sound compared to the other sights they've seen on their way through.
"Where are you taking us?" Lila spoke up as she wanted answers on where they're going from here and she heard Cyrus coughing heavily before giving her an answer.
As he exhaled sharply, Cyrus responded with, "Prime."
Their camp's Prime and from the sound of things, anyone fortunate (or unfortunate) to survive in the Ruins winds up in one of these types of camps.
Per the concept of human nature, there's camps like Prime where people wouldn't mind ending up since they're in a better shape than most camps, then camps like Omega, which Cyrus said wasn't the camp they wanted to end up.
Fortunate him and his group found Theodore and Lila, not anyone from Omega, else things would've ended differently, especially for Lila.
Don't need the details to know what Cyrus hinted at, so Lila's fortunate him and his team found them and not someone from Omega, so there's some sort of silver lining coming from this.
More, Cyrus doesn't think they're from Omega, since he noted Lila's 'free' and Theodore doesn't have a huge omega symbol burnt into his chest.
Really don't need answers on what Cyrus meant by 'free' and Lila left it at that.
Theodore's interest piqued and he asked a lot of questions, enough for Cyrus to remark that it's impossible for someone not to know any of the camps, unless they somehow survived living under a rock.
He's curious himself on how Theodore and Lila survived this long without gas masks, much less without encountering anything that made the Ruins its home.
"Um, does the creepy parliament building count?" Lila sheepishly raised a finger as she brought up the building that just set off numerous alarms in her head, topped off with the creepy figure by the opened door.
Hearing the deafening silence briefly alerted Lila that there's definitely something off about that building, that the graffiti's true, and Cyrus tells her that nobody goes near the building.
Cyrus chided her and Theodore for going near it in the first place, that it wasn't safe, and they're fortunate that they didn't go through the opened door.
"So, it's really haunted?" Lila asks Cyrus as he led them to an intersection in the tunnels, taking a right, and they ventured through the next tunnel.
As he walked, Cyrus responded that it's haunted, by those tricked into going inside, and that there's at least twenty-eight victims that foolishly went into that building, none ever left.
"What happened to them?" Theodore's interests further piqued as he wanted to know more about the parliament building and the nature of it.
He heard Cyrus dryly cough before answering that nobody knows what becomes of the victims who entered the building, only that they never left the confines, and never will.
"So, we were right not to turn around, then," Lila noted that she and Theodore refused to turn around when they started hearing tapping noises coming from the window in front of them.
Cyrus commended her and Theodore for that, saying that they probably saved their lives by doing that, because there's no telling what'll happen if they turned around.
"What about the 'thirteen steps' graffiti?" Lila continued her inquiries on what the hell's going on and Cyrus winced as he mentioned that there's circulating rumors that another 'anomaly' began near the old parliament building.
Something to do with a staircase with thirteen steps that seemingly appeared out of random in the field, no reason for it, and doesn't appear to go anywhere in particular.
There's been rumors that anyone who went up the thirteen steps never comes back down, that if anyone tried to stop someone from going up the staircase, they're violently attacked by an unseen force, pushing them away from the staircase.
Some rumors suggested that once a person takes their first step, they're compelled to go up the twelve steps, no matter what they do, they lose complete control over their legs, and they can't stop themselves from going up the steps.
"I've seen some things in my time, I would've called this rumor bullshit from the get-go, no anomaly starts up near another one, but that was then, this is now," Cyrus waved his free hand as he tells them that he would've dismissed the rumors as such, but with what he experienced and encountered, he's willing to take it with a grain of salt.
Following Cyrus as his heavy footsteps echoed throughout the tunnel, Theodore asked him what he meant by anomalies and what are they, only for the raspy voiced man to wheezingly cough as he's trying to withhold himself from laughing at the question.
He's shocked that Theodore doesn't know anything about them, that he had to ask the aloof giant how he managed to survive this long, considering he somehow managed to survive one.
"I'm stubborn," Theodore weakly gave his answer on how he survived this long only for Cyrus to mutter something in what sounded Russian.
He explained to Theodore about the anomalies that accrued throughout the Ruins, dangerous occurrences that happens at any time, any place, anywhere.
They started off as small occurrences that had minimal effect, but progressively grew larger and more dangerous as days gone, to the point there's areas in the Ruins that remain uninhabitable because of the anomalies.
Even the creatures that made the Ruins their home wouldn't go near the areas, presumably because they sense the anomalies. Cyrus thinks they fear the anomalies as much as the humans, that they're not any safer.
No one knows why anomalies happen, just that they do, Cyrus thinks because of the bombs, they tore not only their world apart, but ripped apart the fabrics of the universe, to the point that it's causing ripple effects.
Thus anomalies.
The group continued their trek through the tunnels as Cyrus led them until they reached a service ladder where he went up first, carefully tapping against the underside of the closed lid with his gloved hand.
A moment later, the lid opened, and he went up the ladder through the hole. He called down for the rest and they followed him up, appearing in a different area.
There's more people wearing gas masks, holding torches and MP5s, and they let Cyrus and his team pass by as they sealed the hatch.
Above ground, they're in what looked like a hollowed-out train station with the entranced sealed off and armed men near the tunnels.
Cyrus led them towards a makeshift rail car, made with whatever's available, with a brightly lit lantern on the front, helmed by another man as he talked with Cyrus.
"We're going back to Prime," said Cyrus as the man acknowledged the request.
Everyone filed into the rail car, Cyrus closing the hatch behind, and the man used a lever to create momentum until the rail car started moving forward.
The rail car moved, bumpy at times with Theodore keeping Lila close to him as they felt the bump.
"What were you doing, anyway?" Theodore struck up a conversation with Cyrus as he sat across from him.
Scratching the side of his neck, Cyrus said that they were looking for supplies, same as usual, when they found Theodore and Lila.
"Hard to find anything after everything's picked clean," Cyrus lamented that it's getting harder to find supplies among the Ruins, since everyone's already picked through every crack and cranny.
Lila asked if they tried finding supplies outside the Ruins, but Cyrus told her that they're unsure what's outside the Ruins, if it's even safe.
Safe.
He laughed at this, before he stressed that nobody wanted to send their bests out to find the answer, afraid they won't come back.
Doesn't stop some dreamers for thinking of what's outside the Ruins, if there's anything outside, as Cyrus' unsure.
Asked around a couple of times, but nobody has any answers, and no one's risking their lives to check. Maybe the idiots who think they know more, but they're pressed to find anyone who'd come with hem.
Omega, maybe they'd send their own out of the Ruins, they're not above sending people to their deaths. Part of the testament showing the depravity of the camp. Who knows if they sent people out of the Ruins, nobody's stupid enough to go and ask them.
If they did, it's anyone's guess if the people they sent survived outside the Ruins.
For Cyrus, he hoped anyone from Omega died a horrible death.
Slavers, murderers, scum of the earth, there's a reason unaffiliated camps keep their access points sealed at night, not to keep the creatures that stalk the inaccessible areas of the camps at bay, but hoping that if anyone from Omega tried getting inside the camps ended up faced with a terrible force they can't hope to fight.
Cruel, but in these times of theirs, necessary evils have their place, even though Cyrus wish it wasn't true, however, there's no tears shed for Omega scum.
"What happens if someone from a camp escapes them?" Lila asks a small question about the chances of someone escaping Omega and attempting to return to the sanctuary of their home camp.
Shaking his head, Cyrus replied that nobody leaves Omega. Nobody. Not in one piece, at least.
"You better be lucky we're from Prime," Cyrus tells Theodore and Lila.