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The remains of "humanity's last stand" made for a rather attractive dump heap.
The labyrinth of concrete moats and tall circular wall at the facility's center were carpeted in green. Soft moss spread in patches across the grounds, giving way to wildflowers and trees that stretched from delicate buds to great behemoths. Sunlight beamed through the vines that stretched across the pipes and cavern mouths, creating cozy nooks that felt safe and inviting.
It was as if mother nature was flipping off "The World's Safest City" for marketing itself as something so impenetrable and perfect when the NECO corporation was apparently able to build 98 more just like it. And like the other ones Danny had been to, she was sure, this one was just as structurally sound and overgrown as a shattered flowerpot.
Not that she had much of a view from below one of the automated construction cranes littering the area, inside a person-size panel on the side of its gigantic black base.
Danny's portable soldering tool slipped, and sparks flew all over her hands. She winced and transferred the tool to her opposite hand as she shook the pain off, before switching back and resuming her work. Flimsy headphones hummed "Safety Dance" from around her neck.
It wasn't that Danny didn't appreciate what the original denizens of the walled cities had been through. The digitized copies of her family's journals that she carried described the experience in gruesome detail. The first of her family's line to stay in one of the walled cities had started writing to try to capture the struggle, having rightly dubbed their lifespan as being part of a "massive historical event." It became a bit of a family tradition for the years that followed, even as the world's surface started to cool and sprout again.
Since her parents had passed shortly after she was born, and her grandparents when she was in her late teens, the diaries were all that remained of them. With any luck, the parts she was about to harvest from the surrounding ruins would ensure she could immortalize their story just a little while longer.
With a final hiss of steam, she finished the connection between the automated crane and her abomination of a hacking device.
"Ha! There you go buddy. As for where this thing needs to go…" She released the rat's nest of cables snaking out of the back to jiggle a wheel on the front.
Affectionately nick-named Frankenstein, the bundle of parts was mostly made from a pocket television from the late 80s, with a small CRT display toward the top and an extendable antenna. The bottom had been busted out and expanded to allow room for a very large battery, storage for a myriad of music and films, and a large rotating dial. A spaghetti of wires dangled out of a hatch in the back for odd manual connections.
New programming instructions and receiving signal provided, Danny took her wire cutters and snipped the freshly soldered wires from Frankenstein, freeing it. She stepped back into the sun. Packing away the wire cutters and headphones, she closed her red nylon hiking bag and slung it over her shoulders.
In front of her, three cranes hung suspended over a bottomless concrete gorge about eighty feet wide, each hefting a very long metal support beam. Likely a few remaining pieces of
re-enforcement for the thick concrete walls from before the city had to be prematurely "finished." Danny wondered how they were still dangling nearly a thousand years later and tried not to think about the extra weight she was getting ready to put on their cables.
Instead, she lifted her eyes to the other side of the chasm, where a very old tree grew out of the trash that had accumulated there. What resembled a white kite, a drone, sat tangled in its branches. All of this laid inside a moat veined with wide pipes and covered in bright green vines.
It made Danny feel like she was sitting at the bottom of a long-forgotten bowl in the back of a fridge. Perhaps if this went poorly, she would at least have something to grab on to on her way down.
Licking her lips, she fully extended Frankenstein's antennae, and clicked the dial inward.
All three cranes groaned and screeched in protest. The one at the farthest end of the chasm skipped unevenly until it hiccupped a large cloud of debris from one of its joints and joined the others in their "graceful" dance.
74, 73, 72… Danny's lips ghosted over the digits as she counted down, attaching Frankenstein to her belt. Starting to sweat, she grabbed onto the metal railing overlooking the gorge, ducked under the top bar, and flipped so she stood on the opposite side of the rail.
On cue, the closest crane swung its cargo directly perpendicular to Danny. Without allowing herself the chance to hesitate, Danny stepped out onto the beam.
The crane squealed, but the cables supporting the beam on either end kept it from tipping. Danny reached forward to grab the middle cable as the arm swung upward to meet with the second crane's beam. Her knees were bent like a loaded spring, a few dark curly strands from her ponytail covering her eyes. She freed a hand to tuck them back under her Back to the Future reminiscent rainbow cap.
Soaring ever higher, the arms finally aligned so the two beams were just about to meet. Danny let go and made her way to the end of the second beam, a smile tugging her lips when she saw she was only one crane away from her prize dangling in the tree branches far above. The crane creaked and bucked sharply.
"Shit!"
Danny's boot squeaked on the edge of the now wildly swinging beam. Her stomach dropped as she free-fell sideways.
Throwing her arm blindly out she grabbed a piece of cable wrapped around the gap in the beam. Managing to throw her other hand around the sharp piece of wire for a more secure purchase, the world spun sickeningly as Danny was thrown around like a yo-yo.
The crane, unheeding of her distress, continued to climb upward. The next beam was advancing quickly to meet it. It swung in and out, in and out, of Danny's sight as she spun.
Danny swallowed the growing bile and flung herself as the third arm appeared again.
The wind billowed around her before she belly-flopped onto the third and final beam. The crane lurched up and down under the offending force, before continuing its steady climb towards the tree. Danny's ribs ached as she made short, shallow gasps. Through tears she could see the drone nested only a few feet in front of her.
Coughing and sputtering, she grabbed the cable in front of her and hauled her body into a standing position. She took a few drunken steps forward to grab the drone. The crane squealed as it began to fall forward. Danny's fingers brushed the rusted shell of the Sentinel drone before it shrank from her vision.
She made a wild grab for a thick tree branch, briefly managed to wrap her arms around it, and lost her grip.
The shrubbery below exploded in green leaves where she landed, the end of the crane arm landing nearby with a heavy thump.
Danny's vision blurred. Thankfully she had only fallen about six feet down onto the soil supporting the tree's massive roots rather than the gorge now behind her, but it still felt like someone had taken a bat to her head and back, the various items in her pack digging into her. Her head swam as a puff of orange wandered its way up the trunk.
Danny groaned loudly and rubbed her eyes, not comprehending the vibrant blur standing out in all the green. A limber orange tabby cat held the offending drone in its mouth, gracefully climbing back down to the ground.
Danny grunted and sat up, getting unsteadily back to her feet. She inhaled and gave a very disgusting cough. She took a breath and tried again, "What are you doing here little guy?"
The orange tabby stopped a few steps away from her, prize dangling in its grasp. Danny reached forward to see if the cat would part with it. The tabby turned tail and immediately sped off toward the rusted pipes tracing the side of the wall.
"Hey!" Danny's voice hitched as she gave chase. The cat bounded nimbly across a set of giant pipes jutting out of the wall, up one bundle that traced the side of the concrete like a ramp, and over the edge onto the upper level. Danny, still dazed, skipped wobbly across, trying her hardest not to slip and fall into the abyss below. Keeping her hand to the wall for balance, she climbed up the slanted pipe and to the top of the ridge.
"Do you realize how much it would have sucked if either of us had fallen down there?" she gritted as she swung herself up and over. The cat twitched its ear in irritation before bounding off with the drone.
Danny gave chase and pushed through the brush to the fifty-foot-tall concrete wall just ahead. As she approached the foot of the barrier, the pavement in front of her dipped downward into a thick tunnel, reminding her of a stadium field entrance. Down two short sets of stairs at the end of the path, a set of industrial red doors were embedded in the wall.
A few blue monitors flickered to the side in greeting as Danny approached the cat, sitting proudly in front of the doors. The drone sat like a dead mouse in front of it.
Danny huffed and waved off the thief, who slinked out of her reach as she squatted down to observe the old piece of technology. It was an ancient Sentinel drone, vaguely resembling a triangular pyramid with a camera in front, antennae on the top, and propulsion on each bottom tip. It was designed for monitoring and highly intelligent "peace-keeping," from before the world completely shut down in the early 2000s. Slightly smaller than its future cousins, its exterior was an eroded off-white and coated in rust and moss.
Ignoring the damage, Danny got down fully on her knees before pulling a swiss-army knife from her front pants pocket. She flicked out the screwdriver and opened the access panel to its contents.
Water dribbled off, covering her hands in a slick greenish-black sludge. Danny dropped the metal plate on the ground beside her, scattering ooze everywhere, and shoved her hands inside of the gaping hole to pry free the large motherboard. The rusted screws holding it in place snapped away easily.
Holding it up to her face, she pulled the rather large hard-drive off the board. She flipped it over to see rust that had eaten a hole into the corner of it, exposing the disk. It was completely useless. Whatever data that was on there was long gone, and there was no way anything new could be written on it.
Danny slouched dejectedly. She'd have to take her bicycle and peddle to the next nearest town, ex-community of City 86, and see if they had any hard drives that were anywhere near the same storage capacity. They were over two hundred miles away, all the way over in Utah. She had hoped, that since City 99 was still locked down and proclaimed dead, that everyone had avoided it and left the good parts alone. Apparently, there was nothing to be had in the first place, as this drone was the only untouched thing of any value around this tomb.
A cheerful meow startled Danny out of her moping, and she turned around to see the source. An orange and white calico stared curiously at her from the top of the stairs, a black cat affectionately grooming it behind the ears. Another cat with a similar orange mottled coat approached from behind and came to sit beside them, giving a questioning chirp. The orange tabby, still sitting just out of arm's reach of Danny, gave a responding trill. The monitors above flickered, drawing Danny's gaze.
The access panel was green. The gate was unlocked.
Danny straightened. A date sat in the upper left corner of the screen, notating when the shut-down had been lifted.
Three months ago.
The roof barrier had opened and the gates unlocked three months ago and no one had even noticed.
Danny turned around, as though she would suddenly see the city's residents behind her.
According to City 99's outgoing report signal, the population was net zero, and most life-essential systems had failed. Where had they gone? There was no way the closest town, Greenhills, had missed them. They were the only community for miles around here, and they had made their way out of City 74 over a century ago.
Danny turned back to the access panel, and confirmed this bunker was, indeed, unlocked and open for visitors. Drone forgotten, Danny activated the panel.
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