It was slow going inside the dark tunnel. There was barely enough room to move his arms ahead and pull himself through, and he kept trying to kick his feet out to find purchase but his knees would hit the wall and his boots would just slide uselessly against the floor or walls.
If JD tried to lift himself—to prop himself up on his elbows and attempt a belly crawl—the back of his head and his shoulder blades would press against the ceiling and he wouldn't have enough space to get his arms braced under him.
The best he could do was stretch his arms out in front of himself and feel for a handhold or a small ridge to catch his fingers on, and slide forward on his stomach. His forearms and biceps burned with strain after only a few feet, and he made a point of flexing his fingers after every pull to give his arms the chance to relax a little.
The butt of his small flashlight was clenched in his teeth so his hands could remain free. In its light several feet ahead, JD could see the soles of his father's boots as he shimmied forward. His dad was bulkier than he was and had an even harder time moving along, but he made no sound of complaint. Occasionally JD would hear a little grunt of strain, but Marcus appeared to be undeterred by the small space.
Off in the distance—maybe only fifteen or so feet ahead—JD could hear Fahz's cursing and griping. His voice was muffled as it tried to move around Marcus's body in the tiny tunnel, but there was no question that Fahz was letting his mouth run.
It was a relief to JD, actually. The moment Fahz went silent would be the moment JD really started to worry.
He couldn't see very well, but the passage seemed to curve in a few places, and occasionally he would feel a rib of metal press into his chest or thighs as the shaft dropped or rose a few inches. The small tunnel felt disjointed, as though someone had failed to proper align the sections together when assembling them.
It took far too long to get through the near-black passage way, with each pull forward probably only moving his body ahead six inches, or maybe a foot. And if there was a curve or a corner or a sudden ridge in the path, then it would take some extra maneuvering to get through. More than once JD had to pause while his father struggled to wiggle his way through a difficult section, but he was grateful for the break to let his muscles rest.
All of a sudden light beamed up ahead and his father's boots disappeared from view. JD squinted and briefly raised his hand to shield his eyes, then heard Kait mutter an apology and the shaft of light moved away.
"Just a few more feet." She said, sounding as though she was still out of breath.
JD reached forward, motivated by the literal light at the end of the tunnel, and hauled himself another handful of inches.
"Here," he heard his father say before the older man reached towards him, his body blocking the light again.
JD clasped Marcus's wrist tightly and felt the pull in his shoulder as his father dragged him forward, and then abruptly his upper body was out of the small tunnel and into the light.
Marcus let go of his arm and JD dropped his hands to brace them on the floor, about a foot beneath the passage's rim. With a bit of shuffling, he walked forward on his palms until he could pull his legs free, and then stood up and arched his back in a stretch.
"Well that fun." He muttered after he had pulled the flashlight from his teeth and held it near his shoulder. "Everyone good?"
He got nods from Kait and Marcus, who looked fine aside from their exertion-induced sweating.
"The list of things I never want to do again keeps getting longer, but that just topped it." Fahz said with an angry finger jabbed at the tiny tunnel, and he glowered miserably at JD through his rose-coloured lenses. He had his arms crossed over his chest and his jaw flexed continuously, and he looked as though he was on the edge of a good and proper freakout. JD gave the man a smile and a firm clap on the shoulder and didn't bring up the fact that they would likely have to make a return trip through the same cramped passage.
JD clutched his flashlight in his fist and took a few moments to look around, and felt strangely disappointed by their surroundings. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but a plain metal-grey hallway wasn't it.
The hall stretched off in both directions before curving out of sight, and there was nothing spectacular about any of it. There were no doors or windows or panels, just flat grey walls and a slightly darker shade of grey on the floor.
Lines of faint artificial light glowed above their heads where the walls met the ceiling, providing just enough light to see by. Some sections flickered weakly or were completely black, creating shadowy gaps. If he had been asked to guess, JD would have said it looked like failing emergency lighting.
"Dave, you pick up anything in here?" He clicked off his light and tucked it back in his belt as he turned to the bot. "Anything we should know about?"
Dave gave a few beeps, then rotated his whole body a few degrees clockwise, then again counterclockwise. A bot's equivalent of a shake of the head.
Fahz still had the bot's control panel strapped to his arm, and he uncrossed his arms to examine the readout.
"It's—" Fahz's voice broke slightly and he quickly cleared his throat into his hand. "It's looking good. Air quality is fine, no signs of Swarm activity."
"Good." They had had to leave their rifles behind in the cavern, but they each had their sidearms, a few extra magazines, and a couple of grenades. If they got into a fight inside whatever this big metal ithing/i was, they wouldn't be helpless but they would be far from well armed. "Let's take a few minutes to catch our breath. Dave," the bot swung toward him. "Engage camo and scout ahead"
Dave jetted away to their left, and just before he rounded the bend JD saw him engage his camouflage and disappear with a shimmer of bending light.
"Everybody hydrate. It's getting warmer and the last thing we need is someone passing out." JD ordered. Their extra water and supplies were in their packs out with their rifles, but they all carried full canteens on their belts and a couple ration bars in the cargo pockets of their pants.
They each downed a few mouthfuls of water and chewed at least a couple bites of their ration bars, listening to the thrum of the walls around them.
The air was still and old and smelled faintly of chemicals, not at all like the earthy scent of the tunnels and caverns. And the temperature was warmer than it had been in the cavern, sitting just above what JD considered comfortable.
"Those were Locust tunnels," Marcus said, the wrapper of a ration bar crinkling in his hand as he pointed toward the narrow passage they'd crawled through. "But this isn't Locust." He gestured to the walls and ceiling.
"I agree. Human then?" Kait asked as she chewed.
"Must be." The old man said as he took another bite of his bar.
"If it's human, what the hell is it doing down here?" Fahz asked, seeming to calm a little as he ate. He wasn't as tense as he had been, though if his hands weren't occupied he kept crossing his arms in a defensive posture.
"Maybe an old bunker or something, left over from the Pendulum Wars?" JD offered. "Or old mining equipment?"
"Still going with the 'leftover mining equipment' theory?" Kait retorted.
"If you have a better reason for something this big to be underground, I'd love to hear it." He shot back as he took a drink from his canteen.
Off in the distance they heard Dave's pulse function activate again, and Fahz shoved the last two-inch chunk of his ration bar into his mouth as he stared down at the panel on his arm.
"Bot's found some rooms or something." He said, the words barely intelligible around his mouthful of food. "He's marked a few locations for us to investigate." A map was forming on the display as Dave scanned the halls ahead, small indicators appearing as he went.
"Alright, we'll check out Dave's directions first, then double back and investigate things on that end." JD nodded down the hall to their right, which remained black and uncharted on Fahz's display panel.
"We could split up to cover more ground." Kait suggested, but JD shook his head.
"We're unarmoured and low on firepower. If we run into trouble we're better off as a group than as pairs." Then he pulled his Boltok from the magnetic mount on his thigh and verified it was loaded. "Shall we?"
They set off in Dave's direction, JD leading with Kait at the rear. Compared to the rough Locust tunnels they had followed earlier, the hallway seemed absurdly pristine, despite the failing lighting.
The hall curved slightly and perpetually, with the path ahead forever remaining just slightly out of sight. It took a few minutes for JD to conclude that they were walking the circumference of a very large circle. Based on the distance and the grade of the angle, the structure was imassive/i.
Up ahead JD spotted Dave, uncloaked and waiting for them. He hovered in front of a doorway placed along the inner curve of the hallway. The door was shut and there was no handle or knob with which to open it. In the wall beside the door was a black glossy square that Dave was poking with a manipulator, to no reward.
Following Dave's example, JD reached out and tapped the square with his left hand. It responded after a few seconds, flickering to life to reveal a touch pad with a few white rectangles. Dave hovered closer to examine the panel, still trying to coax a response from it with his arm.
It seemed to only want to respond to JD's touch, evident by a flash when he touched the right-most rectangle. The door gave a lurch and noisily slid aside, though it seized to a halt about halfway.
It was enough that JD could see inside, and he watched as the lights in the room strobed once, twice, then managed to come on. It cast pallid light over the room's contents and JD stepped away to let Dave slip inside.
"It's a bedroom." He said, turning to the others. Dave floated around the room, scanning as he went. After thirty seconds or so the bot seemed satisfied and squeezed his way back out into the hall.
Marcus peered inside and studied the single bed in the corner and the desk. There were a few personal belongings scattered about the room, but it was clear that nothing had been touched in years.
"So people were living here?" Kait asked.
"Looks that way." JD said with a disinterested shrug.
There were more bedrooms along the hall, and some had failing doors like the first, and one didn't open at all. JD and Fahz forcibly pushed the door open a few inches just to confirm it was another bedroom, then abandoned the effort.
"This is fascinating and all, but please tell me I didn't crawl through my own personal hell just to discover an underground hotel." Fahz uttered after they'd opened the door to the ninth bedroom.
"You see the size of this place?" Marcus said as they walked on. "There's more here than living quarters, we just haven't found it yet."
And he was right. Nine bedrooms turned into fifteen, and then the sixteenth door aside to reveal stairs.
"Now we're talking." JD walked through the door as Dave fluttered ahead. "So which way, Dave?" He asked, pointing first up and then down.
Dave spun to look at him for a moment, then emitted a deafening pulse. In the tight space of the stairwell the sound made JD flinch and wince.
"Ow," he muttered, rubbing his ear. "Some warning before you do that next time?"
Dave's only response was to float down the stairs, the group following diligently behind.
The thrumming in the air continued as they moved, and it was all encompassing. The railing vibrated under JD's touch as they descended.
The next level down was more living quarters and looked largely the same as the previous floor, though some of the bedrooms were larger and clearly meant for couples or even families.
"I'm guessing bunker." Kait said as they walked down the stairs again.
"I'm guessing bunker too." JD agreed.
In total there were four levels of living quarters, at least as far as they had searched. The circumference of the total structure was far too large to walk all the way around in any sort of reasonable timeframe, so they opened the doors to any room they could find, then stopped and turned back when the way ahead was bare.
The fifth and sixth levels were inaccessible, the metal doors and walls buckling inward and a mass of stone bulging its way into the stairwell. JD could only guess what would have caused the rock to spear through the metal of the structure and cause that much damage. They edged their way around jutting rock face and continued downward.
The seventh level was far more interesting than living quarters. The hallway looked the same, with the intermittent doorways lining the inwards curve of the hall, but the rooms were larger and more spacious.
JD held his Boltok at the ready and stepped through the door to the first room, squinting in the dark, half-illuminated space. The lights flickered and tried their best to brighten as they entered, but it was their flashlights and Dave's spotlight that provided them with the most light.
"Lab?" JD asked as he approached a row of high tables, his flashlight glinting off the dull metal and glass.
"I think? Doesn't look like any lab I've seen." Kait murmured. "Not that I've seen many."
The room stretched away from them, with broad support pillars intersecting the space every thirty feet or so. Sheets of glass hung vertically over many of the tables, causing reflections to dance all around them. It put JD on edge as his peripheral vision kept picking up flashes of movement that he knew were just Fahz and his father walking behind him.
The tables were white and would have looked stark and sterile if it wasn't for the dust and grime that clung to them. The walls were not the same metal grey as the hallway, but a lighter sheen with a finish that sent off rainbow flares when JD pointed his flashlight directly at them.
There was a flash of light and a sharp i"Fuck!"/i from Fahz and JD whirled around, his Boltok pointed and ready for a target.
Fahz reeled back a few steps and stopped, his Talon held up in one hand while the other grasped a table edge to steady himself. The hanging glass sheet in front of him flickered and flashed, colours and lines running down its surface to fade away as they reached the bottom.
"What did you do?" Marcus asked, coming up behind Fahz. The older man was less jumpy that the other three, and hadn't yet drawn his sidearm.
"I bumped into it, is all." Fahz said defensively, dropping his Talon back down. "Think I hit it with my elbow."
Marcus grunted and stepped forward, crossing his arms over his chest as he studied the glass panel and it flashed and flared in front of him. The glass sheet started just above his head and ended a few inches above the table surface, and ran the length of the table.
JD holstered his Boltok and watched as his father uncrossed one arm and touched the colourful glass. The colours shifted at his touch and tried to converge around his fingertip, but the flickering made the movement choppy and disjointed.
Curiously, Kait tapped her finger against the closest glass sheet. It didn't respond and remained completely transparent. Undeterred, she walked to another table and tapped the glass there.
It burst to life and exploded with a flurry of colour. The panel swirled around as though it was trying to form a coherent image but kept forgetting what shape it wanted, shifting to try and assemble one thing before abandoning it half way through and trying to build something else.
After a few seconds it settled and showed a luminous image of a simple green plant with two broad leaves and a single long-stemmed bud rising from between them.
"Neat." JD said.
"They're screens, I guess." Kait shrugged, walking around to peer at the display from the far side of the table. The moment she reached the opposite of the table she took a quick step back. "Woah!" She uttered, waving her hand in front of her face.
JD arched an eyebrow, not seeing what had caused her surprise, and moved to join her. As soon as he was at her side the image of the green plant exploded outward to become fully three dimensional and hover above the table. He blinked rapidly and swatted at the left leaf with his hand.
The leaf flopped backward and waved back and forth as it settled back into its natural position, as if he had actually hit it. Intrigued, JD nudged the closed bud with his finger and it wobbled and swayed. He felt nothing as his index finger swept over the leaf, but it reacted as though it was real and flexing beneath his touch.
"Now that's really neat." He uttered, smiling a little as he glanced at Kait. She was doing the same as him but her motions were offset to the right by about a foot, not at all lined up with the plant in front of him.
"This is really cool." She said, an amazed smile on her face.
"Uh…what are you doing?" Fahz asked from a few feet away, hands on his hips and his head cocked a little to the side.
"You see this? The plant?" JD flicked the bud so it swung wildly in the air in front of him, and pointed at it with his other hand.
"Whatever it is you're looking at, we can't see it." Marcus stepped to the side of the table, one eyebrow raised slightly beneath the brim of his skull cap.
"What do you mean you can't see it? It's right here." JD drew a circle around the plant with his finger.
"I see nothin', mate."
"Okay, come here." JD stepped away and blinked as the plant abruptly disappeared from his vision, leaving only the screen and the empty table. "Woah, where'd it go?" He waved his hand in the area where he had just seen the big leaves. One step forward and the plant flashed back to life in front of him, and another step back and it was gone. "So neat. Stand there." He pointed at the ground, waving at his father to step up.
Marcus's reaction was a bit more subtle, but JD could see it when his father's eyes widened a little and his head drew back a fraction in surprise. One hand tentatively reached out to a point in the air, then withdrew.
"Some sort of holographic tech?" The old man asked.
"If it is, I've never seen anything like it." Kait shook her head, her hands still moving in front of her.
"Alright, I've got to see what the fuss is all about." Fahz stepped up as Marcus moved away, standing in front of the table and giving the space an unimpressed look.
He stared for a long moment, his eyes darting back and forth, then turned to JD and shrugged.
"I don't get it. It's a screen with a plant on it. Big bloody deal."
JD frowned. "You don't see it?"
"See what?"
"There's a plant. Right in front of you. Floating." He jabbed a finger at the block of air directly in front of Fahz's chest.
"Uh, no. There's not."
"It looks like a tulip. Right here."
"iNarcissus Seratinus./i It's a daffodil." Marcus interjected absently, earning him stunned looks from everyone. He paused, as if realizing he'd spoken out loud, and shifted on his feet. "Mother was a biologist." He said gruffly, as if annoyed he had to remind them. "I learned about plants as a kid."
"Well your magical floating daffodil is no were to be seen." Fahz said with a huff.
"Here." Kait reached out and plucked the glasses from his face.
"Hey, give those—shit!" His hands, which has been reaching for the retreating glasses, immediately shot back and Fahz's attention was drawn to the space above the table. "There's uh…there's a floating plant right there." He said, pointing at the air.
"So it doesn't work with glasses. Good to know." JD said with a grin as Fahz's fingers reached out in front of him.
Fahz pawed at the air, completely enthralled, and said, "I've read about something like this."
"Woah woah, hold up. You read?" Kait asked as she stepped away, smirking and clutching his glasses.
"Don't know about you, but I get bored when I'm sitting on the loo." Fahz muttered, more focused on the image in front of him. "Some boffins were developing imaging tech that beamed light directly into your retinas, supposed to let you see all sorts of stuff. I thought it was a load of bull, but…" They watched as he flicked something in the air, like JD had earlier. "But this makes me think they got it to work."
"Baird is gonna get a kick out of this." Kait turned to look around the room some more, tapping a few of the glass display panels as she went. To free up her hand, she perched Fahz's pink-lensed glasses on her head.
Some of the displays Kait tapped blinked to life, but most flickered or remained dark. A few were shattered or cracked, their shards scattered across the tables and floor.
"Yeah," Marcus agreed. "Dave, scan that thing, will you?" He gestured to the panel in front of Fahz. The bot obeyed, scanning the glass screen, the table beneath it, and then the connection points that led to the ceiling.
The far wall was a mass of small vials and jars and bottles, each filled with seeds. They were labeled, but in a language JD didn't recognize. Some of the seeds were clearly foul and useless, but others were dry and carefully preserved. He plucked one—a tiny jar with seeds that looked like dried peas—and shook it so it rattled, then he placed it back on the shelf. Looking down the wall, he realized there must have been thousands of the tiny bottles.
JD took a step back and surveyed the big room. "So, we've got a cool holographic projector with a daffodil, a wall full of seeds, and—"
"And some displays about trees." Kait waved a thumb casually towards two of the glass panels that had sprung to life when she touched them. Each of them—one was only half illuminated because a crack ran a jagged line down the middle—had colourful diagrams of large coniferous trees.
"Botany lab?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Botany lab." She agreed with a nod.
"It's cool and all, but a plant lab isn't the mission." Fahz finally pulled himself away from the holographic display.
"He's right," Marcus said as he placed the bottle of seeds he had been examining back on the shelf. "Let's keep looking."
JD followed Kait and Marcus from the lab, Fahz towing along behind.
"Can I have my glasses back now?"
"You know, I was just thinking I might look good in—oh my god you're blind." Kait said flatly as she dropped the glasses from the top of her head to the bridge of her nose. She blinked at Fahz through the rose lenses, her eyes wide. "These are prescription?!"
Fahz gave an exasperated sigh and rubbed the shaved side of his head. "Yes they are, now can I have them back?" He asked, holding his hand out.
Kait twisted her head to look around, ignoring Fahz's hand. "No wonder you wear these things all the time. You can't see without them!"
"M'eyesight's not that bad." He huffed, stepping forward and bracing one hand on her shoulder while the other pulled the glasses off her face.
"Oh it's bad. They gave you a rifle when you have vision like that?!"
"Bloody hell," came the muttered response. Fahz placed the glasses back on his face and glared at Kait through the lenses. "If you must know, it's just the stuff up close I have trouble with. I can shoot Swarm just fine without them."
"So is ithat/i why the only reading you do is on the toilet?" JD asked. "It would explain a lot, actually."
"Can't believe I signed up for this fucking escapade." Fahz said under his breath as he started walking down the hall after Dave, Kait and JD grinning at his back.