"So…what is even going on here?"
Jetty's worried words broke a long silence. Sam's confidence withered under the sustained stares from her peers, picking apart her will in this foreign setting.
"I think only one person knows that," Johanna growled. "Time to ante up, brainless."
"Look," Sam tried her best to defend herself, her voice cracking under the strain. "I don't know what's going on here! I don't know why Nihlus keeps picking me out, why he's done this…"
"So who's Nihlus then?" Johanna folded her arms across her breast, leaning against one of the pristine white walls. "Some buddy of yours from the Capitol?"
"No!" Sam denied vigorously. "No – he's not…not even a person! He's something they cooked up, and now he keeps coming after me. He was there in the arena. He was in District 10…it's like he just keeps coming back. Ever since the 98th Games, he's just followed me around."
"So we have to you to thank for being stuck here?" Johanna spat, fed up with the situation already. "Gee, thanks."
"Hey," Firth stood up to defend Sam. "Johanna, why don't you go get a life?"
"You want to fight about it, chosen one?" she retorted quickly. "Your dad's not here. I'll bash your teeth in."
"How about we all chill out instead?" Cheyenne broke in, gritting her teeth and showing visible signs of stress under controlling a band of loose cannons. "Killing each other's fine if you want to listen to that guy and really make this another Hunger Games, but I'm a little more interested in ending this sub's lockdown myself. If doing what we came to do sounds good to you, you're more than welcome to join me. If you want to kill each other, please don't get it all over me."
Johanna backed off, muttering something under her breath. One more hurdle to jump, Sam thought. Nihlus and a big underwater whatever fills with who-knows-what, and now Johanna Mason wants to take a chunk out of me too. Great.
At least Firth had stuck up for her, if nobody else would. She needed all the support she could get now.
"We will not find any miracles here," Locust grunted, as if the entire spat hadn't happened. "We should search the rest of the premises."
"Right on," Cheyenne agreed. "We stick together, try to find something that can fix any of this – and if there's supplies or anything else that can help us survive up on the island with the others, we grab it. We're not just down here to play around."
The dock turned out to be a small facility. A tiny control room suitable for two people at max offered few clues, with only a one-way view into the docking room itself. The controls were useless: A few computer consoles at first offered hope, but they refused to even turn on under Locust's competent fingers. Whoever had their hand on the mechanisms of this dock wasn't to be found here – and Sam and the group would have to keep looking, deeper into the heart of the nexus.
"Look," Lily had let her eyes wander around the place, her short stature and young age making her mostly ignored by the stronger, more experienced members of the group. "Can these help?"
Sam figured out what she'd found immediately. There was no mistaking the three boxy black devices hanging on the wall, each with a pair of slits. Sam had seen similar things around the Capitol, with flippant citizens gabbing away into them. They were radios.
"Nice find," Jetty nodded in approval. "But are we gonna need 'em? If we're sticking together, after all…"
"Better safe than sorry," Cheyenne said. "Who knows what's waiting for us now. I'll take one; Locust, you take another – and Firth, take the last one. If we get split up somehow, we'll at least be able to get a general idea of how to get back together."
Easier said than done, Sam thought. No doubt Nihlus had set plenty of different ways to break up the little group.
The former tributes had little choice but to leave the white-walled dock. Firth led the way, with Cheyenne and Johanna holding up the rear. Sam noticed the two middle-aged women exchanging words, hot in a debate of one thing or another. Once again, she figured it was about her.
You're messing everything up, Sammy. Look what you've gotten everyone into!
The first passage out of the dock gave a startling view to the world around Lazarus. Strange fish swam about lazily, ignoring the humans making their slow tread through the cylindrical clear tunnel below. Squid the size of Lily dangled their arms out behind their fleshy bodies, squirming through the spotlight-lit water with halting starts. Every now and then Sam could pick out large silhouettes creatures looming above and around her – whales or sharks, perhaps, animals she'd heard second-hand through Firth and River or via school lessons back in District 10.
Something else inhabited these depths, however – something decidedly human.
Loud words rang out from speakers hidden in the tunnel's construction, raining angry accusations with a heavy accent on Sam and her companions: "Brotherhood! Invaders tread on our land. They seek to defile our pantheon, and their arms are change and blasphemy! Drive them back into the sea, and cleanse our basilica of their sin!"
Before Sam or the others had a chance to react, a giant creeeeaaaakk! rang through the tunnel. Sam had barely a chance to glance back at Cheyenne before she saw the danger: A small cylinder hurtled towards the tunnel at breakneck speed outside in the water. Cheyenne had time to shout a frantic "Go!" towards Sam and the others ahead before the weapon slammed into the passage.
Bam! An explosion threw Sam off her feet. She didn't have time to clear her head from a cloud of stars before a wall of sea water slammed into her at full force. Sam caught a mouthful of salty ocean as the giant wave cascaded in, unleashed to wreak havoc by the torpedo's impact.
Sam saw Firth and Persephone washed past her as she struggled to grab something, anything in the fierce, howling chaos. The gunmetal gray hatch in front of her exploded open in the face of the water's force, dragging Sam into the void. She coughed and choked against the water's assault as her lungs rebelled violently. Sam felt her thoughts wavering as she let the water throw her body around like a rag doll, bashing it against a wall of the tunnel and hurling it past the broken door.
Slam! An emergency hatch broke her fall, shutting tightly behind her and cutting off the flooded tunnel from where she'd fallen. Sam hacked up gallons of sea from her water-logged lungs, curling up into the fetal position and letting her body expel the foul-tasting stuff.
"Cough it up. You're okay, Sam…"
Firth leaned over her, placing his hand on the small of her back as she continued to choke up salt water. He was sopping wet himself, with his bronze hair matted down into thick clumps from the sudden entrance of the ocean. Sam managed to squeeze open her eyes against the pain, coughing violently as she looked around.
She'd landed in an entirely different place. Gone were the soft, rounded curves of synthetic white walls and high-tech docking claws. Replacing them was walls of bland gray concrete and steel singed with burn marks, surrounding ugly, ripped furniture designed with efficiency in mind. A tall ceiling housed blinking, stuttering yellow lights, neglected by disrepair and time. It was as if the water had taken away the entire setting, replacing it with something much more familiar and horrific: The sights and symbols of decay.
"Where'd we end up?" Sam managed to gasp through her coughing bouts.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Firth replied. "Looks like we got separated…already…"
Sam looked about to figure out his intent. River and Jetty lay nearby, each clearing their lungs from the deluge and soaked to the bone. Lily lay on her side nearby in a pool of water, grabbing her neck with a pained expression. Finally, Persephone had already gotten up, trying desperately to wring out water from her now-limp hair.
Of course the girl from District 1 immediately thinks about how she'll look after the ocean attacks her…
"Are you all dead?" Firth's radio perked to life. Sam was shocked he'd even managed to hold onto the thing – let alone that it still worked after the deluge. "If so, do I get all your stuff? I know Persephone has a lot of stuff. Mostly outfits. I doubt she uses the same one twice."
"Sounds like Johanna," Firth mused. "I guess they made it out okay."
He examined his radio momentarily, finding a red button on its side and pressing it as he spoke: "It's Firth. We're fine – mostly. Are you three alright?"
"Locust looks like shit, but that's normal. Nobody's dead? Damn."
Sam heard a "Give me that," coming from the other side of the radio before Cheyenne's voice came in strong: "We're cut off from you guys. There's a second tunnel of here at the dock, but I have no idea where it goes – by the looks of it, there's an adjacent squarish building that doesn't connect to yours. Can you guys sit tight until we get there?"
"How 'bout this?" Firth looked around at the dilapidated surroundings, glancing up disappointedly at the flickering lights. "We'll have a look around here and try not to get even more separated, since we have only one radio. Stay in touch, and we'll try and meet up somewhere. Maybe we can figure out this place faster."
"Alright, fine. Try not to get yourselves all killed. Although I bet Johanna might like that."
The radio cut silent and Firth pocketed it on his belt. He pulled Sam up by one hand, gazing around the wide, broad foyer with a look of despondence. "This is just a nightmare already. How'd we go from one nice-looking place to this dump?"
"It's probably –" Sam began. She didn't get a chance to finish, however.
From far off down the open, concrete-lined atrium, a quiet humming reached her ears. Sam spotted a bright white glow coming from around a corner, lighting up a dirty patch of concrete. She found herself involuntarily moving closer to Firth – what now? What other problem did Nilhus, or whoever the heck was down here, want to send their way?
"Hmm hmmm-hmmmm," the humming continued. The interloper continued until turning the corner, finally revealing itself – and showing someone about as alien as Sam could have imagined.
"Oh!" a steel-blue sphere hovered out from the hall, wandering into the foyer. A perfect triangle of white lights looked back at Sam from a glossy, steel-blue globular body, ringed with white points of illumination around its equator. It hovered as if by magic, whiffing about the air on tiny jets of light. Its words rang with a cheerful tenor, bright and chirpy in this desolate place.
"I had assumed the Brotherhood had detonated another bomb in this terminal," the sphere ruminated. "But newcomers – oh my! Introductions, yes, necessary…ahem. *I* am Ecclesiastes 38 Scion, systems watchman of this station. I am responsible for necessary maintenance and ongoing activity of the Lazarus institute."
"Wait a minute," River had managed to clear out the water from her lungs, holding up a dripping hand to Scion. "You're a talking robot?"
"I am most certainly not!" Scion replied as if horrified by the notion, his frontal triad of lights flashsing bright red temporarily in indignation. "I am an artificial intelligence matrix designed for the sustenance of this installation – over however many years it would take to ensure the surface was cleared for human recolonization."
"Slow down, slow down," Firth interjected. "Are you saying you know the ins and outs of this place?"
"Why…of course," Scion hesitated, as if the question were absurd. "I am designed with full schematics to the Lazarus facility."
"Hold on," Sam tried to slow everyone down, her throat finally clearing enough to let her speak clearly. "We just got cut off from the dock. There was some sort of…lockdown, or something, that kept our sub from leaving. Is there somewhere in here we can reverse that?"
"Oh dear," Scion commented, tilting back in midair as if raising an eyebrow. "I am afraid that will involve traversing straight through Brotherhood territory…which is a particularly lethal place for organics such as yourself."
"Why?" Sam asked. "Where do we have to go?"
"The Brotherhood is a religious order of zealots," Scion commented. "They inflicted the damage to this terminal via an incendiary munition, destroying the once-prestigious décor that lined the walls. They have occupied much of the city. In order to access external dock controls…I am afraid you will need guidance to the center of the city, in Lazarus Central Control."
"Can you get us there?" Sam ignored the rest of what he said. If this…Scion…whatever he was, had access to something that could free them from this escalating nightmare of Nihlus's design, she'd gladly take it.
"Why, of course," Scion remarked. "This is a terminal for the Lazarus Underground, after all. But I must warn you – there is no safe passage to the core of this facility."