We repeated the process again, only this time dropping to the basement. Again it was pitch black but Vera took her flashlight and moved purposefully away from me. I followed her and found her light cast on a large lever on a wall. She flipped it up and the walls around us hummed to life, lights flipping on revealing a long dark damp hallway full of pipes.

"We're further down." She said. We walked down the hall, Vera in the lead. I was about to ask her how she was feeling when we stopped at a door.

"Um… you might want to step back…" she said. I did so and she wearily began to run her fingers along the bricks next to the doors.

"What are you doing?"

"We booby trapped the door… I'm going to turn them off…"

"Behind a brick?"

"I've never done this before…" she said, her fingers suddenly pulling out a brick and revealing four sets of wires. "See those pipes?" she pointed up and I followed her finger to four large pipes directly overhead, their openings pointed at us allowing us to see up into them. "Watch them."

"What am I watching for?"

"If I get this wrong… you'll see them light up inside."

"Light up?"

"If you catch it in time maybe we can get out of the way."

"Out of the way? Of what?"

"First pipe will spill gasoline on us… second pipe is acid… I think… third is fire…"

"And the forth?" I asked. She shrugged.

"It won't matter." She muttered. She turned to the wires again and I took another step back. Vera cut one… and the door clicked. She gave me a weary smile.

"The forth drops a bomb…" she said, and pushed the door open. I hesitated but followed after her. She flipped the lights on.

"Holy…" My jaw dropped as the lights came on revealing more and more of the room that seemed to span further that I assumed. The walls were lined in racks of guns of all sizes and sorts, drawers labeled neatly as to what ammo they held. The racks lined the walls and the hall leading down to a door with the word "FOOD" written across it. The rest of the room was full of shelving units of first aid, rope, bleach, books on medical knowledge, agriculture, and medieval defense tactics. Random supplies like pillows and blankets, lanterns, dish soap, oil, tools, blocks of metal, matches, anything you could possibly need.

"Dani…" Vera called me over to some pipe works over on the far end. She twisted the knob and water began to flow out. We filled out bottles, and washed what blood off we could. Vera found us new clothes, ones that weren't blood stained and we took the time to correctly wrap our wounds. Vera wrapped my arm professionally and tapped it off. She didn't waste a second before she began to pack more supplies.

"This place is crazy…" I said.

"We were prepared." She said, "And we knew what we were doing. Look for the gardening section. Grab some seeds. We'll have to replant the garden. And look for batteries. And take some ammo…" I did so finding all sorts of things among the shelves.

"This feels like I walked into the matrix… you know. All those shelves show up with everything you need…" I heard Vera scoff.

"Only more variety…" she said. I nodded, "Keep count of what you use… we'll have to re-stock whatever we take." I nodded.

Vera counted what we packed and wrote it down in a book on one of the tables. She then went over to a bookshelf. She pulled at it and it rolled away revealing another door. She pulled the key from under a desk and unlocked it. Inside was more shelves full of rolled paper, and more books.

Vera pulled out one of the rolls and laid it out on the table. It looked like a blueprint of the castle… and as I realized what I was looking at a felt a spark of hope light up inside me.

"Can you build this?" I asked.

"Don't have to. It's already built." She said, "It was just never finished. I have to finish wiring it. This will keep them off the walls for sure."

"This is perfect." I said. Vera stuffed the blueprint in her bag and threw it across her shoulder.

"We're taking automatics this time." She said.

"No dilly dallying."

"We get back to the castle."

"Take out the trash…"

"And set the castle's defense system up."

"Right…"

There was a gargled scream and the color left Vera's face.

"They're in the basement…" she breathed.