Here we go.


Cover Art: Kirire

Chapter 92


The bunker was half buried in the ground. There might have been a trench dug down around it at some point but the decades since it was built had caused the land to erode and the mud and soul to cave back in, leaving the concrete pillbox-like structure with only its top half sticking out the ground. That was overgrown with weeds and plants and bushes. The whole area was, in fact, and Blake found she wasn't surprised something like this could have existed on Menagerie without her knowing about it. From a distance, only about two feet of concrete stuck up, and there were bushes taller than that to obscure it.

The entranceway was clear, however. A narrow ditch had bene dug at a steep angle down into it, although given what Sienna had said about her attempts to block that up, Blake was of the suspicion that the ditch hadn't been dug by human hands. Blake lowered her binoculars and looked to Jaune. They were crouched a good fifty feet away, under a tarp strung up between some metal poles for shelter. It wasn't raining but was in fact a burning midday sun. Jaune was of the opinion that investigating an anomaly in the dark when they could do it during the day was stupid, and that was something Blake agreed with 100%. Having faunus night vision didn't mean she was as comfortable during the night as the day.

"Plants seem to have no problem growing over the bunker but I've noticed no animals will go near it," she said. "And that's surprising given how attractive you think it'd be as natural shelter for prey animals." Blake set the binoculars down. "You think they know something?"

"Possibly. Some animals may have evolved to notice anomalies."

"I don't think evolution works that way."

"Maybe not that specifically, but it'll work in the sense that those that came here died and weren't able to pass their genetics on. Not so much survival of the fittest as survival of those that don't try and make nests or burrows here."

"Come to think of it, this whole patch of land is quiet as far as wildlife is concerned."

"That makes sense. If the anomaly killed all the prey animals looking for shelter, the predators would be out a food source and would move to other areas. Normally, that'd mean prey animals returning to fill the gap in the ecosystem, but if they're naturally drawn here and die... well, it'd be like trying to fill a bathtub with the drain unplugged. The wildlife just keeps streaming on out."

"How is your RC car coming along?"

"Poorly." Jaune sighed and shook his head, set the thing down and played with the controller. The thing moved as he commanded it to, but it kept getting stuck on uneven ground and mud and twigs. "It's not exactly an all-terrain vehicle. I think Sienna just grabbed me a children's toy."

"Will it do?"

"Once it's inside, maybe." Jaune set the spare scroll on its back and turned on both the camera and its torch function. The battery wouldn't last long, an hour or so at most, but neither of them expected the vehicle to last that long anyway. "Let's hope the ground is smoother in there. Problem is one of us is going to have to carry it there by hand and set it down, because it sure as hell isn't making it there on its own power if even a small lump of dirt is enough to get it stuck."

Blake sighed. "My job, then?"

"Actually, I think I should do it." That was a surprise. "The anomaly hasn't been so obvious as to attack anyone before so lack of aura shouldn't be a problem, and if it wants to influence its prey in some way then me being an anomaly myself might give me some protection." He picked the thing up. "Come with me and stay close, though. If it looks like I've lost control or am about to go in, you're strong enough to knock me out and drag me away."

"Fun..."

All panic aside, his paranoia was sensible and warranted. Blake walked after him, about three paces back, with Gambol Shroud ready to throw its ribbon around him. Jaune carried the RC in two hands and approached the ditch leading down to the doorway. He angled the RC, or the torch on the scroll strapped to its back, to peer inside. The gloom did part, as opposed to just swallowing the light. The interior looked messy, a concrete floor littered with animal droppings, dust and the odd bit of rubble. There was a tunnel going further down.

"This might have been a shelter instead of just a fortified gun encampment," said Jaune. "I'm setting the RC down now. I'm not feeling any compulsion to enter. You?"

"Nothing." Blake shook her head. "I'm not sure what compels a bunch of people to go down there."

"Curiosity, I imagine. Or bravado. It's easy to imagine kids daring one another to go, then the ones left outside panicking when their friend doesn't come back. They don't want to have to go home and tell their parents they lost someone, so they head on in to find their friend." Jaune set the RC down and hastily backed out, jogging back to her position. Gambol Shroud was holstered. "Well, it didn't grab us and drag us in. That's a nice start."

"Don't tempt it. How good is the signal on that crappy thing?"

"Pass." Jaune walked about halfway back to the tarp before kneeling down. "Not good, I imagine. How is the feed on your scroll?"

It was a little grainy, but that was mostly due to the scroll's torch being active and casting some harsh glare across the screen. It'd be pitch black without it, however. "It's workable. Not great, but it'll do. Here."

Blake knelt next to him, the two of them shoulder to shoulder so she could keep the scroll in a position where they could both see it, while giving him enough room to work the controls. Blake had never understood why RC Cars had dual-stick controls. It was a car. No one drove an actual car without a wheel, but someone had, in their infinite wisdom, decided that RC Cars should be different. It obviously wasn't Jaune because he struggled to manoeuvre the thing, making the footage less of a car slowly exploring the bunker and more a jerky, stop-start motion of drive a few inches, pause, lurch, settle, drive. Over and over.

The bunker – or shelter, whatever it was – was roughly octagonal from the outside and looked to be the same from the inside as well, and there was no sense that the space was larger inside than outside. Jaune drove the car around for a bit until suddenly the camera spiralled out of control and they both gasped.

Thunk-thunk-thunk-whrrrr...

A wheel twirled.

There was no monster. No attack. After a few seconds, Jaune tested its reverse and managed to bring the thing back under control, bumping into a wall behind it from whence it had come. "I think we fell down a staircase," he said, voice as tight as she felt. "I panicked for a moment there. The camera was angled upward to see anything attack it, but that must have meant we drove into an opening in the ground without seeing it."

"I nearly had a heart attack!"

He chuckled. "Me too. But we should have expected this. There's no way a group of White Fang would get lost in a bunker the size of a single room. There must be an underground system. This might have been used to house civilians away from an attack by air."

"Grimm?"

"Maybe, but maybe a human war as well. It could have been multi-purpose. Long since forgotten."

"Is that good or bad?"

"It could be either." Jaune kept wheeling the car forward, revealing a rough-cut rectangular corridor with open doorways cut off to the sides. "It might be that the bunker itself isn't the anomaly, but there's just one hiding down there. Places like this make for good hiding spots for them. In all honesty, I'd rather that be the case. Going down there to hunt an anomaly will be safer than going into a structure we believe to be an anomaly."

Neither sounded so hot to her, but at least they could fight their way out if it was just a monstrous anomaly. A dimensional rift was much harder to deal with. The little vehicle kept trundling along, and it didn't lose signal or start showing other-worldly scenes, so that was a good sign. Maybe. It might be the case that the anomaly only worked on living creatures. Or that it was only interested in hunting living creatures.

Jaune had it explore some of the rooms off the main corridor, but they were mostly dead ends. Little rooms that might have at one time been used to store munitions, or to have people on bedrolls sleeping. Some were larger than others, but all were equally abandoned, and the lack of so much as a rat or a cobweb was telling.

The RC car kept going and going down the main corridor until it reached a dead end.

"That's it," said Jaune. "There's nothing more."

"I guess they didn't finish building it," she replied. "Or maybe it was only ever meant to store weapons away from where airstrikes could ignite them."

"It might have been one of many structures across the island. The others may have been buried over time, but this one refused to let itself be. Or the thing within did." Jaune wheeled the vehicle back the way it had come, just to try and provoke a response. None came. "I feel like we've explored every chamber down there. The lack of anything is concerning."

Because it either meant the hiding anomaly was a lot better at hiding than they thought or, and more likely, the anomaly was the bunker after all, and it wasn't interested in the RC car. Neither was exactly happy as far as conclusions went.

Come on. Take the bait and attack the car. Show your face.

The car trundled on until it reached the staircase it had fallen down, at which point Jaune made it do a 360 to try and see anything else before giving up. It obviously couldn't scale the steps, and there was nothing to be seen.

"Now what?" she asked. "Or do I not want to know?"

"Now, we go down there."

"I don't suppose we can just bury this, can we?"

"They've tried that already. If we could seal up the entrance and call it contained then I'd be happy to, but Sienna has tried that. This place evidently wants to stay open to the outside world. We can't allow that. We're going to have to go inside and find the anomaly ourselves."

Wonderful...

/-/

They didn't go down straight away, of course. There was no rush and plenty of preparation that could be done. Sienna and the White Fang were informed, and then supplies were brought so that they'd have fresh food and water if they were down there for any length of time. Steel wire was brought as well as spray paint.

"The bunker's layout may have looked obvious from the RC but we'll not take any risks. We can use the steel wire to mark our way back, but we'll also spray signals every now and then in case the wire gets cut. We'll map it out as we go, too."

Most surprising of all was that Jaune had a gun with him, a simple AR borrowed from the White Fang over his chest looped there by a strap. He obviously didn't fancy his chances wielding a sword in a narrow corridor. The high-powered torch attached to the barrel of the weapon may have also played a part in things. Blake had her own secret weapon as well, as much as she hoped she wouldn't need to use the book strapped to her hip.

"Do you really expect the layout to change once we're inside?" she asked.

"Yes."

The speed of his answer was ominous. "What makes you so sure?"

"There were no bodies to be found with the RC. Sienna said people had disappeared somewhat recently, but even if they hadn't then there should have been skeletons down there. As you said, there aren't any animals close to the bunker to have taken the bones away."

He was right. Damn it. "Great. So, we're fully expecting to be taken elsewhere once we're down there."

"That or there's a deeper part of the structure we weren't able to find with the car. Keep in mind we couldn't see everything because of the angle. There may be a door or a staircase we missed. But even if there is, it'll still be a new, unmapped area. Hence we'll need ways to mark where we've been." He paused. "How did your parents take the news?"

"Great."

"You didn't tell them. Did you?"

"Nope."

"Blake..."

"It's much too late to worry about that now." Blake hoisted one of the packs onto her back. "Let's get this over with."

He let the matter go and followed her. There was nothing overtly ominous about the bunker other than the knowledge of what lay within it. Blake took a deep breath and activated her aura before stepping in, reminding herself that she and Jaune had a lot of advantages the White Fang grunts hadn't. Better training, stronger aura control, experience. To say nothing of the fact Jaune was anomalous and she had her own Slaved Anomaly now. They were ARC Corp, they were forewarned, and they knew what they were doing.

The torches shone left and right in the entrance way. It was gloomy but not cold inside. Jaune's light found the stairway downward quickly enough, and even illuminated the RC at the bottom of it. That was a good sign.

"Me first," she said, pushing past him and descending. The staircase was steep, steeper than a normal staircase was with narrow steps that felt like it'd be all too easy to trip on. It'd obviously been built in a hurry, though. Health and safety had to take a backseat in a war. Hopping the final few, she stared down the corridor, faunus eyes adjusting to the gloom faster than she could bring the torch up.

It was quiet, chilly, and stagnant. The only sound was her shallow breathing, and though she stared at the open doorways as if expecting to see someone in them, there was nothing. "All clear," she called back up. "You can come down."

"Let me just secure the steel wire," said Jaune. "And done."

He clambered down with a whirring sound from behind, as the wire spooled on a hoop at his waist unfurled. He shook a spray paint can, the sound of a metal object inside rattling against the can so painfully loud in the bunker. With an aggressive psssssss! sound, he marked an X on the wall and then another on the floor in bright yellow. He tossed her a can that was bright pink in colour. Bold, shocking colours they couldn't miss, and differing to let them know of the other's presence if they were separated for some reason.

"Maybe we should be connected in some way," she said, not liking that idea.

Jaune grinned. "Are you asking to hold hands?"

"I'll brain you with this can, Jaune. Give me some of that wire."

He chuckled and offered her a spool, and this one she connected between the two of them. It wasn't so strong that it'd drag them both to their deaths if something happened. A sharp tug would be enough to snap it in that case. The main thing was knowing where the other person was.

"We check each room before we move on," Jaune said. "Simultaneously. You take left and I take right."

It was slow work. Methodical. They would move ten or so metres forward, stop, then split across the corridor and stand in a doorway to shine their torches within. "Clear" and "all clear" would sound occasionally, but little else.

The rooms were empty – barren, in fact – and Blake couldn't decide if that was suspicious or not. On the one hand, it didn't seem to make sense that there wouldn't be so much as an upturned chair or discarded scrap of paper around, but on the other hand maybe the original occupants had cleared everything out when they left. If this was an emergency bunker then people would have been advised to come down with no belongings to save space. If it was a military bunker, then the only supplies here would have been munitions and weaponry, which might have been taken away or detonated when the war was over.

Every two rooms or so, Blake would shine the torch back to make sure the staircase upward was still there, or that the marks they were leaving hadn't changed or vanished. Every time, she expected to see the stairs gone, replaced with an infinite corridor, but nothing had changed.

And then Jaune found it.

"There's another staircase here."

Blake flinched. "Clear on my side. Do we investigate or...?"

"Clear the floor first." Jaune marked an arrow on the floor pointing into the room. "We'll come back to it."

They moved on and checked every other room until the end of the corridor, all without seeing a thing. Jaune sprayed more X's to indicate they shouldn't go that way, including drawing a backwards arrow coming out the door they returned to and pointing toward the stairs. The reason was obvious: if they were fleeing from someone and in a rush, the arrow would point which direction they should go to get to safety. Inside the indicated room, there was finally something out of place – a single fallen piece of rubble that lay on the ground between the door and an open hatch with a ladder leading down.

"We must not have seen the ladder because of the angle of the camera scroll," said Jaune. "At least this means our hypothesis of an anomaly hiding in a normal bunker is still alive."

They knelt by the hatch and shone the torches down. The metal ladder was rusted but thick and solid, probably still in a good enough shape to take the weight of one of them at a time. It only went about seven feet down, leading to a second level underneath that had a similar concrete floor. Presumably, it was additional levels, making this more and more likely to have been a civilian shelter rather than a weapons station.

"Ladies first."

"Such a gentleman," she snarled, then eyed the hole again. Using a ladder required going leg first into unknown danger, which she was absolutely not at all for. Especially if it meant having her back turned to a potential threat. "Hold this," she said, handing him the wire spool. "I'm going to jump down."

"Be careful."

"That's why I'm jumping." With a quick breath, Blake tucked her hands into her sides and slid down the hole, fell, and landed in a crouch with weapon drawn. Ahead, back, left, right. Another corridor, clear as far as the eye could see. Blake let out her breath. "It's clear."

Jaune climbed down the ladder at more sedate pace, his feet clanking on each rung. He handed her the wire spool back, which she took and connected. Jaune then sprayed both the floor and a bit of the ladder itself in paint, and looped a knot around one of the rings so the wire would show them the way back to the ladder itself.

"This floor looks identical to the last," Jaune said. "But I can't tell if that's anomalous or just the simplicity of its design."

"Hmm." Blake felt the same way. "It would make sense the place would be identical floors stacked on top of one another, but I get what you mean. Clear rooms one by one again?"

He nodded, and then they were off for a second time, identifying empty rooms – still with no furniture – and working their way down a corridor functionally identical to the one they'd come from. It took a good thirty minutes to check every room and, once more, Jaune located a hatch with a ladder heading down.

"Looks like another floor. I wonder how deep this goes."

"Hopefully not infinitely. Give me your torch for a second." She angled it down to the base of the ladder and breathing a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness."

"What?"

"I was looking for yellow paint."

"Ah." Jaune chuckled. "Worried we were caught in a looping scenario? Yeah, that would be problematic. Good catch." He tugged on the wire and made it bounce. "It's still taut and there's no wire connected to the one down there, so that is a new floor and not one we've already been to repeating endlessly."

"It's how damned uniform this place is. Everything is the same. But I get that's the point. They probably dug it out and just laid floors identically on top of one another." Blake sighed. "Why would kids go down these ladders, though? And surely the White Fang would have reported how many floors they went down."

"You'd have thought. The anomaly could be avoiding us. I'm anomalous and you have your book. Maybe it's smart enough to know we're trouble."

Like a fish intelligent enough to recognise and ignore the bait on a hook. Maybe. Blake wouldn't complain if that was the case, though it'd make their job a whole lot harder. "Hmm. What do we do if that ends up being the case?"

"I'm not sure. If Coral were still alive, I bet she'd suggest sending someone down here so she can monitor how and when they die. Some prisoners or just an unlucky employee. Dad would do the same but with a dog with a camera attached to it."

"Ugh." Blake wasn't a fan of dogs but even she wouldn't suggest that. "I'd rather not cause the death of an innocent animal."

"Same. We're just going to have to do this on foot."

They went down two more floors, each functionally the same as the one before. Only functionally, though. Come the third, Blake stopped to take a photo of the ladder and careful comparison to the fourth showed that the rust patterns were in different locations.

It was such a pointlessly small thing to get excited about – the patterns left by rust on old metal - but they both cheered a little all the same. That the ladders were the same make and size was just the builders using standardised materials, but this was proof they were different ladders. More tangible proof than the paint left sprayed on them. Comparison of the walls showed some differences as well, but not significantly. It was all very solid construction designed to survive direct bombs, so it wasn't crumbling, but there was discolouration in the concrete, and sometimes a bit of a swirl or line where the concrete had been touched while wet by something and retained the marking. That those were independent enough to be noticeable reinforced the notion they were in a traditional bunker and hadn't been swept into another dimension.

Any calm came to a stop with the spool of wire.

"It's at its limit," said Jaune. He sounded shocked. "This is a kilometre of wire."

"This place may not be looping but there could be infinite floors," Blake said. "I feel like we're at the limit of what could be called reasonable for people to build already. One or two basement layers, sure, but unless the level of the land all across Menagerie was significantly lower in the past, this is getting out of hand."

It'd be easier to make more bunkers than it would be to excavate additional levels, or just to make them wider on the upper levels. There'd be harder and harder layers of rock to cut through as well, and construction during wartime tended to be all about minimising cost and time, or so she'd read. They would have been building on a time limit.

"Do we continue or do we go back?" she asked.

Jaune mulled the question, and then said, "I think we continue."

"Are you sure?"

"We'll keep going until the paint runs out and then turn back. Or until we find a body of one of the victims. We've not been in danger this far—"

"Who's there!?"

It wasn't from either of them.

Jaune and Blake both froze, though Blake was quick to recover and point Gambol Shroud down the corridor, illuminating a man in a green overcoat with a gun pointed back at them. He wore a helmet, and his face was smudged with dirt. On his head, a candle was fused to his helmet with a tiny flame flickering fitfully.

It was a standoff between them. Neither dared move.

"Friendly!" Jaune said, stepping between them. "Friendly. Let's not do anything rash."

"Jaune, get behind me!" she hissed. "You don't have aura!"

"Aura...?" The man heard her. "You have aura? Prove it. Show me."

Blake glanced at Jaune then at the man, the soldier. It took a little concentration to flare her aura, but she was able to make it visible across her skin. It was a waste, and likely cost her a bit of her aura, but it was apparently enough as the soldier let out a breath and lowered his weapon.

"You're a huntress, then? Bloody good news. Best I've had in weeks. If it's been weeks." He thumbed his nose. "Hard to keep track of time down here. Are you from the... what are they called? White Gang?"

"White Fang?"

"That's the one." The man grunted. "We got a few of your lot down here a couple of months back saying they were sent down here to investigate something. Only one of them left now. I'm Sergeant Miller, leader of the expeditionary bunker forces."

"Jaune Arc. ARC Corp. And this is Blake Belladonna, also of ARC Corp." Jaune pushed Blake's gun down with one hand, forcing her to be at ease. "Do you mind if I ask a few quick questions, Sergeant? Your situation seems to be a little unusual."

"You think we didn't realise that the moment your White Fang came down here and told us there hadn't been a war up top for goodness knows how long? Or when our civilians were being taken away one by one and never return?" He spat on the ground. "We've been trapped down here longer than any of us can remember, and supplies are low. Should have run out years ago, in fact. Yet they don't. And there's something out there picking us off." He shook his head. "I've said too much. The Brigadier-General will want to talk with you."

Jaune frowned. "And we'll talk with them. You mentioned people, Sergeant. How many of you are down here?"

"Last we counted? Some four thousand souls all told."

Jaune sucked in a breath. "Four thousand—? People? Actual people?"

"Men, women and children. Only about sixty professional soldiers are left, but we have hundreds of volunteers out scouting for food and..." He trailed off. "Not here. It's a bloody miracle we found one another before it found us."

"What is it?"

"We don't know. No one has survived it. We only find the remains of those that do." He licked his lips. "Sometimes we hear the screams."

"How have you not gotten out?" asked Blake. "We're only about five levels underground. A little over a kilometre walking distance."

Miller laughed bitterly. "You know how long a distance that might as well be to over four thousand people, some of whom are grievously injured? We stopped sending parties to try and get out and find help years ago. They never made it. I don't know what luck you two have to have made it down here unharmed. Maybe it's your aura. Either way, it doesn't extend to the rest of us."

There was a crunch down the corridor, a sound of something crushing a pebble. Miller twisted his rifle that way, a frankly archaic single shot looking thing. Blake aimed Gambol Shroud as well, casting harsh light from her torch that had Miller flinching. After however long down in the gloom, he obviously wasn't used to so much light. The light bounced off the walls but there was nothing there.

"Sergeant Miller!" Miller called. "Expeditionary bunker forces. Announce yourself!"

Only silence greeted them.

"We need to leave right now," hissed Miller. "We always respond. Have to in the dark to avoid friendly fire. That's not one of ours." He was already backing away, shaking like a leaf. "I'm not sticking around to see what it is."

Blake looked to Jaune. There was still time for them to climb back up the ladder and leave.

But, of course, Jaune nodded. "Let's meet this Brigadier-General of yours. Blake, cover our rear. Aura up at all times. Sergeant, lead the way. If nothing else, we've brought your people some much-needed food and supplies."

"That'll make you popular. It's this way. We've fortified a section of the corridor. There's only one way in or out, and we have the corridor covered with anti-tank cannons and machineguns. It doesn't risk those, must be afraid of them. Good news there. If it can feel fear, it can be killed. But it knows we have to come out to find food and medical supplies. That's when it gets us."

"Then let's be off before it picks up its nerve."

Blake walked backward the whole time, Gambol Shroud trained down the corridor. And though the darkness clung to every doorway, she never saw a thing – not so much as a flicker of light or movement. Despite that, she knew it was watching. There was a primal and certain feeling within her that something was watching her, waiting for her to turn her back.

When that feeling passed, she knew it had moved on in search of easier prey.


Next Chapter: 11th March

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