The door opened, and May peered out into the darkness of the deep sea platform. This place was empty of life. There was no one else here but her, and there never had been anyone here before her. On top of that, the next time anyone would be here was in a couple days, and it would probably be her again. After that, there was no telling how long it would be before someone else set foot on the platform. Anything she did here, no one would know about it for a long time. It was time for snooping, as usual.

"Hey, Robyn. How big is this place?"

There was a characteristic silence between her questions and Robyn's answers, since she had to ask someone else for an answer, get the answer, and relay it back to May. This one took some time, during which May just looked out into the darkness. Finally, Robyn answered. "I'm being told there's more than forty thousand square feet of floor space... that you'll be able to access."

That was much more than she was expecting. "That I'll be able to access, huh..." That meant classified areas. Classified areas were fun. "Alright. Let me know when I need to start heading back." She stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind her. The lighting was almost nonexistent, but there was something. Intermittent low glowing lights fixed regularly along the side of the hall, casting an eerie green around them. She was sure there were some horror video games that were set up like this, and it was definitely creepy, but she knew there was nothing in here besides her. That helped ease her mind a lot.

The exploration began in earnest, and she made her way down to the first intersection. There were numbers on the walls marking what section she was in and which section was what direction, so she paid close attention to where she'd come in. The signs pointed her towards the command center, the storage rooms, and the bunks. Bunks filled with beds that had never been slept in would be just too much, and storage sounded boring, so she decided to check out the command center. Following the arrows to the command center, she found that every two dozen meters or so there was a sealed door in the middle of the hall that she had to open. Robyn suggested she close them behind her as well, and not to leave any door sitting open. That made sense. Probably.

Entering the command center, which she was surprised to find was a section she had access to, she started looking around for anything that really piqued her interest. Like the other platform, there were no windows, but unlike the other platform none of the equipment was on. There wasn't even power going to them, so she could turn them on and check out what they were doing. They weren't doing anything yet anyway. There were holographic display tables, but they also had no power. Nothing had been used yet. Since the platform itself hadn't even been used yet, there wouldn't have been anything recorded on those instruments to start with. There wasn't anything here.

Letting out a bored sigh, May moved on from the command center. She closed the door behind her and started walking back. Perhaps there was something cool in the storage rooms. Before she got to them, though, her eye was caught by a sign that pointed to 'drill operations'. She stopped and stared at it for a while. She knew the Atlesian military ran drills, but she didn't think a platform like this would be able to sustain enough people to warrant it. Maybe she was wrong, and they were more obsessive about it than she thought, but she figured it was worth checking to see what drills would entail on a deep sea platform and why they needed a whole area of the platform for them. It seemed odd to her that drills wouldn't just involve whatever place you already were or the place you were supposed to be. All hands to stations and stuff like that.

She entered drill operations, closing the door behind her and turning to face the strange room she was in. It was filled with machinery. Very strange machinery that she didn't understand or even recognize. After a minute of trying and failing to make sense of it on her own, May decided to ask Robyn. "Hey, I'm in a place called drill operations. What... is this?"

"Let me ask Ironwood."

She half expected Ironwood to say it was classified. Strange machinery that she had never seen before, hidden in a section of an uninhabited deep sea platform, it made her feel uneasy. The closest she could come up with was maybe mining machines, but that didn't make any sense down here unless some of the machinery was outside the platform. And even then, there had to be simpler ways to get Dust. The old mining machines this most reminded her of were outdated due to their hazardous nature, but she was sure Ironwood wouldn't be stupid enough to use those this deep in the ocean. They were no longer used because all too often the volatile Dust was detonated by the drills...

"Robyn... is Ironwood drilling into the ocean floor?"

"...Yes." She sounded apprehensive, and like she was still listening to someone explain what was going on. "I'm... being told that this... isn't even sensitive information. The deep sea platforms and the submarines are, but the drilling operation isn't in and of itself. It's only classified because of its location."

"Okay... but this is like... isn't this really dangerous?"

"No... no, it's not Dust. He's not drilling for Dust down here, it's something else. Oil."

Oil? He had to be joking. "Like for cooking? I hate to be the one to tell him this, but you can get that from vegetables." Coming all the way down here, pulling off this big an operation to use dangerous drilling machines... to find oil? At the bottom of the ocean? What could he possibly hope to achieve with this?

"I... oh. Oh... Okay, May, this is something else. There are... large... deposits of oil at the bottom of the ocean, under the rock. A lot of oil. They're drilling it up to extract something called... kerosene. This could be an alternative fuel source to Dust."

Suddenly, this all sounded way more benign than she could have imagined, if not actually beneficial to the people of Remnant. It also suddenly sounded a lot less interesting. Then a thought slapped her in the face. Never mind Remnant, the people of Mantle could benefit enormously from this. "Wait, hold on... this could be great! Alternate energy source? I knew there had been some... ventures into that field in the past, but I thought they never amounted to anything productive. Is he saying that this stuff works?"

Silence... and then, "Yes. It isn't perfect, but... he's telling me that the amount they're able to produce right now can keep every home in Mantle heated permanently. And that the oil reserve under this platform, the one that it's drawing from, has enough oil to... power all the current needs of all of Remnant for the next two thousand years. Hold on." She went silent, and May could only imagine that she was pressing Ironwood for an explanation on how that was even possible.

All of Remnant... for two thousand years. Current Remnant, anyway. Obviously, the energy needs of the entire planet could easily increase in that time, but still. That was a lot of energy, and if they had found a way to tap into this oil as an energy source, they had to do it. There had been rumors, reports, and occasional panics over Dust shortages for as long as May could remember. A second source of energy was like magic come true. Some natural fuel sitting under the ocean floor. Maybe the suit was malfunctioning and she was hallucinating.

"Okay, May, this is... a really big deal. This isn't the only oil they've found, and oil isn't the only new fuel source they've found. We are, apparently, on the edge of a major energy revolution. He also says that kerosene, which they extract from this oil, is a major component in... space travel."

There was silence for a moment. May was holding her breath, hoping that Robyn wasn't about to tell her this was all a joke and she fell for it hard. Space travel was supposed to be impossible. Dust only worked up to a certain altitude, and then it just... stopped. Any ship that attempted to leave the planet just wound up falling back to Remnant. If this new fuel could unlock that secret, if it could get them up there... the CCTS was done, for one thing. They could put things and people up out of reach of the Grimm for good. Another thing came to mind, and she allowed herself a nasty grin. "Hey... how badly does this hurt Jacques Schnee?"

"Oh..." It sounded like she hadn't thought of that yet. "Oh, this would kill the SDC. And Ironwood says he's going to release all of the production to the public sector once he's made sure it's viable, which he says is soon. I'll believe it when I see it, but... yeah, this will wipe the SDC off the map."

One thing May had a hard time believing about Ironwood was that he was in it for the money. Even if he turned everyone over to running on this new fuel source, and then sat there like a king with his hand on the tap, it would be about power and not money. He wouldn't be charging people unfair amounts for an artificially, or naturally, dwindling resource. If anything, she could trust that he'd hand over control of energy production because it just didn't appeal to him to control it, and giving everyone permanent access to sufficient energy for their entire lives' needs meant that was one less thing he needed to worry about in his day to day affairs. Yeah, she didn't really trust Ironwood personally, but in this, yes, she felt like she could trust he'd found something good for everyone and he was not going to keep it all to himself. The existential nightmare for Jacques Schnee was a bonus.

"Hey Robyn... tell Ironwood I said that, looking at this now... I think he might be alright."

"If it pans out, I agree."

Of course, she wasn't stupid. Anything this good was bound to have some kind of catch. She didn't know what that could be just yet, and it sounded like either Ironwood didn't know either or he was just too blinded by the prospective positives to deem it worth mentioning. That didn't really sound like him, to be blinded to the negatives, so she could believe he was just unaware. Being unaware in no way meant it couldn't all go wrong, or that it wouldn't be his fault when it did go wrong, but... that was right. He'd already made many mistakes, and paid for them. Ironwood was more careful now than ever. He couldn't afford to make mistakes anymore. None of them could. Not here, not now, for sure, but not ever. Humanity was balanced on the edge of a knife, all depending on finding a way to defeat Salem, and most of them didn't even know she existed.

May took a deep breath and slowly let it out, refocusing herself on the task at hand. She reminded herself that there were a lot of people in that submarine who were still relying on her not to screw up, and all of humanity was relying on their mission being a success. If she did something wrong, it was possible that would spell the end for all humanity. "Geez... I need a drink."

Robyn's voice came back, reminding her that she was being listened to the entire time. "Getting thirsty in there? Hold on. It won't be too long."

"Ah, not really. I meant alcohol."

"May, you don't drink."

"Yeah. Ever feel like maybe you should, though?"

"Kind of... but not really."

"Well, I'm not really saying I want to start, just like... I'm just saying this is the kind of situation that would make someone want to." She shrugged, even though no one could see her. "Guess I'm just feeling the pressure." There would be enough time to decide if she actually wanted a drink and to be amazed over the prospect of an industrial revolution later. For now, there was one more place she wanted to check out. "I'm gonna go take a look at the storage rooms. I want to see how much supplies they have down here."

She left drill operations and closed the door behind her, heading back out to the main hall she'd been tracking along. There were other halls that led to other places, but she didn't want to lose track of the hall that took her straight to the dock. Moving through the hall, opening doors and closing them again as she went, she saw a sign that pointed to a different section, listing medical, second drill, common area, processing, and hazardous materials. That sounded perfect for her plans of things to stay away from. Hazardous materials were never a good thing, so she went the other way. She made her way to the storage room and entered, sealing the door behind her and turning to see what storage looked like this far under the water.

The storage room was huge, and densely packed with military grade crates. Every crate was tagged with whatever was inside, and they seemed to have a lot of everything people could possibly need for a very long time. "Wow... how many people are even going to be down here at a time?" There was no way a two meter tall crate labelled 'forks' was needed for seven people. "It looks like we're starting our own city down here."

"That makes sense, doesn't it? If it turns out we can't go up, we can look into going down to escape the Grimm. This is far too deep for them to go, so we should at least explore the idea of building a city down here."

That was true. May had seen enough for now. "This is a lot of stuff, but it's about as exciting as I predicted. I'm heading back to the dock." Returning to the door and opening it, May sealed it behind her and stepped back out into the hall. Just as she was about to head back to the dock as she'd said, she noticed she had left the last door in the hall open on her way to storage. "Ah, whoops. I guess I forgot to close that one. I'll get it. No worries." She pushed it closed and sealed it, then pushed and pulled at it a few times to make sure it was secure. She was pretty sure she hadn't forgotten to close it, so she must have just done it wrong. "Oh well. Heading back now."