A resounding thump shook Jessica awake from her deep sleep on the Security room's ancient chair. Confused for a second on what had roused her, she searched the room for the source of the noise, before hearing another thunderous boom coming from overhead. Concerned she looked at the monitors and found it was past dawn, with the light starting to filter over the land.

In the monitors she could see a new vehicle had joined the other two. This one had a large bed filled with boxes, some of which had been opened. In front of it was an open tent with a man sitting at a table looking at a case with a monitor. Several odd poles were placed all over her yard.

As she watched, she could see that the man was making notes on a piece of paper. He then flipped a switch in the case, and another boom happened and she saw a large plume of dirt rise up off the ground. The man would look at the monitor and write some notes down.

Nikki came in looking exhausted and whispered "What is going on?"

"I'm unsure, it looks like they are exploding holes." As they watched the man would flip another switch and a new explosion would happen.

"Are they trying to blow a way into here?"

"No, the explosions are way too small."

For the next few hours, the sisters listened to booms going on overhead. The explosions had started to sound farther away, and Jessica could no longer see them on the monitors. Jessica pulled out some ration bars and split them with her sister and the blobs.

Going to the monitors, Jessica, the man who was under the tent, was now discussing something with Papa Bright. The slaver leader began to point at something in the distance, and the man nodded. He waved at two men who pulled two boxes off the bed and began to take out the contents.

They began assembling the strange device, of which Jessica could not identify. When they had finished a group of men began to carry it off screen. Concerned she wondered what the hell they were up to up there. Standing up she went to check on the others to see what they were up to.

Sitting around the living room table was the group of blobs and Nikki. They were playing a card game, and Jessica asked "Did you teach them how to play?"

"Yeah, they picked up Battlecards really fast."

"Deal me in." Jessica sat down and Nikki began handing her a set of cards.

Looking at her cards, she began making a strategy for the game. For the next few hours, they played several games of Battlecards. At first Jessica was able to consistently win at the game, but as they played, Blaze began to win more and more. She began suspecting the red blob was counting the cards.

Before she could ask Blaze about it, she heard a loud thunk coming from the vents above. Jessica rushed to the air supply control panel, and found several red blaring messages. The Fresh air intake was blocked, and when she tried to switch to the secondary pipes, she lost contact with the air pump.

The CO2 scrubber was still functioning, and the filters were still active but the oxygen was cut off. She tried bringing up the oxygen producer online, but a red glaring message alerted her that it was broken and needed to be repaired. A squawking came from the speakers and she rushed over to the security room.

On the monitors in front of the bunker was Papa Bright who had a wicked smiler. "How is it going inside there, girls?" He waited and received no answer from them. "Still not talking? Oh well. I'll make sure you talk when I get in there. I'm certain your voices will be sweet to the ear, every breath you take will be filled with agony. Speaking of air, I decided to start cutting off your access to the outside. That includes air."

Jessica clenched her fist as he continued. "That's the thing about these old bunkers, they have some poor design choices. Leaving air pumps right out in the open, you just need to dig them up. I wonder if your oxygen producer still works, if not, you probably only have a few days of air in there."

Papa Bright shrugged and said "I'm still going to get in there. Especially after I find that you're sitting above an underground base. I am so excited, not only will I get you two, I'll get whatever's down there as well." He laughed and began to climb up the ladder.

Annoyed, Jessica went back to the air control panel and verified they did only have a few days of oxygen left. She opened the panel for the O2 producer and found it was in parts and all broken up. Glass came over and took a look at it. "What do you think, can you fix this Glass?"

Glass ran its tendril over the parts and looked back at Jessica and nodded. It began to move about and search for more things around the place to help fix it. Nikki came over and said "Great now he cut the air. He looks pretty serious about getting in here."

"I'm not going to make it easy for him to get in here." Jessica said and made sure to shut the valves for the external air. No point in leaving those open. Heading back to the security station, she saw a fourth car roll up and Papa Bright met them. He pointed in a far direction and the man behind the wheel nodded and the car began to go offroad into the wasteland.

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As she watched a fifth car that was heavily armored came up, and several men donned armor and jumped on board that car. It took off towards the road and Jessica was a bit shaken. How many men does Papa Bright have working for him? She had assumed he was a small-time slaver, but he had a small army that Jessica had seen.

The only people left she could see was Papa Bright who headed inside, and the Slaver outside the bunker door. There were a few patrols going around the house. Concerned that she was missing something crucial, she went to the computer and pulled up the schematics for the bunker.

When they had found the bunker, she had briefly read through the schematics she found on the aging computer, but hadn't looked at them in years. Pulling them up, she did find the air pump was located a few hundred feet away from the bunker. It had several inlet pipes, but it was buried pretty deep.

Perhaps they used the explosions to somehow find the air pump. Moving on she found the water lines drew water from a location deep under the bunker. But based on the schematics and what she had found, it looked as though the water lines were connected to the place beyond the door she found.

The thought of their drinking water having anything to do with that scary place made Jessica a little nervous. Yet at the same time they had been drinking it years without any problem. It was better to be safe though, Jessica went to Skye and said "Hey Skye do you have a minute?"

The blue blob waved yes and Jessica said "I was looking at the schematics for the bunker, I think our water is connected to the place we found below."

Skye shuddered in pure terror and practically leaped down to the water plant and began to examine each part in detail. Blaze came to check on Skye, and when Skye waved a frantic tentacle, Blaze jumped in and helped Skye work on the water plant.

Satisfied, Jessica went to the security room and was startled to find several of her camera's had gone offline. As it didn't record what happened, she was unsure if something had gone awry with them. Her only two camera's left were one watching over the bunker door and one looking at part of her sonic fence.

Outside the fence she could see several large freaky lizards that possessed hair were pacing outside. Jessica had never seen them before and didn't want to face them, as she guessed they were at least six feet tall. They must have been drawn over here by the sound of the explosions.

Seeing Daisy pass by, Jessica said "Hey Daisy can you come take a look at the security panel? I lost contact with several cameras."

Daisy waved a tendril and pulled open the bottom of the security panel and began to mess around with the wires inside. It examined each for several minutes as Jessica watched. Suddenly Daisy went still, for several moments. Concerned it might have gotten shocked Jessica asked "Are you alright Daisy?"

It rolled out and waved a trembling tentacle. It flipped a few switches and some images appeared on the monitors, but none of her original cameras came back online. The new images captured Jessica's attention. The first one was an overhead view of her home.

Using the controls, she found she could zoom in and out with this camera. Zooming out a bit, she saw a parade of vehicles headed to her place. Some of them seemed a bit damaged letting off smoke. Off to the side of her property, she saw a hole had been dug. Probably, where the air pump was.

To the south she saw a car wandering around the wasteland, occasionally stopping. Jessica guessed they might be searching for another way down into that weapons facility. Jessica took a look at the other monitors. One showed the tunnel she had discovered with Skye, it was lit up in a night vision green showing the whole length.

Another monitor showed a large glass tank that was ominously smashed open. Glass shards could be seen surrounding the container. However, it was the last two monitors that spooked her the most. Under a sign that indicated that the room was the cafeteria, a bunch of busted tables lay around the center.

In the middle of the room, was a pile of skeletons that still had remnants of clothing on them. Floating above them was an eerie black cube. Looking at it made Jessica shiver in fear. It was as if she was face to face with something that would kill her in an instant.

The last one was the one that really spooked Jessica. It showed a transparent door. On the other side of the door, she could see the tunnel she had explored with Skye. Meaning that this was the other side of the locked door. On the door she could see a black handprint.

On the ground in front of the door, she could see the shadow of a person standing off view of the camera she was watching. A horror filled her as she realized this thing must have been watching her when she put her head against the door.

Looking at the sky view she found the vehicles had stopped and a great deal of men began to pour out, they were all wearing armor, and were acting joyfully. They pulled out several men and women and flung them into the cage. One of the men pointed at the cage and made a motion seeming to say they will need a bigger cage.

Papa Bright arrived outside and greeted one of the men and embraced him in a hug. At that point he escorted the man into the house. Several of the men began setting up tents and additional sonic fence posts. While she was watching them, she heard a thunk and fresh air began to pour out of the vents again.

Going out she went to check on Glass and found it waving at her letting her know it had finished. "Good Job." Jessica leaned down and petted it. She stopped at the kitchen and brought out lunch for everyone. Nikki was sitting at the computer reading some of the books she found.

"We lost some of the cameras. Daisy was able to hook up some more. It looks like a few come from the facility below. Whatever happened down there looks like it killed all the people in there."

Nikki nodded and said "Some of these new books were meant for VadeTech personnel. I think this was some sort of watch station for the Facility. Makes sense that there are cameras."

Jessica headed back into the security room and began to zoom out with the overhead view. As she did so, she noticed a billowing smoke from the east. Panning over she found the Old rail city was now on fire. Several Armored vehicles surrounded the city, and people who fled were caught and thrown into a makeshift camp.

"Oh no."

Nikki came up behind her and said "Looks like we can't rely on the council chasing away these slavers. Guess we are going to have to fight our way out."

Speechless, Jessica noticed movement in one of the other monitors and looked over to see a black slime covered skull looking up at the camera. Its whole body was covered in the goop, and it was slowly moving into the frame of the camera. She experienced the sickening sensation, like it knew she was watching it.

Jessica took a deep breath and said "Yeah, I think you're right."