Coleridge “just so happened” to have several meetings and at least two lunches, many of them at the expense of the Cultivator Marines, the same day that Squads 1 and Reed (F/K/A 3) headed north. Isaac frowned because it felt uncomfortable, needing to remain hidden below a false bottom in the back of the truck, especially because the metal was cold and Isaac wasn’t gonna wear gloves or a hat, damnit. But Coleridge reported that Isaac and Reed were remaining inside their rooms today for closed-door cultivation, so being spotted leaving the base at the exit checkpoint would certainly be a bad look. Unlike her comrade shivering next to her, Reed wore sheepskin gloves and a thick Rusalkan-style ushanka and also sipped on a smuggled bottle of whiskey; she looked snug and warm, but Isaac reminded himself he still had his pride.
An hour or so later, long after making it past the gates outside the Elizabeth Pond naval base, long after making it outside that the capital, Bell’s smiling face appeared as he opened the false bottom. When Isaac emerged in the center of the truck bed from the hiding hole, the chilly winter air slapped at his face. Fortunately, while the truck may have been cruising up the freeway towards the Whiterock Mountains, its bed had a beige tarp wrapped over the back canopy, shielding the cultivator marine cadets from most of the wind. Isaac took a seat next to Demetrius; the muscular man wore gloves, as did Dan Turner. Even Bell wore gloves. Even Oksana the snake, as she laid on Oksana the cultivator’s shoulder, was coiled up inside a large sock for warmth.
It’s your pride as a laborer, Isaac reminded himself as he stuffed his bare hands in his armpits. Pride as a laborer.
The truck, driven by a Naval Research Bureau field agent with his dark blue beret, reached an incline. Smoke billowed from the exhaust pipe as it chugged up a hillside road that soon turned into a mountainside road. Isaac had traveled up and down hills before - Patuxet was surrounded by low rolling ones, while Dai Hong’s estate had been carved into the side of one, but the sight of snow on the ground and dark green pine trees blanketing either side of the road indicated that he was now in the mountains. And as for mountains - he had only seen them in movies or storybooks.
Every so often, through the back of the truck, he could see little villages and towns, many of them surviving on the timber trade or mining what little natural resources Arcadia possessed. Isaac involuntarily shivered when he passed by a roadside town filled with miners; at least Patuxet with its mine was warm, but these guys looked slightly purple and red from working in the snow-covered mountains.
And then, right as the sun started to set, the road dipped away from the settlements and skirted the edge of a mountain meadow. In the distance, the fields of dead flowers and grass gave way to terraced hillside fields - this was the former Zhanghai farmland seized by the Army. Farmland was a stretch - it was a former forest, all chopped down, converted into an empty field for winter wheat. A couple of watchtowers kept an eye on the fields in the distance; they were more concerned about keeping the laborers on site, rather than anyone trying to break in and seize the pitiful amount of crops.
As darkness settled in, the truck peeled off onto a hidden sideroad covered in tall grasses and cracks. The ride was bumpy, adding to the list of things making Isaac’s teeth chatter, since this road could only be found on one of the pre-Unleashing maps. It was short, just a sideroad that took them to an equally-rundown parking lot and building. According to the map, this collapsed longhouse of wood and rusted metal was once a tourist shop in the pre-Unleashing days, serving recreationalists heading to and from the Whiterock Mountains. It was here, in this parking lot, hidden from the Army field and main highway, that Squads 1 and 3 would disembark and head to the depot on foot.
The Bureau field agent set up a radio and wireless telegram machine as the squads collected their gear. Bell wore a thick backpack with a telephone on top that could connect him to the agent - until they got deeper into the depot, at least. Isaac frowned; soon after that initial meeting, he had recognized why the Department of Domestic Security sounded familiar. All the way back in Patuxet, when this whole thing got started, Greg kept a hideout in a DoDS facility, one labeled as a mere Substation for a region they referred to as the Northeast. The DoDS facility below the Zhanghai depot - this would be more important, the Headquarters of the Northeast Third District, whatever that entailed.
The Heart, the Mind, the Soul. A billion souls within the Tree. Everything tied back to the Unleashing. The Skyfather’s lightning bolt that shattered the planet, they once said. Now they say it was a solar flare. Isaac needed to find out the truth, and the only way to do that was by searching through whatever pre-Unleashing material they could find.
…probably not the gift shop, though. Isaac hauled Reed away by the back of the collar when she got too close to the collapsed wooden structure.
“I heard they used to have these little things called snow globes,” she said as Isaac dragged her (she allowed it because it meant she could spend less effort on walking). “They sound neat.”
“That thing will blow over if you sneeze on it,” Dan said, his wooden staff on his back. He had been appointed as commander of the mission; once they were all ready, he used a Rddhi-lit finger to scan his map. He found a tiny game trail in the woods next to the lot, the one used by the Atalantan laborers while hunting (poaching, technically, because this was all Army land) that led them to the depot.
“Oksana,” he commanded. “Take point.”
She nodded and took the lead. Oksana the snake continued to ride her shoulder; other snakes fell from her hair and sleeves and pants and slithered along the pine needle covered trail alongside her, hissing slightly in the breeze as they relayed information back to their master. She walked mechanically, calmly, taking them through thick underbrush and dark forest on a moonless night. They hit an incline; they crested a ridge; they arrived on a cold cliffside overlooking a valley, stars twinkling above; they caught their breath as they arrived in front of an opening in the hills. It reminded Isaac of a mouth, rocks forming ragged jaws, the darkness down the throat beckoning them inside.
“Bell,” Dan commanded once more. “Stay outside to guard the entrance.”
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Bell grinned and tilted his head. “It’s because you think I’m Stockham’s lap dog, and there might be something inside you might not want to tell him about, right?”
The mountainside was silent. Five sets of condensed breath rose and fell as they pondered Bell’s question.
Dan just shrugged. “You’re the radio man. Wait here, and we’ll send a runner if we need to relay anything.”
Bell kept on smiling and found a flat rock to rest on. Starlight fell on him as he sat there, waving in farewell, as the remaining five headed inside the cave opening. Oksana, still taking point, allowed herself a lit finger of Rddhi, revealing a rocky decline ahead of them. As they descended, water dropped from the ceiling, and the starlight at the mouth of the cave disappeared, replaced by increasing darkness.
The group came to a wordless halt when Oksana raised her fist. Isaac heard something slither away down the decline; a minute later, one of her snakes returned and nodded its head at her. Oksana allowed it to disappear up her pants leg.
“The depot is up ahead,” she explained. “I’ve scouted it. No samurai. Completely deserted.”
With that, she continued on, so the rest of the group followed. As the passage opened up into a large chamber, Oksana tapped on a gauge on the wall, then shot Rddhi out of her finger into the pipe next to it. Red lights followed wires upwards and into the chamber, emitting a low, blood red glow, revealing it as the Zhanghai depot. In a large, rectangular sort of room, the lights shone down upon stacks of pallets and boxes and crates and filing cabinets, along with a couple of empty tables and chairs and sleeping mats.
“Let’s see what we can find,” Dan declared, immediately heading for a group of filing cabinets. Isaac did the same, scanning through whatever documents were left behind. The samurai must’ve been left in a huff - usually, things of this nature would be burned and destroyed before departing. They might not seem important - all Isaac found was accounting documents and notes about possible locations for future logging operations - but any information could be used by the enemy. From the way Dan skimmed through the papers, he discovered the same and felt the same.
A metallic bang echoed around the chamber. “Got some fuel drums,” Demetrius said, tapping a beefy hand on a couple of barrels stacked on a wooden pallet.
From a tool locker, Oksana retrieved a crow bar and opened up one of the many wooden crates. “Winter gloves and jackets.”
Reed frowned as she went through more crates. “No food. No Zhanghai noodles or rice. Just charm paper.”
“That’s important,” Dan reminded her. “Charm paper can only come from certain trees, and most of ‘em are in Zhanghai. Demetrius, start hauling the crates with paper outside. We’ll bring those back with us - the rest can be picked up by a bigger crew once we tell Stockham what we found.”
Demetrius saluted and picked up big crates with a single hand each and headed back for the tunnel, a snake with Rddhi sparking through it lighting his way. Isaac, meanwhile, reached the bottom of the last filing cabinet and rapped his knuckles against the side in victory. Through thick piles of documents similar to the ones he already found, he retrieved a leather-bound tome. His eyes went wide as he proudly held the book up to the light.
And then he frowned.
“I don’t know what I expected.”
The whole thing was written in Zhanghai characters, after all. Even the title.
Dan tapped on an inner pocket of his greatcoat. “You can use my Zhanghai-Common dictionary on the way back.”
“Reading’s already challenging enough,” Isaac complained with a defeated grin. The book was thick with old pages - it looked too formal to be a journal, so Isaac hoped it would contain text on how to unlock an Art or craft something. With his battles in the past showing him the power of pills and charms, he supposed now would be a good time to improve his skills on that front as well.
But for right now, when Demetrius hauled away another set of crates, Reed looked all the wall once hidden behind them with a raised eyebrow. Then she exhaled and withdrew her sword. Dan gripped his staff; red sparks ran up Isaac’s arms as he joined him and her in gazing at what was uncovered now that the crates were gone. Right in the middle of the rock wall was a metal door, hard metal. Most peculiar of all was the fact that it was shiny, even after centuries of lying in wait. The words DEPARTMENT OF DOMESTIC SECURITY ran across the door, the bald eagle seal below it in the center.
Some newer writing had joined it. A recent hand had painted a large Zhanghai character across much of the door, with a skull-and-bones symbol below it. Dan retrieved his dictionary to translate; Isaac peered at the symbol.
“You know, I think skull-and-bones means danger,” Isaac informed his comrades.
Reed placed a hand on his shoulder. “Isaac, Isaac, Isaac. Let the experts do the talking-”
“It means danger,” Dan decoded, closing the dictionary with a slight clap.
Isaac grinned, so Reed just flicked his shoulder. “Alright, genius, how do we open it?”
The bald eagle symbol made Isaac ponder for a moment, then he recalled Dai Hong’s cultivation locks at his estate. “If we place a hand on the lock and send Rddhi through it,” he explained. “Then we might be able to get through it.”
Dan rubbed his chin. “Would there be a password?”
“Maybe I can crack it,” Isaac suggested hopefully, but he possessed little skill when it came to codebreaking.
Perhaps the password will be easy. Maybe I can just put my hand on the door and it’ll just come to me.
The bald eagle seal was the size of a human hand, so Isaac placed his own palm on the symbol. And then, gently, he emitted a wave of Rddhi from his hand. The eagle came alight in a bright red, far brighter than the crimson sparks of today’s cultivators, as the streaks of energy spread across the door, illuminating the letters of Department of Domestic Security one by one.
“There’s no password,” Isaac realized. “Or rather, cultivation itself is the password.”
Demetrius had returned from his most recent crate run and joined Oksana, Reed, and Dan in watching Isaac unlock the door. When the last letter glowed, gears within the rock wall churned and groaned as the metal door opened inwards. Using a lit finger, ignoring the slight increase in the speed of his heartbeat, Isaac stepped inside and found a long corridor. To his immediate right was another bald eagle symbol on the wall; when Isaac pressed his palm on it and emitted Rddhi, the lights down the Corridor flickered on one by one. They were built into the ceiling and burned brighter than any lights of the modern age.
“Say, I got a question,” Reed mumbled as she stared down the hallway. “Cultivation came from the Unleashing, right? But we think this thing is from before the Unleashing. And this thing is unlocked by cultivation and lit up by cultivation. So how does that make any sense?”
Nobody had an answer for her.
Dan twirled his staff. “Not sure what we’re gonna find in there, but let’s go. Oksana, take point.”
Several snakes emerged and slithered slowly down the hallway. Oksana followed them, little Oksana the snake on her shoulder, fangs bared, ready for combat.