The next day Ander set out into the ruins carrying a bundle of torches. They didn’t smell great, reeking of old pig fat. Still, they would do until he found some way to properly render the fat. He walked deep into the ruins, waiting until he could barely see before pulling out a special stone he had found the previous night. Using his knife, he struck sparks off the stone and lit one of the torches. The light of the torch wasn’t great, creating a dancing shadow for every piece of rubble it illuminated. However It was all Ander had, and these ruins might provide a way out of the chasm.

And so Ander pushed forward into the caves. Amidst the shadows Ander saw scurrying animals of every variety, most far larger than would be considered normal on earth. However none attacked him. In fact, they seemed to want to avoid him. Ander couldn’t help but admit he was a little disappointed. Maybe their would be more aggressive creatures further in. The entire place was a large maze of interconnected rooms and passageways. But for every room Ander saw, he couldn’t shake the image of an office building. With that idea in mind, Ander was able to find a switchback staircase that led down deeper into the ruins. There was a staircase going up as well, but large boulders and other rubble blocked the passage. Seeing that he really had no other choice, ander went down the stairs.

One level down, Ander found a door made of some kind of metal. It did not open easily. A crack ran through the wall, and Ander could tell that the door had crumpled slightly. The door was quite stuck. Still, Ander wasn’t about to give up, and sticking his torch in a pile of rubble he grabbed ahold of the door and pulled with all his strength. The door screeched in protest, but moved, opening up into a black cavern beyond. Here, things were different from what he had seen before. Instead of rubble and dirt, the place was filled with identifiable pieces of furniture, though they all seemed to be in the last stages of rotting away. The air was quite dry, and Ander wondered if the place would have been completely preserved if it weren’t for the door crumpling and letting in the tiniest amount of air.

Ander walked between the remains of desks, chairs, and other things he couldn’t identify. The place definitely looked like an ancient office building now, made with technology completely unlike anything Ander had ever seen. Ander saw a glitter at the edge of his vision. When Ander turned to look, he found what looked to be a pen sitting amongst the remains of a desk. The pen was made of real gold and a black wood, and gave a satisfying click as Ander pressed on the end. The nib of the pen seemed to be in working order, creating a blue line when Ander tested it on his skin. The odd part was that the pen was completely untarnished, the wood undamaged. It looked like it had just been unwrapped from its packaging. It was a stark contrast to the rot and decay all around Ander.

Not knowing what to think, Ander put the pen in his pocket and moved on. He found that the room he was in had several hallways leading away, and he turned down the one to the right. He proceeded down the hallway, checking doors to rooms on either side. He found various items here and there that had survived the ruin of the building far better than they should have. There were several chairs, a couple dozen more pens, and a few mugs. Now if only there was a magic coffee maker. Ander supposed that was what it had to be. Everything Ander had seen was more primitive than earth, looking more like something you would find pre-computer. However even then earth had access to large scale metalworking, which seemed absent here. Instead it was all replaced with wood and stone worked in a manner unknown to him. Eventually Ander had explored the entire floor. Unsurprisingly, he found several other staircases blocked off far more thoroughly than the one he had come through.

Ander returned to the staircase and the small pile of loot he had obtained. He had taken a chair, a few mugs and several pens, leaving the rest of what he had found in a room with a working door not far from the staircase. He would come back for it later if he got the chance. Ander was happy to have found some sort of loot, despite the fact that it wasn’t what he had hoped to find. Still, there were several more levels to the facility, so he wouldn’t let his hopes be dashed so soon. Maybe he would find some sort of factory on the lower levels. That would certainly be interesting.

Ander moved his pile of loot to the platform and headed farther down. His torch had lasted far longer than he expected, but he lit a new one for the next floor. Ander made his way down the stairs, and found the next door to be in far better condition. He opened the door and stared. Sterile white walls greeted him as he looked down a long lit hallway. Like the previous floor rooms populated the length of it, but the doors were mostly made of glass, allowing a clear view of what had to be lab equipment. Ander closed the door.

Resting his head against the closed door for a moment, anger, hatred, and no small amount of guilt rushed through him. He was in a world with a medieval technology level, and he still couldn’t escape. Damn those scientists. He hoped those children came out alive. Taking a deep breath and getting his emotions under control Ander opened the door again. The walls were undamaged and unstained, the doors in perfect working order. However, the walls were whitewashed stone rather than plaster or plastic or any other material that would have been used on earth.. Ander stopped a few steps in as he heard a mechanical sound in the ceiling.

“Fire Detected. Activating fire suppression systems.” The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time before a small hatch opened in the ceiling and a hose popped out, aiming directly for Ander’s torch before letting out a stream of foam which doused the torch.

“Fire Eliminated.” And all was quiet. Fortunately for Ander, some sort of ceiling lights were still operational, giving him plenty to see by.

Ander stood there for several seconds before closing his open mouth with a snap. He proceeded to the first door and grabbed the handle.

“Access not granted.” The voice said. “Visitor is without clearance.” Ander hesitated for a moment before trying the handle anyway. To his surprise the handle turned and the door opened.

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“Secure area breached. Visitor status revoked. Security has been notified.” Then the voice went silent. Ander waited for several minutes, but no murderbots came out to attack him, and he decided to go into the room anyway. Inside were loads of different types of machines on benches and tables. There were cabinets full of glassware and other cabinets full of chemicals. Ander was able to figure out at a glance how a number of the things worked. He had been a chemistry major before he dropped out, and while the equipment looked far different from what he had used at his university, many had very similar functions. However none of the more complex, computer driven equipment had copies here. Everything was in good condition, and Ander wondered if everything was magical on this floor.

Ander left the room and went to another door to find another room with various testing equipment. He continued down the hallway and every room was a laboratory of some sort, though the nature of the specific science changed with each room. Unlike the labs he had… visited… back home, this lab seemed to be very multifunctional. Back home, scientists seemed only to care about their precious Mineral. Which meant that all those labs were dedicated to geology and chemistry. Here, only the first few were dedicated to chemistry, with other labs dedicated to every branch of physics.

Ander came to the end of the hallway where two utilitarian double doors stood closed. Ander pushed on one of them and it swung inward to reveal a large room. The room seemed like some combination of school cafeteria and tech startup work lounge. Here and there were large long tables with chairs set around it. But interspersed amongst them were restaurant style booths of various sizes, as well as stuffed couches and chairs arranged to make distinct meeting areas. This was all readily apparent as not a single thing was out of place, and not a speck of dust lay on any surface. On one end of the room, farthest from where Ander stood there were several open windows through which he could see kitchens. On all other walls were doors leading further into the compound.

The entire thing was surreal to Ander. It looked as though everyone had left, politely pushing their chairs in as they left. That was aside from the fact that this entire scene could have been found back on earth. What the hell was this place? Add that to the voice he had heard earlier, and it felt like he was in a science fiction book.

Ander poked around a bit amongst the furniture, and besides finding that it was all very comfortable, found nothing else of interest. And so he moved on to one of the doors adjacent to the one he had entered through. Inside were a bunch more offices like the ones upstairs, but all were pristine. Not a thing was out of place, even personal effects were lined up as though a neat freak had organized everything. Unfortunately, that made it difficult to tell which items were potentially magical. Ander wasn’t worried about the potential nicnacs he might be able to find however, because in each room were filing cabinets full of research documents. Ander spent an hour or so poking through the files. Surprisingly, he could read all of them, though he could tell that they weren’t written in english, or any language he could identify. That said, the jargon in all of them was far byond his head. The only thing he could tell was that the experiments that they were doing in this facility were both magical and mundane.

In all there were 16 offices, and each one had a half dozen filing cabinets. Ander knew that it would take years to go through all of this, and while he would love to, it was all so facinating, he knew that finding a way out was far more important. Maybe he could return once he had a way to escape. Ander left the office wing and went to the next one. This wing was more laboratories like before, but in this one, everything seemed weird. It was all neat and tidy like everywhere else, but while Ander could glimpse similarities to what he had seen on earth, everything seemed… off. Ander went into one of the rooms to find a number of desks. Each had several pieces of equipment, and a set of odd tools. Each desk, there were six in total, was standing within circles of inlaid gold, making intricate arcane looking patterns on the floor. Most of the desks were tidy, with everything set in it’s place. However one desk looked as though it had been abandoned mid project. On the desk was a small piece of stone surrounded by the debris of carving.

A couple steps brought Ander to the desk, which was covered in a thick layer of dust. He could see that the stone was held in a sort of jewelers clamp, allowing the artisan to carve the intricate linework he could see half finished across the surface of the rock. Ander brushed the rock off, revealing that it was a piece of marble polished to an extreme luster. All of the lines were carved with extreme precision despite obviously having been done with the hand tools scattered around next to it.

Ander’s first thought was that this was an artist’s bench, stocked with the tools to allow an individual to make something intricate and beautiful. However, there were also several complex machines that made the bench seem more like the bench of an electronics engineer. Rifling through the desk, Ander found more obscure tools, but nothing else of interest.

Ander left the room, grimacing. This was all interesting. But he had hoped for more creatures to fight, or maybe things to loot. All this was cool and all, but not really worth trying to carry away. Ander returned to the main room. There were several more doors, each leading into more long hallways with rooms just like the ones he had already seen. However, one was different. He saw dust and decay, very much like the rooms above, meaning that this area might have a way outside. Ander reached for the door handle.

“Danger, hazardous spill detected. Hazardous lifeforms detected. Please do not go beyond this point.” The lifeless voice from earlier made Ander jump a foot into the air, drawing his sword and brandishing it in mid air. With a sigh, Ander sheathed his sword and pulled out another torch. The next hallway was dark again, which meant that Ander would have to use his stinky torches. Ander pulled his knife back out and struck a few more sparks to light the torch.

“Fire Detected. Activating fire suppression systems.” Like before, a small hatch opened in the ceiling and a hose popped out, aiming directly for Ander’s torch before letting out a stream of foam which doused the torch.

“Fire Eliminated.” Ander glared at the ceiling at the point where the hose came from.

“How am I supposed to see if I can’t light a torch?” Of course there was no answer, and so Ander returned to the last hallway he explored. Pulling a chair out of one of the rooms he got up close to one of the lights in the ceiling. Some quick work with his knife caused a round glass orb glowing with a soft light to fall out of its socket and into Ander’s hand. To his surprise it stayed glowing, though that is what he had hoped would happen. And through the protests of the voice, he took it into the main room and to the door. This time, there was no warning from the voice when he turned the door knob. Ander gave the door a hard shove, having to push through dirt and debris to get the door open. The air beyond was fresh, and was filled with the various scents of life both fair and foul. Ander held the orb out ahead of him as he drew his sword once again.