After Grims show of ability, along with promises that he could explain at least a little bit, the group quickly packed up what little belongings and tech they had managed to scavenge. While it wasn’t an immensely long journey to their, possibly, new digs it would still be a bit of a trek.
They gathered around Joe in the break room as he set down a small device on the far corner. Pressing a button, it projected a map onto the hard surface of the table. Hardly the most advanced tech that Grim had ever seen, but by far the most advanced he had seen here.
Tapping the center of the district where they were, Joe said, “Here is where we are at. The entrance to the sewer system is way over here,” he tapped on a seaside building with the label of ‘SP’ on it.
Joe answered the unasked question. “Yeah, that stands for sewer plant. And yes, we will probably be trudging through shit and god knows what else before we get to the access hatch to the labs. The entire facility hasn’t been used in… oh six years or so. Based on what it was I am definitely not expecting any occupants.”
“That seems like an illogical way to access this place,” complained Tetra. “How did they get everything down there to begin with? Isn’t there another way in? Like an elevator or something?”
Trevor nodded. “Yes there is. Unfortunately, it was sealed. This way may be sealed as well, but I know that we can force our way in. There are three hermetically sealed doors and an armored bulkhead on the very inside. But with joe’s talents, my knowledge, and the piece of plastic explosive that, uh, Rat picked up we should have no issues getting inside.” He gestured at the two imps watching them impassively, “Not to mention we have additional help Grim assures me will be useful should it come to that.”
“There are a lot of ‘ifs and shoulds’ here,” grunted Grim. “I’m not sure I like this. But if this place is as hidden and well stocked as you think it is, then we don’t have much of a choice. Staying here is just asking to be over run. I can only kill so many people… and these heroes seem a tad more resilient than I would like.”
Joe laughed, “Yeah, they can be annoying. Heroes and villains alike are annoying. But I have to admit, at least the villains aren’t outright brainwashed.”
Grim was curious about that statement, but would pursue it later. Filing it away with Bag for future discussion, he moved on. “Three doors and an armored bulkhead though… that seems excessive.”
Trevor grimaced. “The things that we worked on there built the foundation of what the program is today. Not everything was… humane. Much less legal,” he admitted. “And to be honest if the things that got loose in there are still alive we may be in for a serious fight.”
“We?” questioned Rat. “You don’t look like much of a fighter,” he admonished.
Trevor just gave a somewhat timid smile. “Young man, I am smart, not strong. But intelligence comes with its own strengths. True, you could easily snap my neck. Or have me eaten alive by a swarm of rats. But I promise you, you would not walk away from such an encounter in one piece.”
Rat looked curious at that, but Joe moved them along.
“It shouldn’t take us more than a few hours to get there on foot. But that would be boring. So I got us a truck,” Joe said happily.
The distances still boggled Grims mind. The sized of Elysium was just… outside of a few ecumenopolises that he had been to, cities this size were very uncommon. Spending an hour or two, even on foot, traversing one of multiple industrial districts was astounding to him.
“-should let us get there in just under an hour. Barring any major issues or confrontations,” Joe said. “There are lots of gangs in the area, and their territories overlap. With most of this district outside of the major shipping hub to the north being a ruined mess, there’s lots of places for criminal and villainous enterprises to set up.”
Grim observed the map, noting that many of the sections were labeled as older and not having recent recon done within them. Overall, however, the map was a thing of beauty to anyone who needed intelligence on the area. It contained a ton of notes from where Joe or Trevor had added them. The information had been built up over time, signifying just how long the two had been on the run and unable to escape the Republic.
“Good. I think this is a solid plan,” Grim said. “Anything else we should be aware of?”
Rat looked around the table, then tentatively raised his hand.
“Put that hand down before I break it. You’re a god damn adult, act like one,” Grim replied gruffly as there were snickers around the table.
Those quickly turned to frowns as the Anubis demon spoke, “While I was taking care of that drug den, I heard rumors that beasts had made it into the confines of the city,” he said slowly. “Just rumors Boss. I haven’t actually seen any. But my little furry friends have told me that there are large swathes of territory, for them at least, where they don’t go because they keep vanishing. So there’s probably some truth to the rumors.”
Everyone around Grim was… grim. However he didn’t have a reference point to work from for the term ‘beasts’. Annoyed at his lack of information, he mentally pinged Bag.
“Shit. So they are basically mobile dungeon cores with accompanying territories?” Grim asked in surprise. “That could be very, very bad.”
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Nodding to the group he said, “Well, if they aren’t strong enough to have established their weird reality altering territories, I don’t think we need to worry about them. Unless we do?”
Joe shook his head, “We will at some point. Everyone in the region will. Beasts are a tad more complex than than the Republic is willing to admit to its citizens. At least in Reichan we make this information readily available.”
“Explain,” Grim ordered.
Surprisingly, it was Trevor that stepped up. “Beasts fall into a very, very wide variety of categories. And new ones are discovered all the time. But it is generally agreed that when they hit the equivalent of a Class IV superhuman they gain the ability to create a domain around them. That much is common knowledge, even here in the Republic,” he explained.
“What isn’t commonly shared here is that once a domain is established many beasts are able to propagate. And quickly. It is what makes them so incredibly dangerous in the wilds, as often times when a scouting or expansion party crosses into a domain they aren’t facing just one, powerful creature. They are facing one powerful creature and anywhere from dozens to thousands of its offspring,” the scientist finished grimly.
“Oh. Well, that wouldn’t be good,” Grim agreed. “Not good at all.”
Joe sighed, “You haven’t been in a fight until you are running for your lives from a few dozen squirrels the size of a semi-truck.”
“Squirrels are universally evil,” Grim agreed once more. “Nothing that cute can be innocent. They are evil. A level of evil that no villain on this world could match. Insidious, nasty things.”
The group stared at him, even his own minions slightly taken aback at his vehemence against the small fluffy creatures. But while taken aback, they understood. Nothing that cute could be good. Period. Anything nature evolved to have cuteness as a defense was safe to be around. Joe highlighting that the things could naturally evolve to be the size of an industrial transportation truck and carnivorous only reinforced that point.
“Well, hopefully if there are beasts here they aren’t squirrels. Or spiders,” Trevor agreed.
Stella and Tetra nodded in agreement. Squirrels sucked. Spiders sucked more. Getting attacked by anything capable of wiping out a group of supers sucked the hardest. They were determined to ensure that nothing of the sort happened. And if something did attempt to attack them… well they were confident in Grims ability to ward them off long enough to escape. At the very least.
The group packed up and headed out of the building. No one was waiting for them outside, so the group of eight followed Joe. He led them down a maze of alleyways, somewhat in the direction that they were heading. Eventually, the large spy led them through a door and into a small warehouse. There, sitting in the center of the empty building, was a beat-up white dual-cab pickup.
“You certainly roll in style,” Grim said, looking at the truck. He didn’t see any gas tank of any kind, so it must have been electric or run off some exotic fuel. He directed the imps to load the crates that Rat had retrieved. All four were tossed into the back. The imps got up behind them while Joe and Grim covered the lot with a tarp.
Getting into the vehicle was a squeeze for the group, but Tetra managed to squeeze Trevor in between herself and Rat in the back seat. Grim claimed the passenger side front seat, while Stella hopped into his lap. Much to the amusement of the other. Grumbling, he allowed it to happen, hiding the fact that he wasn’t as annoyed as he thought he would be.
Still grinning at Grims discomfort, Joe started the truck with a push button. He had seen systems like that before, but there wasn’t even so much as a hum from an electric engine. More than a little curious on just how they were being propelled out of the warehouse, he asked.
“What is making us move? I didn’t feel a combustion engine and I heard no electric capacitors start. How are we moving,” Grim inquired, poking at the dash.
Trevor spoke up from the back, “You must be from really far away if you haven’t heard of gravity engines?” he quipped.
Grim had, in fact, heard of such an engine. But never on something as small as a truck. Generally, a gravitic engine was massive, propelling a starship through the void from one planetary system to another. That is, if it didn’t outright have an FTL drive of some kind. But this world seemed far and away from that level of technology.
“I’ve heard of gravitic engines before, just never one so small,” he admitted.
Tetra shook his head in the negative, “Not gravitic Boss, gravity fed. The planets perpetual motion drives kinetic converters within the engine itself, generating mechanical energy to turn the crank shaft through a series of mechanical gears,” she explained. “Gravitic is… well honestly I’m not… woah…” her eyes dilated as her power did something, giving her new perspective or ideas on what he had revealed to her.
“Shit. I just broke her,” Grim grumbled as the rest laughed at the poor supers apparently mind-altering powers. It took several minutes of driving for the poor feline demon to insert herself back into the small talk that was going on.
Much to Grims surprise, the entire hour-long drive was relatively peaceful. They only had to fend off one real attack from a bunch of thugs, who upon seeing a half dozen supers exit the truck took off running. Outside of that, they were merely observed by passersby’s. It seemed that the abandoned and decaying industrial district was far more populated than he had initially thought.
“Bag, what are your thoughts on this? I’ve seen… easily several hundred industrial complexes. Each and everyone one of them fucking ruins. How can a city this massive even function with this lack of industrial support?” Grim asked, flabbergasted.
“It can’t possibly be more mind blowing than having entire abandoned regions within a city like this,” he grumbled back.
He was silent for a while, absorbing that. If the Republic was a single massive city, that meant that there had been other cities here before. That meant that there was most likely layer, upon layer, upon layer of civilizations beneath them. The discrepancy in architecture would, in large part, be explained by that.
“Trigger? Are you saying that there are literal triggers to these events?” Grim asked, his astonished incredulity only growing.
It took a minute for Grim to digest that. He had been on so many worlds with different tech levels, magic, and even a universe that couldn’t sustain carbon life. That had been dicey, but he had survived each one. He had seen a lot… but a world where something keeps smacking down stable or advanced polities to ensure perpetual chaos?
That was new.
New and dangerous. It certainly sounded like there was a God or Pantheon involved in this somewhere. If there wasn’t... well if there wasn’t, he couldn’t fathom why, or even how, someone on this world would organize the perpetual slaughter of people who became too successful. Well, he could think of a few reasons, but none of them good for him. That level of control over a world this large, and this undeveloped, told him that there was some kind of worldwide observation net. And it was horrifying to think he may get caught in it.
Horrifying… and terrifying.