24 - TRAPPED

The tremor continued to shake the earth, growing in power with every passing second. Already they were having difficulty standing up, unable to find purchase on the unstable floor. Only Calvin seemed to have no problems standing up, thanks to his senses, and the fact that he was discretely using nanites to keep his feet firmly planted on the floor. Plumes of dust came down from the widening cracks of the ceiling, where the concrete was breaking apart from the strain. Entire pieces were falling down, some as big as a person, weighing several tons, and the three rushed towards the support beams in the corridor, where they hoped they could find a safe space to wait until the earthquake passed.

Tommy pulled Calvin to him, and checked if Marceline was listening in. When he saw that she was preoccupied with what was happening all around instead of minding their business, he finally told him to be careful.

“Don’t reveal your powers and your nature more than you have to. So far, she thinks that you used magic to spot her, and we should keep it that way unless we’re forced to show our hand.”

Calvin nodded. “Right. A repeat of what happened at the city would be catastrophic.”

“Hey!” Marceline yelled, and despite being next to them, her voice barely reached them through all the noise. “What are you two conspiring over there? We have to get out of here, before this thing buries us alive!”

“She’s right!” Calvin said. “We need to make it to the exit, now!”

“What about the portal?” Asked Tommy.

Right at that moment, a screech pierced the air. It was loud and powerful, accompanied by the growling of many throats and the ringing of metal weapon and armor in the dozens. Feet were stomping the ground, a formation of soldiers marching somewhere unknown, seemingly unfazed by the earthquake that was threatening to level the entire structure.

“Shit. Are things coming out of the portal?” Asked the adventurer.

“Seems like it.”

“Then, all the more reason to get the hell out of here!”

They started to run towards the door, stumbling their way though the narrow corridor, that was quickly filling up with debris. But, before they could reach the exit, a rumbling sound coming from above forewarned Calvin of what was about to happen, and he pulled back the two running people with his considerable strength.

“What—” Asked the adventurer, and Tommy yelped. They had practically been plucked out of the air by his hands, and were put down on the ground behind him. He shielded them with his body, and waited.

They both saw, wide eyed, what would have been their fate like if he hadn’t pulled them back. A gigantic chunk of concrete came down crashing, and split apart in the middle, before the falling rocks from the interior of the mountain finally sealed down the tunnel.

“Damn! Now we’re stuck!” The woman yelled.

“Better stuck than dead. Show some gratitude.” Tommy retorted.

She only grumbled in reply. Slowly, the tremor died down, and the place was plunged back in an eerie silence. It was dark, save for the makeshift torch Tommy had, but the faint light was enough to show that they were stuck between two masses of fallen debris. The stretch of tunnel they were in was not much longer than ten meters, and walls and floor were barren. The only things in here were the supports beams every five or so meters, and the thick metal pipes running through the ceiling. Pipes that were still ringing from the vibrations, and seemed to whistle like kettles under pressure.

“How did you know we were in danger?” She asked, as she inspected one of the piles of rubble.

“My spider sense tingled; I suppose.” Calvin replied distractedly.

The other two turned to look at him. He was poking at the rock with his finger, trying to insert some nanites in the tiny cracks without getting seen by the others. If he could determine how thick the rubble was, then he could start to formulate a plan.

Usually he wouldn’t have been this proactive. In fact, he had no idea why he was even acting on his own accord, but it felt good. So far, it had been his acting without thinking that had put him in danger, multiple times.

Turning around, he saw that they were staring at him, and he was taken out of his musings and thoughts.

“What?” He asked, and already felt like sweating. He feared that they saw him messing with the wall with his nanites, and that he had been busted.

“Spider… sense? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Maybe it’s magic?” Tommy said. He too didn’t have the slightest idea what Calvin was talking about, but he could use this to reinforce the idea that on top of being strong, Calvin was also a magic user.

“I don’t see why would spiders even help.” Marceline retorted.

“Spiders?” Calvin asked in confusion. “Why would you even be talking about spiders?” He saw Tommy facepalm, but he quickly regained his composure.

“You said that! You said that your spider sense… tingled? What the hell does that even mean?”

Calvin looked at the annoyed adventurer. He scratched the back of his head.

“Uh. I have no idea, actually.”

She threw her hands in the air. “Whatever. We have more important issues to discuss. Anyone has any idea how to get out of here?”

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“Well, apart from digging? I might add that we have to dig over there,” Tommy pointed towards where Calvin was poking at the rocks. “Because the other way is supposedly filled with whatever the portal decided to spew out.”

“Yes, of course. I meant how are going to dig there?”

As soon as she said that, Calvin punched the rock around the rubble pile, then the pile itself with all the strength he could muster. Computer? He asked in his mind.

Composition is solid rock on the sides, and broken debris made of cement reinforced with steel beams in the center. The rubble pile seems to be at least ten meters thick, and impossible to excavate without causing a structural collapse.

“Well? Are you going to punch the rock to death?”

Calvin ignored the useless remark, and looked at Tommy. “It’s ten meters deep over there. And the rock on the sides is impenetrable. We can’t go this way.”

“What about the other way?” He asked.

Calvin repeated the procedure at the other wall. After he was finished with the punches, he felt some strange vibrations coming from the other side, and he was sure that he could hear snarling, grumbling and the faint sensation of a completely alien speech.

“Solid.” He said. “And with all probability filled with hostiles on the other side.” He looked at Tommy. “If we’re stuck, then does it mean that we will have to do that?”

“Do what?”

Tommy shushed him. “Too early. At least wait until we are about to die of thirst. Then it would be easier to impose conditions.”

“That would mean you too, Tommy. No. I’ll do it, and since it’s my own magic I don’t have to explain it to anyone.”

“No! You know you can’t. It’s too obvious. If you use it you’ll have to kill her.”

“Hey!” Marceline unsheathed her sword. “Watch your mouth. You ain’t not killing no shit here.”

“Calvin, disarm her. We don’t need a loose cannon here.” Tommy said tiredly.

Calvin yanked the sword out of her hands, pulling at it by the blade, which didn’t even rupture his skin. His strength was so great that the adventurer almost fell to the ground trying to defend her property. Then, Calvin jammed it into the rock of the wall, all the way to the handle.

“Done.”

“Good. Now, we wait.” Tommy said, and sat on the ground.

Calvin complied, and sat beside his brother. Mimicking what the boy was doing, he closed his eyes.

“We wait?! All this and we just wait? There’s who knows what on the other side, we’re stuck in a tunnel with limited air, no food or water, and we wait? Are you completely out of your mind?”

“Look,” Calvin said condescendingly. “If there is one thing I learned, is that I’m not that sharp when it comes to these matters. Tommy is. That’s why I’m leaving this to him. If he says we wait, then we wait.”

After around three hours, a rhythmic sound began to reverberate throughout the whole compound. The very walls seemed to pulse and vibrate with each beat, and it seemed to come from everywhere at once. Tommy and Calvin were sitting with their backs against the curved wall of the tunnel, still with their eyes closed. Tommy was meditating, and trying to remember old lessons and things that his father and tutors taught him what now felt lifetimes ago. Calvin was instead exploring the capabilities of his body, mind, and of Computer. He was playing around with the time dilation, and found that with his current mass he could experience ten hours of real time thinking for every hour in the real world. This, alongside Computer’s ability to simulate things, allowed him to test a wide range of possibilities and tactics he could employ with his body.

By the time the sound pulled him out of the daze, he had spent more than thirty hours in his mind space. The sound came to him low pitched and long, eerie and alien, like the gong of an angry eastern god. He quickly realized that this was an effect of the time dilation, and when he returned to the real world, he heard how it was supposed to sound. Like a giant hammer hitting the rock. Then, there was a small tearing sound, metallic and piercing.

Marceline had been pacing around the room all the time. After seeing that no matter what she said, the two savage siblings would not hear her out, she tried to work out her frustrations by pacing impatiently around, only sorting the opposite effect. As soon as she heard the sound, she stopped, and noticed that none of the two wolf-kin had reacted in the slightest. She opened her mouth, but Tommy spoke as if he was waiting for her to ask him the stupid question.

“Two things. First: they either have magic, or they brought tools with them, or the portal is permanent and two-way. And second: they too are stuck inside this place. Probably because there is only one exit.”

“How do you know all this?” She asked, annoyed.

“Simple deduction.”

“And we’re not doing anything?”

“Still too early. And I don’t think they will go anywhere anytime soon. Calvin?”

Calvin had not been idle. He pulled back the invisible, nano-sized filaments he used to capture the vibrations inside his body. Computer parsed the data for him, and gave him a rough idea of the layout of the whole compound by measuring how the sound waves propagated.

“They don’t know the way. They’re digging at random.”

“See? We have time.” Tommy said, and closed his eyes again.

Calvin was about to do the same, but instead focused on where the tearing sound came from. The others didn’t mention it, as they probably didn’t even hear it, but he did. Looking in that direction he saw a small crack in one of the pipes. He could see the air distorting slightly around the crack, as if something ethereal was trying to come out of it. He asked Computer, and his eyes widened.

“I don’t think we have all that much time.” He said quickly, and sprung to his feet. “Please tell me that one of you has fire magic.”

“What? Why?” The other two asked at the same time.

“Poisonous air. Look,” he pointed at the broken pipe. “It’s coming from inside there, and will fill the room if we don’t do anything.”

“And you want to set it on fire?” Asked Marceline.

“Yes. Quick!”

The poisonous cloud was invisibly expanding, but already both Tommy and Marceline could feel that something was not right.

“I don’t have anything, sorry.” She said.

Calvin looked around the room. He went to the sword embedded in the wall and pulled it out of the concrete. “Let’s hope this works.”

He slashed at the pipe.

“What are you doing!” Yelled the adventurer. “Why are you widening the crack?”

The crack was now quite bigger, and more and more gas was filling the room. Marceline could feel that the air she was breathing was not quite right, because it made her head light and spinny, and a sheen of sweat was forming on her forehead and down her neck, where her unruly blonde locks stuck to it.

“I need a spark!” He said, and swung the blade again.

The pipe, however, was severed in half. There was no spark, nor was there any way to produce any. Even swinging the sword against the wall or Marceline’s armor was fruitless. The two collapsed on the ground, heaving. They looked pale and sickly, but they were still conscious. By now even if Calvin decided to use the nanites to create a chemical reaction to set the gas on fire, it was too late. Everyone but him was on the floor, and he could see them gasping for air with their eyes rolled to the back of their head. He cursed inwards, because by trying to hide his nanites he put them all in danger. He crouched down next to Tommy, and put his hands on his face.

Out of the shapeless silver, made of nanites in the form of programmable matter, he created something Computer called a ‘rudimentary gas mask’ on Tommy’s face, and then on Marceline’s.

When he was done, he saw their breathing slowly return to normal, and their white complexions regain some color. He would have to come up with a convincing explanation to give the adventurer, but at least they were all alive. Before they woke up, he made a mask for himself as well, and set to work on the wall while the two were still out.