The basement was a multipurpose area. A hallway split down the middle, connected to the stairs and elevator on one side and a door on the other. Two rooms split off from the hallway: a laundry room, chatter barely reaching my ears over the hums of machinery, and a gym. The clangs of metal on metal and soft grunts alerted me to several people working out in it.

I’d already checked the cameras for the place, so I knew the only two positioned down here were in the gym and laundry room. I just needed to make it to the door across the way, then I should be able to freely enter the room with the supposed entrance to the Underground. Hopefully. There was always the chance the maps or my calculations had been off.

I headed down to the far door, carefully keeping away from the cameras’ lines of sight as I approached the doors on either side of the hall. Rather, the doorways. Neither of the rooms had doors attached to the frames. I looked closer at the walls connecting between the support beams, noticing they were rather weak structurally. They looked more like a temporary divider wall than an actual wall thanks to the fact they just loosely sat on the floor instead of connecting down. Probably added on to the basement at some point rather than part of the original structure.

I darted across the gap, my steps and gear as silent as freshly fallen snow as I headed for the far end of the hallway. I tried it, finding the door locked. It was just a simple mechanical lock though, so I popped it open in no time and slid in.

The door entered into a small supply closet, causing a frown to spring to my lips. Racks filled with cleaners, spare toilet paper, and other supplies filled the space. This wasn’t on the map. Now that I think about it, neither was the gym or laundry room. Note to self, don’t always trust the map.

Where was the entrance to the Underground though? Or had the original owners of this place bulldozed it when building up the apartments? Hmm… Dang old maps and their uncertainty. Wait, no, the map was old but the marks had been fresher. Maybe at most a year or two old. No way they bulldozed it then right? Everything down here looked as though they had been set up a decade ago. It must still be around here somewhere.

I took a step, feeling a flush of Insight hit me. I was missing something… but what? I mentally retraced my steps, rechecking my map several times. I paced back and forth inside the closet, carefully rethinking as I tried to figure out where exactly I had gone wrong-

Wait, my steps… How many steps did it take to get to the hallway? Something was wrong here. Why was the hallway so short? The ancient schematic of the basement I found showed it to be quite a large area, but then that wasn’t exactly right either? Only two-thirds of the space was in use by the laundry room and gym. The basement was missing a third of its space. Hmm… It could just be a discrepancy in the schematic. The thing was ancient after all.

Or it could not. I eyed the supply closet further, catching sight of an oddity on the far wall of the closet. The bricks were different. It was barely visible, but the striations of the bricks were slightly off, as was the hue. It was slightly more yellow. A bit newer than the rest of the brickwork in the basement, though only by maybe a year.

Was it a fake wall? I tapped on it several times, but they were brick, so it was hard to tell. I looked around the room further, catching sight of a marked up tile. Something heavy had scraped the tile up at some point.

I pulled on the shelf slightly. I was getting stronger recently, but it still took a bit of effort to force the shelf off of the wall. Like, more than should be possible considering it was a simple shelf. Even the weight of the cleaners and all that shouldn’t have been making it too big of an issue.

Then I heard a quiet mechanical grinding as the shelf gave way, pulling slightly off the wall. I strained, the mechanical noise getting louder as the shelf swung out, one side pulling off the wall.

I looked down, catching sight of a tattered rip cord attached to the shelf. The other end disappeared into the wall. With one final tug, I managed to get the shelf pulled as far as possible from the wall. The ripcord pulled quite far out of its hidden slot.

The mechanical grinding increased by several times as the shelf slowly pulled back to its resting position, the bottles of cleaner and rolls of toilet paper shaking slightly as the surface moved. A catch released, and the back wall shifted. Dust fell off of it as the entire thing shook momentarily.

Then the wall split into two, pulling apart to reveal an ash-covered room. I eyed the place. I paused only a moment, pulling out my rifle before taking a hesitant step forward under the effects of Dexterity. I shifted my eyes from shadow to shadow, wary of danger.

There was a set of footprints headed toward a long bar on the far side of the room, but they were almost entirely covered up. If I had to guess, it had been maybe thirty or forty years, give or take some time, since anyone had been down here. The tracks were also one-way. Unless they backtracked carefully by stepping on their own footprints, whoever ventured down here so long ago hadn’t made the return trip. My hands tightened around the rifle's grip.

The place seemed to be some kind of ancient bar. If I had to date it, it would be at least a hundred years old purely based on how the wood elements of the room looked. The bar, barstools, and tables scattered around were charred in a way only real wood reacted to fire. Synthwood got all droopy and melty rather than charred. So either this room was from a period before Synthwood really took off, or it had been an extremely extravagant place at one point.

I took a hesitant step forward, disturbing the ash slightly. I adjusted my balance to stir as little of it as possible, carefully stepping in the path of the old prints. Dozens of skeletons lay around here, scattered about the place. The char and ash made it difficult to spot, but bullet holes lined almost every wall. What happened here?

I flinched, rifle up and ready to shoot as I heard a grating behind me. My guard relaxed slightly as I saw the hidden door to the place close by itself. Probably set on a timer or something. I’ll need to take a look at the mechanism before I leave. Probably could do with some grease and fixing up if I wanted to turn this place into a more permanent passageway. Maybe even clean up the bar?

A far-distant idea of me owning the place, and turning it into a proper business came to mind if only to better hide my tracks. The amount of money for that kind of thing though… still, it would be cool. A super secret entrance into a super secret and popping speakeasy, which was actually just a cover for a super secret passage into a super secret stash house full of loot was the kind of thing that made my mind tick. Or was it just the secretness of it that was so attractive? I could maybe even turn it into a merc dive and get gigs that way.

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I walked closer to one of the skeletons that caught my eye, noticing several shattered bottles all over the place. Did they use the bar’s own product as an accelerant? It was likely. The skeleton’s clothes had all been burned away in the fire, but the chrome hadn’t. Or should I say prosthetic? The thing was ancient, almost entirely non-mechanical in nature. Hell, the thing was closer to a peg leg than anything.

I tried to think through what I knew of history, but I couldn’t quite place it other than knowing that the prosthetic was ancient. At least older than the Cyber Panic in twenty-eleven. Probably way older, all things considered.

Maybe back when- hmm… What did that fangirl teacher of Corporate History call it? Prohibition? That sounded right. It was one of the few things she talked about that wasn’t directly related to Sentinel- no, that wasn’t quite right. The only reason she brought it up was thanks to old rumors that the CEO of Sentinel got his starting investments from running several ‘Businesses’ at the time.

Ah, no that actually made sense. If this place was an old speakeasy back from prohibition buried with time, some things started to click. For instance, the weird hidden entry. The ancient wood, the old chrome, and probably more if I were to look around further could hint at it. The ash acted as a preservative for some of the stuff here, and aside from the person whose footsteps I tracked, I doubt anyone had been here since the fire. Too much debris and the skeletons probably would’ve been removed at least.

Was the apartment built after the speakeasy then? I knew the apartments were old, but I didn’t think they were about a hundred and fifty years old… The blueprint hadn’t been dated though, so I guess it could’ve been. The amount of renovations this place would’ve needed to stay in good shape after all that time would be astronomical.

I left the corpse, heading back to the tracks. They split off, heading to the bar before looping back. I gave a cursory glance behind the bar, but it was empty except for shattered bottles. Either it had been emptied before the fire, or whoever left the tracks got to anything left over before I did.

I followed the tracks into a kitchen area. Even back here hadn’t been spared from the fire, ash coating just about everything. An old walk-in freezer sat open, four skeletons bundled up in the corner of the place… Food rotted to nearly nothing and shattered jars sat scattered all around the freezer. Surprisingly, there was one jar still in good condition full of what looked like pickles.

The tracks meandered around the kitchen for a while, the open cabinets and drawers suggesting the person had searched through the place. Then they headed towards a hallway connected to the kitchen. Still no sign of the supposed way down. I gripped my rifle tighter and entered the hallway.

About a dozen rooms sat branching off the hall, most of them looked like private booths. Even they weren’t spared from the fire. The tracks wandered around the rooms, pausing in what looked like an old bathroom, before heading to a room on the far side of the hall.

The room was more of a study. It reminded me of the posh drawing room where Mr. Abernathy met me, though way older and more suave. Or at least it had been. Ash covered everything, though to a lesser extent than the rest of the place. The walls were burnt-out bookshelves, nothing but ash remaining of the books that once called them home. A massive desk sat on the back side of the office covered in the ashen husks of two lamps and several pens. A skull sat on it, staring almost judgmentally at me. The rest of the skeleton lay scattered off to the side, taking 'Rest in Peace' to a whole new level.

A silver frame lay down against the wall with the original painting burned out. Where the frame would’ve hung, however, sat a safe. Unopened. Though it looked as though someone had briefly tried to get it open with a crowbar or pick.

I held myself back from immediately heading to it, panning over the place carefully as I flicked on Aetherial Perception and watched for traps. Nothing. The tracks led behind the desk, so I followed them once more.

Behind the desk, a rather large pit framed by splintered and rotted wood sat. The hole descended into darkness, the bottom of it hidden by sheer rock faces and clumps of rotten wood from where the flooring fell out. The tracks led to the drop in the floor before stopping abruptly. Had they descended? Hmm... no rope marks though. Had the floor rotted out below them?

I kept an eye on the pit as I headed for the safe. It was trivial to unlock it, though it was a bit weird that my knowledge of safe cracking still applied to a safe from so long ago. I guess there hasn’t been much improvement in purely mechanical safes outside of more resistant materials. Well, maybe only slight improvements. The safe was far easier than some of the stuff I’d sprung open.

The door creaked open, revealing stacks and stacks of small paper- no, not paper. Money. The old currency from before the Fall of the USA. Worthless now with the world’s conversion to Boswan Pulas, or Rayn as it was more commonly known, but probably would’ve been quite a lot back then.

Might be able to fetch some Rayn from the old currency from a collector, but then again, probably not. The money wasn’t in good condition. Since it was so close to the front of the safe, some of it had caught fire due to the heat. Thankfully, the flames suffocated themselves before they burned too much. I’d have to drop it by an appraiser to know for sure.

A small black book sat pressed against the safe’s back wall. I flicked through it, finding pages full of names, affiliations, and debts. Nothing too important since so much time had passed, but probably could’ve been useful a while back. I could look through it fully at some other point though.

There were a couple gold coins marked with an eagle’s head. Good ole gold, always worth something. Two ounces, so another five thousand Rayn just from the vault. Things were starting to look up. And who knows? They might have some value to a collector.

Maybe I should try to start hitting some of these older places and find abandoned loot? Might be worth it? Especially if I targeted stuff around the K-10 Crash when a lot of records were lost. There were all sorts of abandoned goods still left out there. Hell, checking old stashes was one of the most common jobs for more combative Mercs. I could think about this another time though.

I stashed the two ounces into an inner pocket of my backpack and looked under the worthless paper, finding another small black book and a keychain smothered in keys. I went ahead and grabbed it, stashed the keys in my bag, and looked through the book.

It was written in code, though a rather ancient one. It was probably something back in the day, but now? I checked the Net for a code cracker and got it translated almost instantly. It appeared to be a codebook full of destinations, times, and other details. Probably stash locations, if I had to guess. Might be helpful, though I highly doubt any of the stashes remained.

At the end of the book was a blueprint of the Speakeasy, one which I memorized instantly thanks to Eidetic Schematic. There were several hidden compartments all over the place, but I could check those out on my return trip. If there was loot, I didn’t want to load myself down too much. For a similar decision, I decided to put everything except the gold back into the vault for safe, heh, keeping and locked it.

I took the opportunity to armor up now that I was away from prying eyes. That, and it was now or never. Down in the depths would be too late, and I needed at least my helmet on for the rebreather. That, and it would be an easier descent with the weight of the armor more evenly distributed across my body than centered on my back.

Then I tied up my rappel line. It was rather annoying to get everything set up, my only real experience from watching others, but eventually, I managed. I pushed off from the edge, trusting my rope as I plunged into the abyss.