The clatter of things hitting the metal floor and chairs rolling away mixed with the solid footsteps of two men, running to the stairs. They both heard the dome open, and didn’t expect anyone to be coming down the only official travel method for their group, so they were understandably nervous.
It could either have been royalty, shutting them down.
Or it could have been Amity.
Either way, the fake sand dune being uncovered was bad news.
Amity stepped back from the stairs, startled by the immediate ruckus at first, then by the employees armed with a simple weapon each. One held what looked like a sci-fi blaster, the other had a small rock in his hand. She subtly grabbed the red and white rocks from her pocket, before throwing her hands in the air, surrendering.
“Stay right there, miss!”
Amity obliged, gesturing for Kaiya to raise her hands too.
The two men bolted up the stairs, making it almost all the way to the top before they hit a wall made of wind, solid enough to block the two coming from the front but easy enough to disperse on the command of Amity. She kept them down with wind as she dragged them out of the stairwell, before diving back down into the mysterious underbelly of the operation.
“Amity, what was that?”
“Which part?”
“The bit where you lifted two grown men and carried them out of the way! That was insane!”
Amity chuckled. “Oh, yeah. I got that strength when I got my magic… Speaking of, do you have magic?”
“I mean, I can do that searching spell, but that’s about it. I don’t think I can do any fancy magic like you did, though.”
“Did Silva… Did Lady Chagrin inject you with anything at all?”
“Not as far as I know… She barely even acknowledged me, beyond the invitation to stay with her.”
Amity reached the bottom of the stairs, and pressed another hand scanner to open a door. It opened slowly, revealing a wide, empty hall. It was a blue-ish gray, and very sparsely filled, only containing sparse counts of people and significantly more heavy machinery, some disassembled and some working flawlessly. A series of tubes ran around the area, the majority of them all connecting at some point to a single central tube located in the middle of the room. It was clear, similar metal as to what made up the floor ran up it on four points, supporting it up to the first bend. Amity put up a temporary wind barrier to avoid anyone coming in and interrupting them, just as Kaiya saw something pretty notable.
They heard a running motor as a translucent red cylinder slid at a decent speed, probably 8 miles per hour, down the many horizontal tubes running along the ceiling. It made a gradual, although fast, deceleration, just before hitting the bend. The tube was big enough for the payload to easily make a soft landing at the bottom of it. The doors opened, revealing a person who stepped out, unfazed that they just traveled incredibly fast in a cramped environment.
He walked away, and Amity and Kaiya ran up to it. The vehicle sank into the base of the structure, and it seemed to vanish. The floor looked solid, but there was notably a small button near the edge. Amity pressed it, and another cylinder began rising, but didn’t make it all the way out before stopping. An alert beeped on the a small screen on the door, reading “Please step inside.”
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Kaiya was the first to do so, the cylinder raising around her and closing off just above her head. A red light displayed near her eyes, gesturing her to tap her nose to where she wanted to go. The dot for “midwest holding cells” was beeping, so she tapped it. Immediately, she felt the thing she was riding in begin to lift itself, going up through the same path as the prior rider did. Amity saw what Kaiya was doing and did the same, following her friend relatively closely.
They rode for maybe a minute before they saw something besides the insides of rock, that being a smaller area with a central checkpoint. They rode past it, but they had both noticed the light on the map beeping faster as they made it closer to their destination. Another red cylinder flew past them, running in a parallel tube in the opposite direction, but they shrugged it off until they saw more. Two more, this time green ones. They were shorter, around the size of the ones Amity and Kaiya were in, but they didn’t pay them any real mind either.
The beeping slowed down, as did they, as the final turn approached. They were set down in a similar tube as they entered through, but they noticed a stark difference. The room they were set in was bustling, and blindingly white. They ducked behind an empty desk and began to think.
“Whoa, this place is packed! How are we going to get through without getting noticed?” Amity whispered.Kaiya was silent, wrapping her arms around her legs and putting her head down on her knees. She began to whisper the short phrases as she had done before, causing the glow to emanate, this time from behind them. Amity saw it through the wooden desk, but she also saw something worrying. There was the glow of two humanoid figures, but there was also a glow from atop the desk, and another immediately next to the figures.
She stood up, looking for the glow, and found it. A small vial of blood, sat on a stand with a paper under it, reading “Subject FIFTEEN-X.” She immediately went back under the desk, and reported the information, to which Kaiya responded with a gentle sigh.
“They are glowing, so they’re probably still okay. We still need to move quickly, though.”
They both looked on the desk for anything potentially useful, which they quickly found in a sheet of paper with a map printed on it. It wasn’t entirely there, a few errors blotched out some of the most crucial areas, but they carefully inspected it nonetheless, drawing up a plan.
“Right there, it says FIFTEEN-X. That’s probably where they’re being held.”
Kaiya picked up the paper, finding a short path that went into seemingly niche areas.
“I have an idea. We weave through the darkroom. People don’t usually stay in there for long, so its probably empty.”
Amity approved.
“Then, we can probably run on the storage areas behind the labs here. Again, not likely for people to be there.”
Amity then asked; “Then, we run in, pick up Raleigh, Himiko, and Katie, and then just do that in reverse?”
“Pretty much. Let’s go, now.”
They stepped out from under the desk, darting under the eyes of anyone looking. The darkroom was only covered by a curtain, so they could get in easily and quietly.
As you would expect, the darkroom was pretty dark, as the red light you associate with them is only on when someone steps in and turns it on. They fumbled around, trying their hardest not to disturb anything when Kaiya found the curtain that covered the exit.
Amity took a few seconds to reach her, but they quickly dove into their second area, the lab. The first lab, blindingly white in comparison, had a small door near the corner that led to the narrow, although long, supply rooms. The two stepped in, but the moment they closed the door they were immediately shocked by the clinking of glass on glass, someone picking up test tubes. The noise stopped, and they heard footsteps getting closer as they stood perfectly still. Eventually, some softer noises emanated from a shelf just a row away from them, which seemed to be sample bottles.
They decided to walk as if they were another scientist, and this was clearly the best move, because someone pulled open the doors to it just as they squeezed into an aisle. It took a second to close, but eventually they decided that the person had gone back inside and they kept going. The exit door opened not to the third lab, but rather to a small white chamber. A piece of glass mounted on a wall, just above a small panel with several buttons.
Amity ran up to it, looking into the adjacent room, to see…
Himiko. Surrounded by blood, dark red and devastating. On the ground next to her, an old paring knife.