Surrounding Lev and Jameson in an unlikely outfit of striped t-shirts and army camo sat about twelve men. Each one had their faces painted with a probably toxic array of paint some with pink some with red but none of it camo. They were not trying to hide their colors and the one with the most varied array of paints was the man in red. Entirely red, his face was red, his eyebrows were red, his hair was a giant red spike on his head. Each of the men was carrying shotguns or at least what Lev assumed were shotguns.

“What the hell are people doing from the city. How did you guys get out” The man in red barked. Jameson and Lev looked at each other somewhat unsure of their response. How could they respond to this ensemble.

“Hello my name’s Jameson and I don’t really know how we got out of the city.” Jameson said his voice curving around the words almost as if he was trying to lie. Lev thought it was odd.

“You don’t know how you got out of the city? Well, you did get up and walk out of the city so how’d you do it you numbskull dragnuts literal piece of doggy doo doo.” The filth continued for a while but Lev refused to pay attention to numbskulls who only knew how to curse. The man seemed so serious but this whole group seemed so silly. Both Jameson and Lev didn’t know how to answer. They had just left the city, they didn’t have any magic, or any huge guns.

“Sir? Or ma’am or however you want to be called I don’t care. We just left the city, it was that easy, what do you want from us?” Lev said. The man in red looked at Lev like he had just gone up to his favorite grandma and beat the living crap out of her. However he stopped, his mind churned, Lev saw his eyebrows go from elated to deflated, to elated once more.

Before the man in red could speak however Jameson seemed to want to say something.

“So why’d you guys ambush us. I’d kinda like an explanation.” That made all the strange men start to smile.

“We are trapped is the reason. Trapped with this, this thing.” The man in red said.

“Thing?” Lev asked but the answer seemed to be the kind of thing nobody wanted to know about. After that however the men with the colors didn’t say anything more. Only gestured to Lev and Jameson to follow them towards something. Behind the truck was a whole array of more trucks arranged side by side with only about a doorway in width and height between them. The men all went into the little hole created by the cars while Jameson and Lev watched.

The hole was dark, darker than it should’ve been, the cars shadows shouldn’t have made it so dark. Lev got closer to it, the dark recesses and edges of it calling to him. Something was beyond this doorway, something Lev didn’t fully trust. The energy in his mind seemed to whir, it was singing in his mind. He could hear the noise in his ears but he knew it didn’t exist outside as Jameson didn’t seem to hear anything.

Whatever this doorway was it seemed to react with the pieces and fragments of energy in Lev’s head. However his energies didn’t tell him anything about the danger of it. The thought of the reasoning behind why a row of cars had appeared in such a manner didn’t even cross his mind. Jameson didn’t trust it, something in his mind, was telling him that this was dangerous, this could kill him and that something made his teeth chatter.

“Should we?” Jameson asked. The words dropping into the silent air like little first raindrops.

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“I think we should.” Lev took the first step, then the second, then the third, until his body didn’t seem to want to stop walking. He went through the door of cars. Jameson looked around, he didn’t realize how covered this whole place was with cars. Each wall was made out of some sort of car. Stacked up Mercedes filled up one of the walls while a row of newly minted Tesla’s filled out the other. But there were only two exits, the way he came and the doorway. And Jameson didn’t leave friends.

Lev walked through the darkness. Two cars parked together shouldn’t have created this, it was too dark, to unstable, everything here seemed wrong, and even the sides of the cars seemed to fade and were replaced by darkness. He kept on walking, he heard Jameson behind him but he didn’t want to go and check.

In the darkness, something else lurked. Something that always lurked near Lev and it’s eyes watched, hoping to see Lev move.

The cars started to let up for that’s what the hallway had become. Stacks and stacks of cars started to recede until all that was in front of Lev was two black Mercedes and a wall of light. He stopped in front of the wall of light, he had never seen anything like it before. Tendrils of light wisped and frothed on the surface. And it pulsed with a ready beat like the start of an engine. Lev put his hands to it and he disappeared into the abyss.

Jameson arrived at the same portal of light that Lev disappeared but there was nothing there. Everything had disappeared and not a trace of Lev was left. But Jameson didn’t know that he was gone. Jameson took a look at the great wall of light in front of him, took a single glance behind him and pressed his hand to the door and disappeared as well.

Lev appeared under no sky at all. The place, everything inside of it and everything around it was utterly black. Only a couple of shiny stars appeared in the sky above. However unlike the sky on Earth the sky here was strange. It curved and bent like nothing should. It was like the shell of an enormous turtle, jutted and marked. Fractals shown in the abyss above. Lev could only look for a second when Jameson tumbled right over him.

As the mass of flesh and bodies undid itself to be back to normal again they saw it. They were surrounded by cars on each and every side of their body. A giant arena of cars looked down on them and right in the center, an egg sat. The men with all the colors sat in front of the egg, their hands on the ground prostrating themselves to it’s greatness. A man, not one that Lev or Jameson had seen before got up to welcome them.

“What is this place? It’s so odd.” Lev asked

The man laughed and laughed until snot was coming out of his nose and Lev and Jameson’s ears only rang with the sound of laughter.

“Welcome to the Nursery.” The man said and he said nothing more. They always seemed to stop just when they were going to tell them more. Almost as if something was holding them by a chain and forcing to talk but not forcing them to speak. The man beckoned towards Lev and Jameson, Lev looked at Jameson. Jameson saw Lev’s eyes. Lev shrugged, if these people wanted to hurt them they would’ve done it on the bridge. Might as well follow. So they did and when they got to the egg the man gestured at an open space for both of them to sit, so they sat.

Four minutes they waited, four minutes until the man in all red started to speak.

“The newcomers have come, have all the preparations been made?”

Another one of the men in colors answered him, “The paint the tablet said to use is on our faces. The leader has been marked and two others have been gotten just like the tablet said.” He almost seemed afraid every time he said tablet. The tablet seemed to be religious? The man in red gave a groan. A loud shriek mixed with a mumble. And the egg seemed to react. First it started to shake, the gold leaves that seemed attached to it started to rumble. After a couple of seconds of shaking the egg itself, the whole entire thing, started to move side to side. Lev and Jameson stared at the thing their bodies had long stopped being able to move. So all they could do was look and see.

Finally the shaking reached a climax the egg was going from on it’s side to the other side over and over and over again. The egg slamming into the ground created a great rumbling. Lev felt off balance, Jameson felt like he was going to die. Then it stopped just as it was standing upright and there. Right there. It started to open.