We must return.
Staying here has never been a permanent option, America is great, and it is ours by right.
We will solve any issues in our way.
All branches of our military will focus on this mandate. In ten years, we will make our return and claim what belongs to us.
-President Rosewell, Executive Order 344 (290, 3rd Era)
Erec decapitated the last lizard; his breath came out in desperate puffs. Behind him was a trail of scaley corpses which lined the last street toward the vault. Ahead, he could see the bunker-like building. The exterior of it was uninspired and boxed in, a total of three stories, and made of brick and concrete. It is the type of place that would drive a person mad if they had to spend all day every day in its drab interior. Even with such a soul-sucking architecture, or perhaps because of it, it helps up to the apocalypse with sheer resilience, ignoring the wild nature climbing up its sides and trying to force its way within.
For all of that, there was no question that this building was it. The logo of Vortex Industries was visible on the outside, faded but still perceptible past the vines with its deep purple paint.
“That looks an awful lot like your heraldry,” Olivia remarked as she and Garin trailed next to him. Boldwick and Rochester were further behind, ensuring the rest of the Knights and the Pendragons held together after the fight.
“I found the logo in Worth; it looked cool, so I took it. I didn’t want to use Audentia’s crest as the second son since it wouldn’t belong to me. That’s Bedwyr’s, not mine.” Erec lied easily. He’d had that excuse lined up for months in case anyone spotted the similarity. “I didn’t design the heraldry for my house either, but when they did, they must have taken the logo off my Armor.”
[Ha. I was wondering when someone would connect the dots, eh Buckeroo? Little do they know you’re a corporate spy in their Kingdom.]
Sure. Not that he could argue with VAL over that delusion. Or joke? He wouldn’t have thought a piece of metal capable of jokes, but VAL wasn’t always serious. Part of him wondered if that was always VAL or if the thing had snapped during its imprisonment beneath the earth for all those years. He didn’t like to think that a broken piece of tech had latched itself to him, so he chose to believe it’d always been that way.
“Weird coincidence,” Olivia said.
“Sure is,” Erec replied.
“I have to go help, sorry” Olivia apologized before turning and running back to the Pendragons.
“Anyway… We’re here at last, huh?” Garin puffed; he had a dent in his sternum. “And soon we’ll be going in.” Erec watched Olivia go. The injured Pendragons were being gathered up, and by the looks of it, someone had their head cracked by a lizard weapon. It would take a few minutes for them to be ready to move.
That logo on the building drew Erec in. Ancient, and bits of purple paint were missing from the brickwork. Yet it called to him, swirling and pulling him toward it. Memories of climbing down that tunnel before he was an initiate surfaced, that logo on the steel door that locked him out from VAL. Vortex Industries, and by extension, this place, was intrinsically tied to him now. In a way, this was a homecoming to a home that was never his, that only was his thanks to a long string of coincidences and information that brought them here.
The uncanny feeling of fate tugged at the back of his mind like a puppet on a string. He remembered watching shows like that as a kid, in the depths of the caverns. He’d always been fascinated with how those old men got the little wooden dolls to move with the slightest twitch of their fingers.
Before he knew it, he was already walking toward the building.
Garin didn’t follow, “Hey Liv, need some help?” he called out before opting to head back to Olivia with the quick field medicine, but that line of work wasn’t for Erec. And he couldn’t wait.
The pull of the Vortex called him. It was as if a chain was hanging out of his chest, connected to the depths of that building. Based on what Rochester told them, there wouldn’t be any harm in an early look; it wasn’t as if he could get past the sealed vault.
Enide popped into being on his left, her hands behind her head as she took long steps to keep up with his stride. She didn’t say a word. Didn’t need to. She felt the call of the Vortex as keenly as he did, and it dragged the two of them to the building. Below, the secrets that dragged his mother away would be within grasp, and for her, the lost family she couldn’t forget. Only when they reached the shattered glass doorway to the building did someone finally call out to them.
“Be alert and yell if there’s trouble,” Boldwick ordered.
Easy. The Master Knight didn’t try to hold them back since he got it. There wouldn’t be danger until they got into the vault beneath.
With that, Erec and Enide entered the monument to the past. Inside the lobby, a good portion of the lights were busted apart—fluorescent tubes from the remaining ones. Most were piles of glass on the floor, and the prim-and-proper squares decorating the ceiling were full of holes. Each little missing tile in that carefully crafted facade revealed wires and pipes above. In the corner of the room, a massive plastic palm tree stood proudly with defiance towards the chaos of its lobby, happy in its non-growing glory in the ruins of an old-world tech behemoth’s corpse.
[Ah. There it is, trying to patch in.] VAL announced with a thrum of excitement. [Wait, what? Lack of authorization: By Dan, I am authorized. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll sort this out. Stupid redundant security measures, we’re valid high-level employees, yield, damn it. Well. I am, and you’re my research assistant, so that’s good enough.]
The remaining lights in the lobby flickered to life. Enide jolted, pulling a pistol from the holster at her side and spinning in place.
[Don’t mind that. Just some external controls.]
“Ghosts. I hate it here,” Enide muttered.
“The old-world is filled with ghosts,” Erec replied as he walked further into the lobby. In the back was a massive elevator, and next to that, a staircase whose steel door was ripped off the hinges and discarded near the open shaft. To the other side of the lobby was a hallway, which someone barricaded with old dilapidated filing cabinets and loose rubble. Digging out a path through it wouldn't take much, but it likely lead to offices. Not what they were looking for.
“The ghosts aren’t from the old-world. It’s the people left here. They’re down the stairs, the bottom floor has a big tunnel that leads to the vault. When we arrived way back then, that tunnel was wide open. Now, not so much.”
With that direction, they went right for the stairs. Erec’s steps were heavy as they passed through to the staircase. These, unlike the lobby, were far more utilitarian. Just plain bare brick and the warning sign about authorized personnel and fire safety procedures as they went downward. We’re the most authorized personnel this place has seen for over three hundred years. Erec snorted and ignored the warnings about trespassing and legal litigation.
The outside of this place was much bigger than the research facility he’d found VAL in. More official. Which made him wonder if that meant the stuff tucked away down here was more cutting edge or not. On one hand, it was plain they’d invested a lot of resources into this facility.
Enide skipped steps down as she followed him. One story, two story, three. The signage got heavier, a mix of friendly reminders to wear proper personal protective equipment and hazard symbols with explosions. A couple stated required clearance as they hit the third floor down—and a floor past had a poster that stood out. Mostly because a strip of light lit up the surface; it was an odd poster, engraved metal. On it was a chipped print of a cat barely holding onto a branch. Blocky text at the bottom of the plate read, “HANG IN THERE.”
Real motivational. He looked past the poster to the tunnel. A dotted yellow line ran down the middle, and the tunnel was wide. Enough space to fit two cars on either side. A small branch near the staircase had the entry to the oversized elevator. Transport for large equipment.
The tunnel itself went for a good fourth of a mile and ended in a massive steel shutter whose face was ripped apart and littered with stray bullet holes.
“Five layers to it, each one thicker than the last. Trust me. Hard to forget, saw it close from inside. Happened right when we were about to leave,” Enide explained. “When I got out, told Rochester. He cracked layer one, but the second is made of something they barely scratched after three days. And two of the other layers are made of the same stuff—the inside is steel, just like the one out here.”
Would that silver axe do it? Do we even need the Arch-Magi? Probably not. Maybe. Part of him wanted to try, but it would be very stupid. He reined in it and looked at Enide. Her face was all screwed up, her hands shaking.
“That would have been awful, I can’t even imagine how terrifying it was.”
“Still got nightmares. Once a month or so. That feeling of being knit up and tucked in the dark, afraid it might never go away. And when it did, when those lights finally clicked on, that voice. ‘Welcome test subjects; proceed to the testing area in an organized fashion,’” she shuddered. “Can’t put enough distance between me and here to get it out of my head, ya know? Helpless. I hate this place. More than anywhere else. Wish it could crumble into dust and ruin like the rest of the old world, that I could tear it apart with my hands and bury its corpse.”
[Remind her that vandalism of Vortex Industry property is unlawful and uncivilized.]
“We’ll get in there, one way or another,” Erec said.
She kept quiet, but he saw the barest trace of a smile.
They made it to the barrier, and Erec ran a hand over the jagged remains of the first layer. It was steel. In its own right, this shutter would have taken a lot of force to get through. How long had the Pendragons worked away at it, desperate to get their people free? Behind it was pitch black, so Erec flicked his headlamp on. Still black, even with a light shone on it from half a foot away. It was like staring into a void; the metal, if it was metal, seemed to eat the light, aside from the barest bits of scratches that caught and reflected.
[Graphene, layered between carbon nanotubes. We’d just discovered the methodology to develop it using our nanites in useful quantities in the last five years of regular operation. It is very, very, very costly even to produce in-house. Also very promising, the fact that the board invested that much into this construction means there were some highly sensitive projects down here. I bet this could withstand a nuclear explosion.]
Graphene, carbon nanotubes, and nuclear explosions… Yeah, all of those words were chock-full of meaning that Erec couldn’t grasp. He pressed his palm against the sheet with as much power as he might muster. It didn’t flex at all. His eyes darted to the floor. Flush against it. Next, he checked the sides—and sure enough, the Pendragons had the same thought; they’d chipped into the concrete on either side and about half a foot deep, they ran into the same void-black material—more graphene.
[After reevaluating, I’ve concluded that this place contains important research far beyond predicted. And that conclusion irritates me to no end. By the name of Dan, why was this site never disclosed to me? And why didn’t my research facility contain this level of security? He always said I was his favorite piece of technology! Was that a lie?]
Erec tried to tune out the annoying buzz of VAL.
This place was locked tight, and with Vortex Industries, Erec suspected that something very against old-world regulation was going on beyond these shutters. And with how impressed VAL was, would a single Arch-Magi be enough to get through something like this? Erec yanked his axe off his back, the grip a reassurance. With it, he could deal with anything.
“They’ll be down soon, then we go in. And deal with those ghosts.” Erec said
“Sure, that’s why we came, isn’t it?” Enide replied too quickly.
[Oh. Authorization granted.]