Young Writers Society

Well, that had taken a lot less arguing than Nubes had been expecting. He was surprised enough that it took him a couple seconds for him to pick up on Briar's question. "A little farther in," he said, gesturing to the locked door that Lasan was already moving to.

The lizard glanced back at Ryder. "Need me to heal your hand?" the lizard said, one scaly hand already on the lock as he reached out to Ryder with the other.

He nodded.

"I do," he quietly said, trying - and failing - to ignore the knot that was already beginning to grow in his stomach. "Thanks."

Taking Ryder's hand in his own, Lasan closed his eyes. It was a little challenging to heal while also trying to break a lock, but the lizard manged to keep his healing magic from flowing down the arm that held the door handle. Lasan could then see light grow out of the darkness, streaming from his scaly hand, swallowing the numerous cuts on Ryder's palm, and patching them up. Fortunately, given how the light disappeared a couple seconds later, none of those cuts had been serious.

"Ready?" Lasan said, opening his eyes as the lock snapped behind him. He didn't open the door just yet; he wanted to make sure Ryder was alright. A couple of the others had also been walking around broken glass, so it was worth asking if they needed any healing too.

He nodded again.

"I am," he said, in a voice that clearly didn't sound ready.

“I am as well,” Briar said simply.

She didn’t put her gun away or allow any inflection in her voice. Now seemed a good time to prepare for potential combat. If she was to be jumped by something out of one of the dark corners of this abandoned facility, she didn’t want them to be able to get a read on her by her voice before she knew they were there, and she didn’t want to take the time to take her gun out of something did happen.

With a nod from Nubes, Lasan pushed open the door.

This room was a lot larger than the ones before it. If Lasan had to guess, both of the hallways on either side of the fan room led to here; he could see another door at the opposite end of the same wall. The table at the center of the room suggested that was for a good reason; it was littered with paper, whether stuffed into folders, books open at certain pages, or drawings. As Lasan walked over to the table, he figured that time and age had probably gotten to at least a few of them - many of the pages had turned yellow, and the letters (beyond being a script Lasan couldn't read) had broken apart or blurred.

Well, maybe some of them could be salvaged, but he'd have to look at that later. At the moment, he was more focused on the black screens raised over the table, attached to the center of the table by a network of wires. He wondered if they could be turned on by some of the metal devices on the table.

Maybe some of those devices had something to do with the enormous doors that made up two of the walls. Unlike the polished metal of the walls, the doors had a much darker, grittier metal that Lasan assumed was also thicker. Enormous metal wheels separated him from whatever was on the inside - they were certainly bigger than anything he could possibly budge.

"It looks like this was their meeting place," Nubes said, looking around the room as he walked up next to Lasan. "But I don't see any bodies."

Sure enough, there wasn't a single corpse in the entire room - just spotless walls and a spotless floor. Odd.

He wandered over to the table and picked up one of the books, but it felt fragile in his hands - he was afraid to even try reading it. Everything seemed so old, yet also so clean. All the more to lend to the theory that Notch had brought them here, but there was one little flaw.

...If it was Notch, he was certainly failing.

He should have been turning them against each other by this point. That was what he had done with them. Maybe this was just a trick, and he was waiting for the moment that Ryder felt safe before enacting his plan.

Or maybe, just maybe, it wasn't him.

...Ryder desperately hoped he was right with that last guess.

Still holding the book in his hands, he wandered over to one of the TVs. Few places - even in the city - had them, but they had made a working one in the base for the kids. Tucking the book underneath his arm, he returned to the table and grabbed a remote.

He doubted it would work, but he still pressed it on.

Briar went to the table and looked over the scattered papers.

The whole room was spotless, exactly as it would be if the owners of this place had just stepped out for a moment, and they would be back presently. That had her imagining what it would look like if that were true. Skeletal figures in lab coats walking briskly down the halls, stepping into the room to read over their decayed notes, resuming whatever work was being done here.

Briar shook her head and moved on. Nothing there was legible enough to be worth her time right now. Maybe later, when she knew she had lots of time to spare and didn't need to keep alaret for potential enemies. Maybe then she could try to piece together whatever was being done here.

Her lips twitched into the ghost of a smile. What a glorious project.

She skimmed the rest of the room, not daring to touch anything just yet. It was all so fragile.

To Lasan's surprise, when Ryder pressed a button on one of the metal devices, one of the screens flashed to life. Thanks to the buzzing noise and all the gray stuff on the screen, it took Lasan a few seconds to recognize that it was apparently a window to the hallway they'd been to last.

"Wow," Lasan said, ignoring Nubes taking a few of the better-looking books and stuffing them down the lizard's coat, "I haven't seen anything like this before."

Ryder stared at the screen.

This room must have been used to monitor the other ones. Coming to the realization that they could probably see the other rooms without having to enter to them, he grabbed every remote he could find and began the tedious task of turning all of the screens on.

Briar grabbed the remotes closest to her and turned on a few of the screens, leaving the rest for Ryder as she examined the footage.

The security system was outdated. Very, very outdated, but functional enough. She looked at each room in turn as they became visible, then looked more closely, trying to find anything at all that was useful.

The quiet buzz turned into a loud drone as Ryder and Briar lit up screen after screen after screen. Lasan craned his head back, trying to take in as many of the screens that he could. All of them were partly fuzzy and gray; most of them were more so. A few things caught his attention. Firstly, he was reasonably sure he could see part of Lust and Gluttony in the bunker, relaxing. Secondly, some of the screens showed a couple of tall, large, well-lit rooms that Lasan had to guess were beyond the enormous doors. He caught flashes of blankets, a scattering of boxes, and a few bones. Hng.

Thirdly, there was one screen almost entirely covered by gray stuff. Lasan guessed that it had to be the hallway the group hadn't gone down - the screens covered all the other rooms. And he could hear a strange grinding noise over the buzzing.

He took in the array of screens.

Taking a step forward, he pointed at the one covered in static. Something must have happened to the camera's lens, but he could still hear whatever it was recording: a grinding noise he couldn't place.

"We need to go there," he said. It could have been a trap, but they didn't have any other choice - he just had to hope that Notch wasn't responsible, and stayed prepared in case it was another one of his tricks.

Briar looked at the screen.

“That may not be a good idea,” she said evenly, “It’s the only place we can’t anticipate what we may find.”

She offered an explanation this time, which made her feel like she was wasting time. They had no end goal here save find. Find anything, everything, there was. She hated the chaos of that.

"That might be true," Nubes said, stuffing a couple more books down Lasan's coat and ignoring the small middle claw of a lion, "But it also appears to be the one part of this bunker that we have not yet explored. That we can explore, I should say."

Lasan nodded. "And, for all we know, that's a normal thing?" he said. "Just like with the fan."