Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 13: Ash, Part 2

"Enjoy your stay!" the nasally voiced speaker told us as the elevator stopped at the bottom. "Try the chowder."

"Don't think I will," I said as I got off the elevator and met with Corbin, Thimble, and Geraldine.

We waited for the rest of the men to come down, and, finally, Jason. We regrouped in a rather large, open, vacant space, one much like a marbled lot. It must have been a reception area for the 'new' people that gathered here; welcome desks were littered about, long abandoned by time and greeter.

There were hints of a panicked rush that happened here long ago. The papers were probably long decayed, if they used such, but the scrolling lights that made up message boards would flicker every so often, saying WELCOME in capital letters before fading out and a flash of a bunch of typographical gibberish that computers often did. Did the Ancients have computers? It sure looked like it.

"So," Lilly started, "this is the design of the famous Ancients?"

"Yeah, guess I was wrong," I told her. "Or someone put all this stuff here recently. Maybe the Mainland had a hand in it."

"Confusing shit," Corbin told us. "Let's worry about this after we stop the madman from destroying the world."

"Right you are. Onward."

Our goal was the main compound on the other side of the town. We went out from the lot and past the elevators to the wide-open streets of the 'city.' I use quotations as it wasn't exactly a large city, more like a town, but it was impressive enough being built entirely underground. The cavern, itself, was reinforced with metal and pillars, bolts and other mechanical contraptions that kept it from falling in with the weight of the surrounding ocean. It was impressive, and so were the standards of the Ancients of that day and age, if it was indeed their facility.

I could tell this by the fact that the lights of the two-lane roads were very much like lamp posts now a day, a little different in design yet similar. There seemed to be a mix of electricity of some sort—as seen by boxes and lines and the humming noise of a power station along the road—and magic. I was able to detect it every-so-often. I assume that they used a mix of both, yet with age came errors and problems. The lights often flickered, and the detected magic was noticeably weak, leading to temporary brown outs.

I stopped at an intersection to look at the designs of the buildings. They were interesting, just like the elevators and the power lines. A lot of them seemed like stores for this place; warehouses for food, equipment, and other things. They all looked like prefabs, like stuff you'd find out on a construction site or temporary housing. The writing on the walls, the old posters with propaganda talking of a better future, bled with a mix of old script that looked like characters, and New Britannia, which is what we spoke.

All the buildings lined the streets, much like any town or village or city, up to a central building we assumed to be the main part of this facility, some sort of lab or testing ground or launchpad for the space shuttles off in the distance. What once was a lively place was now barren, only a bright sheen of metal and plastics lingering about, always clean yet devoid of life.

"Hey, Mathias," Corbin said, stirring me from my observations.

"Yes, Corbin?"

"Think we've been discovered."

"What makes you think tha—"

I looked over at him as he pointed down the street to our right. There were people down the street, between some of the warehouses, and they were wandering right on up to me and mine. We, of course, drew our weapons and waited for them. They ended up standing a few yards away, under one of the light posts.