I spent the whole entire week studying up on Veridian's underground. And hoooooo, boy, the more I learned, the worse and worse it seemed to get.
So, quick rundown on the Veridian underground:
1. It's about five hundred years old and a hundred and fifty years older than the city itself. It's a network of nuclear bunkers that was developed before, during, and after the Titanomachy and later grew out onto the surface and into a full-blown city.
2. They got flooded a little over seventy years ago by a certain Hurricane Walter and are in extreme disrepair, which is a problem because they're pretty much the foundation of the entire city above
3. An estimated 70% of murders occur down there. It's an estimate because nobody knows how many murder-ees were actually killed in Veridian proper or in the Veridian underground. Dead bodies are surprisingly good at getting from point A to B.
Yup.
Great vacation spot, with direct transportation straight to heaven. Except it's a one-way ticket.
I think someone punched my dad a one-way ticket to heaven.
"And probably the same someone had the crass to put a goddamn government genetic engineering facility down there!!" I suddenly exclaimed like an idiot in the middle of my research. Stinger freaked out and ended up tumbling off the lamp he was sitting on. "Don't do that! That was loud!" he mumbled.
"No one's here, Stinger. No one would've heard me shouting."
"But what if they did!" Stinger spread his wings out wide and shrugged. It became clear to me that he was joking. "And they'd throw you in jail!"
"I'm sure, I'm sure."
The doorbell suddenly rang from the other side of the house. I thought it was Mom at first, getting back from whatever she was doing with Persey, but she would've had the keys, I realized. "One sec. Stinger, stay hidden." I pointed at my pillow, Stinger's newest hiding spot. It seemed to work pretty well. He gave me a little salute with his wing and darted to the pillow, slamming his face into the scratchy pillowcase. "Oof!!"
I walked out and opened the front door. And whaddya know, I was met by my Aunt Kia. In the same exact clothes and stuff from the first time I saw her moving in, except add a couple thousand more bags.
"Hi, Athena!!" she exclaimed. "Is your mom here?"
"Uh—...no. Just me. She took Persephone out for a dentist's appointment." That was a lie. I had no goddamn idea where either of them were. "What are you doing? Couldn't you have just called?" I asked.
"Well, where's the fun in that?" Aunt Kia helped herself into the room and obliviously plopped half of her couple thousand bags down right on my sneakers. "Did you just go to the mall or something?" I exclaimed, quickly moving the bags off of the shoes. "What the hell is all of this?"
"Gifts!"
Oh. Oh, great. Gifts. Yeah, she did just come back from the mall. I hate Aunt Kia's gifts, they're always trashy appliances that break within the first week. Or never worked in the first place. Or they're stuffed animals that we end up donating to the local orphanage. "I thought you would like these!" she exclaimed.
"Aunt Kia, I'm not eight anymore. I'm fourteen. I don't play with dolls." I grunted.
"Well, then, what do you do?" Aunt Kia asked. "I mean, I'll get you that stuff if you want!"
"No! I don't want more stuff!" I exclaimed. "You see how tiny this apartment is? We can't fit another ten thousand XXL plushies in here even if I wanted them like we did in Vermont."
"Well, of course not. That's why I got you small ones!" Aunt Kia reached into one of her bags and pulled out some cartoon character from a show neither Persephone or I watched. I slapped my hand against my forehead, and cried, "That's not the point!!"
"Well, I can get you something that's fun, then. What do you want?"
I was about to tell her that I wanted nothing and for her to get out, but then I remembered that I'd been thinking a lot about the underground recently. Aunt Kia had, pretty obviously, been a ridiculously boisterous kid in her youth; if she hadn't been to the underground to screw around, I'd be absolutely shocked.
"I want go out and do fun things. I don't settle for just material goods." I replied. And I internally cringed; that was the most laughably 'teenager angst' thing I had ever said in my life. 'Oh, I don't settle for the simple things!' It sounded like a dating app profile that some desperate rich girl made up. "How many stuffed animals did you have growing up?"
Aunt Kia frowned, and shrugged. "Eh, not so many."
"You were still happy, yeah?"
"Mm. You have a point." Aunt Kia set her bags down and walked over to the couch nearby. "Alright, fine. What do you want, then?"
"Exactly. What did you do growing up that was fun? What places in Veridian did you go?"
Aunt Kia shrugged. "Uh, we went to the boardwalk, the arcade...they're both kind of boring."
Even she admits that this city is lame!! "You ever go to the underground?" I asked. "At all?"
"Oooh! The underground!!" Aunt Kia suddenly exclaimed. "Now that you mention it, I went there all the time!"
I let out a breath. Of course she did.
"I'm not suggesting that you go down there, but in some parts, it's perfectly fine. There's hardly anyone there in some parts at night." Aunt Kia replied.
But those parts may or may not be the same parts where Basilisk is located... "Which parts are those?" I asked.
"Eh, mostly surface level. The deeper you go in there, the worse it gets." Aunt Kia said. "The farthest down I've gone is the third level."
My eyes widened. That's pretty far down, considering that the underground is six stories deep. "What was on the third floor that made you not go farther down?"
"Oh, well, someone pulled a knife on me and my friends, and we ran back up."
Aunt Kia said those words so casually you'd think this is something she does for a living. "So people just casually threaten you?" I asked. "Just...you know, just pulls out a knife and says 'fuck off?'"
"With more vulgar language than 'fuck off,' yeah."
How much more vulgar can you get? I didn't want to know. I didn't ask.
"I mean, I think it's fine if you go down there. You're...I think you're sixteen now? You can handle yourself. But don't for the sake of your mother. She'd freak out."
I'm fourteen, ya dingus! It was all I could do to hold my laughter in. "Sure, I guess." I snickered. "Thanks for telling me."
"Anytime!"
Why was my aunt so freaking naive?
Tonight was showtime.
Stinger and I talked it out for about an hour or so. Stinger had originally escaped Basilisk through the underground, and he spent the week afterwards trying to figure out how to get out. He knew the area around Project: Basilisk okay, and we spent a while on a map figuring out where exactly it was. He had escaped on the final floor, the sixth floor, and thankfully the sixth floor was so busted out by Hurricane Walter that hardly anyone, even the criminals, went down there. There's nothing down there anymore, and is in such extreme disrepair that it's frankly unsafe.
He had escaped through an air duct that he claimed was wide enough for me to fit into. I wasn't sure how much I believed him at first, but further research revealed that the underground's air ducts are 3x2 feet in length and height. I could crawl around in them just fine. We could sneak into Project: Basilisk, and, uhh...I really don't know what happened after that. I'd figure it out. An easier way was probably through the abandoned buildings, but the two of us figured that it wasn't safe. The pale man was guarding them, or at least they were under surveillance, particularly after I last showed up. We wanted to get in and out undetected.
I prepared a backpack of essentials for the trip. I downloaded my map onto a holographic display chip I had lying around, and shoved it in my pocket. One of my uncles had given me a hunting knife last Christmas (don't ask me the frick why, the Concords are an eccentric species), so I packed that too. I got water, some Snickers, fifty bucks in order to bribe myself out of danger, a flashlight, and a ridiculously loud whistle that can apparently be heard up to a mile away.
It's a tad overkill, but that's kind of the point.
"And Stinger? You are going absolutely nowhere." I demanded. "You are staying inside of my hoodie at all times, until we are absolutely certain that we are alone. Do you understand?"
Stinger's scales turned pale, and he nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I understand."
"You get your chance to come out later. Let's get in a nap before we go, okay? We'll wake up at midnight, and we'll sneak out."
I left the door wide open so I wouldn't have to open it and make noise getting out. I didn't change into pajamas, either. I put on very fuzzy socks so that I wouldn't make any noise stomping around the apartment later, and set a timer on my tablet to wake me up at midnight.
"Good night, Stinger."
"G'nighty..."