Above and behind, ingrained metal vines decorated the walls. They encapsulated all but the blurry glass in front. The three girls may as well have hidden in a refrigerator, cold and insulated as they were, perhaps even immune to nuclear fallout?
Jess had enough faith in Valerie to forget fear, yet enough uncertainty to feel anxious. How would the human resistance greet her? The question hit her over the head, again and again.
Answers came when the darkness opened, like a flap, to signs of civilization. Below them, on the other side of the glass, lay a concrete field surrounded by the rock of an underground cavern. The artificial and natural features encompassed an industrial underworld, one both alien and earthly. Several aircraft stationed below caught Jessica's fascination, a series of parked jets the likes of which she only discovered in fiction and, more recently, footage. Within the crisscross alignment of aluminum flew the sparks of welding tools. But the biggest feature was a two-legged metal beast.
"Now, how did they get a Gundam in here?" Jessica said studiously.
"Is this a freaken hangar?" said Shannon.
Jess and Val said "Yes" in unison. A mild resonance vibrated beneath their feet, as the elevator touched down. Between them, only Valerie's face kept its color.
Jessica turned red as soon as the glass door slid open. It was proofed by another door that, presumably, led into the mysterious compound. Total silence fiddled with their anticipation. A million questions zoomed across her mind, superseded by excitement as the second set of doors parted.
"Hands up!"
"Freeze!"
"Show me your hands!"
A bombardment of orders came attached to the barrels and scopes of assault rifles leveled against their gaping faces. Seven men and women stood armed to the teeth, some of them with bags under their eyes, and all bulked up by armored vests. Shannon's hands were the first to shoot up in excited surrender, a move her friends quickly copied.
"I am unarmed!" she announced. "I am not resisting! I am an innocent human civilian who happens to be black!"
"What are you doing?" Jessica whispered.
Shannon whispered back, "In case you haven't noticed, all these people are white! They could be American. From the South—California maybe. Bitch, I don't know—I am not resisting!"
"Wildcat!" Valerie cried. She rocked upright, arms in the air. "Wildcat 217563. Reporting from under the Wizard's banner."
Her friend was speaking in code. Val knew these people, and they were supposed to know her. But it didn't take a keen eye to see paranoia between their gnashed teeth. Fortunately for everyone, a deep and tranquil voice intervened.
"At ease, grunts."
From behind the armed entourage stepped a stalwart physique in a green uniform. His chest bore the same symbol as the other uniforms: earth around a rising fist. Unlike them, he advanced evenly, and his commanding brown eyes looked down from a dark crew-cut.
Shannon glanced at the advancing leader and breathed a sigh of utter relief. "Oh, thank Jackson!" The guards lowered their weapons as their superior halted, his back to them. After sizing up the three new arrivals, his sharp eyes pinned Valerie.
"I have your designation, Wildcat, but who are your two guests? Report!"
"Two civilians who I trust with my life, sir!" Valerie exclaimed convincingly. "They helped me get here! Together, we've brought evidence that could mean the world."
"Were you followed, Wildcat?"
"I—we covered our tracks three times over," she answered, nerves creeping into her voice.
The commander turned an inquisitive eye to Shannon. "And you?"
"Shannon Wolf," she exclaimed, flinching upright.
"What brings you here, Shannon?"
"They do, sir! Valerie and Jessica are my friends. I watch their asses!"
The leader stepped close, sizing up Shannon who somehow seemed calmer than Val. "Who is Jessica?"
"The girl beside me, sir."
Oh, no. He's going to turn to me. Is he turning? Damn, he's looking at me now. The man's eyes lifted the hairs on her skin. She darted and, accidentally, regretfully, made eye contact as he stepped in her direction. The next second, he loomed over her with the gravitas of a job interviewer.
"Full name, civilian."
"Jessica Leibniz," she answered, standing up straight.
"Why are you here?"
"I'm here..." The journey so far had been odd, uneventful, and tiresome—terrible in many ways. Trapped in her own thoughts, she failed to hear the second question. That's when Shannon gently nudged her out of oblivion. So, she turned back to the commander and absorbed his severe gaze. "I'm here because—because I know what really happened to Pine Rim Hovels on July fourth, sir! I have a Pandora's box with a bubblegum crisis and hope you'll avoid shooting me long enough for me to tell you about it, with all due respect."
"Jessica knows more than I do," said Valerie. "What we have was worth coming down here and worth coming out of the field."
The man's eyes smoldered over them in what appeared to be a final evaluation. It ended with his fix on Jessica and a sly smirk above his stubble. "Call me Monarch," he told them. "As you were."
As Jessica, Valerie, and Shannon dropped their postures so too did the rebels at Monarch's rear. The sweaty tension in the air diffused, the situation defused, and the resistance leader gestured for the girls to follow him. The whole underground compound lay before them.
Sobriety underlined the hazel in Jessica's eyes, tinging between worry and excitement. She was invited to witness a rebellion. Despite how surreal, she followed the road to mental acceptance. Still, disturbed by a million questions, she hoped at least one would escape her breath before her head exploded. She followed the man known as Monarch.
The smell of gasoline prevailed as strongly as the sight of steel: old aircraft, modern cars, and more—Jessica had grown accustomed to neither. Like a tourist entourage, she and her friends gawked at an underworld of mechanical mystery and vintage miracles. The jets left of them seemed straight out of a 90s flick. Closer to their path lay a series of workout treadmills. Paramilitary personnel ran to the beats of an old boombox. Like straight out of a museum, she thought, though the artists were, as the lyrics went, "Straight outta Compton."
Shannon beat Jessica to a revolving question. "What the hell is this place?"
Monarch held his head high. "Back in 2016, when the aliens delivered their ultimatum, many of our kind thought ahead and dug underground. Obviously, the promise of an epoch transition was too tempting for the rest of humanity. Not to mention our government was afraid to test the extraterrestrials' floating stockpiles. Russia, on the other hand, decided to learn the hard way."
Through a row of computer terminals, Jessica locked her eyes on the rigs with hardware she barely recognized, though they were high-tech at a glance. "I remember sifting through archives of the year 2016," she said. "Kept finding memes of the same gorilla."
"But what is the real reason humanity surrendered, Monarch?" Valerie said. "The nail in the coffin? The straw that broke the camel's back? The last drop that made the cup run over?"
Monarch stopped in the middle of their improv tour, tossing back a look of shame. "According to several accounts—many, in fact—the Azareans threatened to take our wi-fi away. During the first day of the invasion, they did. Sounds silly these days..."
"Of course!" Jessica stammered. "All you need is an LED light calibrated for internet access. Just imagine..." Once again, she made eye contact with Monarch, except this time she lost her cynicism. "' It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity' - Albert Einstein."
"If that's true, then I wonder how that translates for the Azareans," Monarch said grimly.
"It makes them puppeteers with strings in the form of tech."
Monarch led on. "Then you understand why we're the minority, Jessica, and why we're losing."
Despite Monarch's statement, Jessica livened at the community. The cavern held a multitude of men and women tied together by defiance, and they'd been hiding under the Union's nose for years, literally under New Sumer. It would have taken gross effort and resources to build the infrastructure they call home. Only great cleverness, ingenuity, and creativity could have made Sub Terra a reality.
One-hundred years of resistance still in the shadows.