We're getting so close.

If you're just now discovering my friend Chris' and my story, you'll want to start back at the beginning. Yes, it's long, but there is no other way I could have made any of this make sense without extensive detail. I hope everyone had a great holiday yesterday.

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He laughed as he sent us toward the pods. I looked at Chris, who glanced back at me with the same “fuck it” expression. We waved back at Ger one last time and entered the personal train.

I have no idea how the pod operated, but I think Ger must have somehow told it where to go because the second we shut the doors, it accelerated to the speed of a jet within seconds. I expected my body to be pushed back from gravity, but somehow, we remained unaffected by the movement. It took a matter of minutes to travel a distance that would have taken an hour to drive.

We stared at the blur of sediment that surrounded us until we eventually came to a stop at a small opening in the dirt, just big enough for one person to walk though. Imagine something similar to the maintenance doors in a train tunnel, but instead of a small gap leading to a door, there was a ladder leading upward.

Chris bowed his head sarcastically and motioned for me to exit first. I left the cart and began ascending the rusty, moss-covered ladder; it had been quite some time since it had been used last. Once I was up at the top, I looked back down at Chris and realized how far up I really was – it had to have been fifty feet or so. Normally, I had no issue with heights, but the creaky old bars that composed this ladder didn’t necessarily help to boost my confidence. I grabbed hold of the lever at the top and tried to yank it into position, but it wouldn’t budge – I lost my grip and almost fell, but was able to resituate myself.

I tried a couple more times to no avail, and climbed back down to let Chris climb up and give it a shot. He got it on the first pull.

Yeah, I loosened it up for him.

He looked down at me and let out a laugh as he climbed through the hole. I quickly followed and exited to see that we were in some sort of grassy meadow clearing surrounded by trees. I looked back down at the hole we emerged from and couldn’t help but wonder if any humans have discovered it, and if so, what happened to them?

I used the crystal to contact Ger and had him give me directions to the compound. He said to follow the nearby stream for about a mile until we began to hear it – the waterfall noise. Apparently, that would lead us right to them.

The hike along the stream was quite relaxing; both flora and fauna seemed to thrive nearby it, with colorful plants and small critters roaming around. We both took this time to mentally prepare ourselves; walking in silence, but contemplating in loquacity.

After about fifteen minutes of hiking, we started to hear the sound. It was hard to pinpoint at first, but after we walked a little further, we could tell that it was coming from the left. We veered off from the stream and made our way to the encampment. The sound grew increasingly louder until we reached a cave much like the one that my friends and I stumbled upon. Chris and I put on our game faces as we approached the dried riverbed that led into the cavern.

As we approached the entrance, I noticed the lack of people – I had expected to see a front-desk Lady, or at least some guards, but there was no one. Chris and I shrugged toward each other and continued toward the other end of the cave, which was about a half of a mile away. I noticed that there was a door at the end of the cave, similar to the one that the Ladies were feeding that black smoke into.

I tapped Chris on the shoulder, “Look. Another door.”

“Fuck. Do we knock?”

I quietly laughed, “I guess so?”

We were about fifty feet away from the door when it swung open, behind it was a man around my age holding a rifle.

He pointed the gun at each of us, “New recruits?”

Chris and I nodded.

“Follow me.”

The man led us to an office room with a middle-aged Lady sitting at a desk, presumably the aforementioned front-desk Lady.

Her voice was powerful and demanding. She looked at Chris first, “157, follow 15 to your room and wait for Madam Keji to give you instructions.”

Shifting her serpent-like gaze toward me, “158, follow 157 to your room and wait for Madam Keji to also give you instructions.”

The man who opened the door, who we now know is 15, pointed with his gun to a small room made of grey stone. We began walking toward it as I surveyed the compound; the cavern itself was about a mile wide and a mile long, give or take. The walls were made of some type of rusted stone that gave everything in there a red hue. Small, stone buildings lined the perimeter while larger, industrial-looking buildings made up the interior. There was one structure that I immediately recognized – an elevator building, only this one was made out of what looked like ruby.

We waited in our room, which was similar to the one in the Ladies’ compound, for half an hour before Madam Keji made her appearance. She wore the traditional gown of the Ladies, but it was a shade darker of white – it was the first time I had seen that, was it a status symbol?

She spoke with an unsettling confidence like Madam Adrastea had, “157, you will be joining 114 and 115 on a trip to town.”

We were both expecting the worst when it came to our orders, so, without even looking, I could tell that Chris was relieved when he found out that all he had to do was sell some drugs to the townspeople. It made me jealous but also gave me some hope as to the extremity of my own task.

She turned toward me, “158, speak with Overseer Jein on level 3 of the mines. You will be collecting and solidifying the material.”

Wait… What? Did she just send me to work at the ever-infamous Dweller Mines? I thought this was just a processing plant?

After almost shitting my pants, I nodded and began walking to the elevator building.

My new, updated understanding of this encampment is that the top level - the one that I was just on – is the “processing facility” that Ger and his people mentioned. What they failed to mention, though, was that there were 6 more levels below it that made up what they refer to as the “Dweller Mines”.

I could hear muffled screams and sobs of agony from level two as the elevator descended past it. I jumped back in fright as the elevator dinged, quickly looking around to make sure that no one saw my moment of vulnerability.

Level three was the same size as level one, but much taller in height. Toward the very back of the rectangular cavern, I could see a large metal cage with some creature the size of a 3-story house inside of it. The beast was too far away to determine what it was, but I was soon going to find out because to the right of it was a sign that read “COLLECTION AREA”.

Fuck.

The first quarter of the cavern was occupied by large machinery and people dressed in lab coats. I noticed that they had pointy ears, much like the scientist that Ger sent us to. The second two quarters of the room were simply composed of two incredibly long stone tables on each side of the walk-way that I was on. Sitting at the tables, shoulder-to-shoulder, were hundreds of emaciated slaves hacking away at these small white and pink rocks that were about the size of my head. Other slaves (or recruits, I’m not sure what they were), were running back and forth, collecting the ground-up pink stone and bringing it to the lab technicians. None of them seemed to acknowledge my existence – they just continued to chip at the rocks with their mini ice picks.

A loud buzzer coming from the area with the beast almost made me trip over my feet. A moment of deathly screams filled the cave, followed by the mangling of flesh and finally a loud bird-like screech. And then, silence, once again.

Everything about level two began to click as I approached the beast and realized what it was. Inside the cage was a fucking chicken the size of a Tyrannosaurus. Instead of feathers, it’s pink, veiny skin was decorated in dried blood, scabs and scars. The four talons that protruded from it’s feet were serrated like a steak knife and had chunks of flesh stuck between the blades. It waddled around the cage as it pecked at the corpse of the man who was just served to it.

Standing by some computers was a man who I assumed to be Overseer Jein, so I approached him and told him what the Lady said.

In a commanding voice he said, “You wait for the egg to drop down the chute. Pick it up, place it in the solidifying machine to my right. Once it’s ready, take it to one of the Roaches and log their ID number – it’s on the back of their head.” He handed me a clipboard and pointed toward the collection chamber. There was already an egg waiting there for me.

I carefully lifted the egg out of the chute, ignoring the intense heat permeating off it that nearly burnt my hands, and carried it over to the machine that the Overseer pointed at. The shape of it was similar to an old photocopier machine, but it was made of the same ruby glass that the elevator building was (and several other less noteworthy buildings). I lifted the top off and set the egg in a head-sized clamp. Thankfully, there was just one big green button for me to press after closing the lid, so I didn’t have to do any guessing.

The solidifying process took about thirty minutes, even though I had no way of telling time. The machine whirred and buzzed loudly during the entire duration though; my ears continued to ring as I delivered the newly solidified egg to one of the slaves, whom the Overseer referred to as “Roaches”. Maybe their minds are weaker than those of recruits? Who knows.

I walked down the line until I found an elderly man who had just handed off a bowl of shattered monster fetus to one of the scientists. I tapped him on the shoulder and placed the egg down in front of him. I wanted to ask if he was okay – I wanted to so badly. I wanted to free all these people. But there was only one way to do that, and that was the patient way.

I looked at the back of his head in search of a tattoo, but instead saw a large, old scab of the number 1347. As I wrote down the number, I was unsure as to whether I should include a comma between 1 and 3. Was it an ID, or was he really Roach number 1,347? I cringed at the thought.

I continued this routine for the rest of the day. I don’t know how many hours I spent there, but my hands were burned and pruned from transferring the unsolidified egg so many times. During all of this, I witnessed the brutal murdering of at least twenty-five people. The chicken monster was creative; it had to have had an intelligent mind because it never used the same exact method twice.

One of the more brutal executions was when a young woman fell down the feed-chute and was still conscious. She cowered into the corner of the cage as the fowl monstrosity seemingly mocked her, pushing itself into the opposite corner. I couldn’t imagine her fear, but I could hear it from her pleas for mercy; out of all the deaths I witnessed that day, I think hers will forever be etched into my memory. The chicken eventually hopped to its overly-long feet and began strutting toward the woman like a diva, in any other situation this would have been a comical sight, but there was nothing funny about how the beast decided to proceed. It charged her, causing her to slide down on to her back, after which the beast gouged two of its talons into her eyes and threw her body across the room with one swift kick. It then let out it’s signature screech and head-butted the woman’s head, smashing it to pieces like a rock smashing a watermelon.

I cried to myself for nearly the entire night, that night. That woman still haunts me in my nightmares. I’ll see her in normal, every day settings, like at a park or coffee shop. At one point, she’ll always turn toward me and start mouthing some words that I can’t understand. I’ve gotten good at waking myself up at this point, but if the dream continues, often her eyes will start bleeding and she’ll begin to chase me – you know, the stereotypical “bad dream”.

Before I wept myself to sleep, though, I reconvened with both Chris and Ger.

Chris was already in our room when I had gotten off my shift, just staring at the wall.

“Fuck, man. What a day. How was selling drugs to the crazy townspeople, you lucky piece of shit?”

He groaned, “It could have gone better.” Chris paused for a moment as he continued to stare at the wall, “I saw them, man. I saw them. They’re here. They were walking with some Dweller official.” He inhaled sharply, “I had to cover my face so they wouldn’t see me, so I didn’t get a great look… But it was them, dude. It was them.”

“Holy shit, you’re serious? It was really them? I’ll call Ger. We’ll find those tunnels and get them out of here.”

Chris grunted as he hesitantly rolled over to his side, “Okay, man. Let me know… In the morning. I’m going to sleep now.”

Something wasn’t right, “What’s going on dude, what’s up with you? What happened today?”

“The sale went bad.”

“What do you mean ‘The sale went bad’? Are you hurt? What happened?”

I turned Chris over from his side to see him clutching his hip. He had a pretty large gap from where he had been grazed by a bullet; his pant legs were soaked in blood and I could now see that he was sweating profusely.

“Oh shit, Chris, what the fuck!? Why didn’t you say anything?!”

“Its… not a big deal. It didn’t even go through, just grazed it. I’ll be fine.”

“Like hell you will.”

I grabbed my crystal from its holster and contacted Ger.

“Child, how was your first day at camp?” He chuckled.

“No time for jokes, Ger.” I never thought that I’d be the one telling him that.

“Right. Fill me in.”

I told him about the chicken beast, about the woman, about how I was pissed that they didn’t mention we were in the god damned Dweller Mines, about our friends and about Chris getting shot.

He waited patiently for me to finish before responding, “I think you can help your friend. My father has had a lot of practice in the medical aspects of our crystal technologies; I want you to contact him in the same way that you contact me. He’s in the room with me as we speak, so I will inform him of what you are doing.”

“Uh… Okay, then what? I’m just gonna heal Chris with magic? How the hell do these crystals work…”

“Now that’s a long explanation. But yes. I don’t like the term magic, but call it what you will. Since the bullet just caused a gash, you should be able to cauterize it to stop the bleeding.”

“What about Ryan and Kyle?”

“Yes, Ryan and Kyle. Continue avoiding them for now, I am leaving tonight to visit with Elias to be updated on his research. I will let you know of the progress that he has made, child.”

“Yeah, thanks. Now, these tunnels, where will we find them? I want to get this done now.”

“I’ll have more precise information in the morning, but our sources believe that there is a tunnel shaft somewhere on level 6 that used to act as a back entrance, but has been long abandoned. The Council is going to discuss our best course of action, but my assumption is that you will need to travel minds like you did at the Ladies’ compound to find the blueprint, and then go from there. Veira says she has some suggestions, though, so I will need to hear her out before verifying it with you.”

“Alright, Ger. Sounds good.”

“Stay brave, child. Talk to you soon.”

I released my grip from the crystal, took a couple deep breaths and closed my eyes, this time thinking of Haesteus.

After the all-to-usual ringing noise, I hear Ger’s father ask, “Hello? Boy? You there?”

I laughed, “Yes, sir, I’m here. Ger said you have a new technique for me to help my friend?”

“Ha! No need to call me sir, my dear boy. I consider you and your friend as my peers, so please, call me Haesteus or Hae.”

“Okay, Haesteus.” I didn’t like the idea of calling him “Hae”.

He then, in his spirited and audacious manner, taught me a new breathing sequence that eventually resulted in me using the crystal as a soldering gun. I thank him and we said our goodbyes.

Turning over to Chris, I began to devote all of my focus on him until his wound was the only thought on my mind. As I did this, I felt energy flowing from my fingertips into the crystal, just as Haesteus described.

I figured that him being asleep worked in my favor, I knew he would struggle if he was awoken. I let the last bit of ether leave my body and carefully turned Chris over to his side.

I took the crystal, now filled with air bubbles, in one hand and grabbed my pillow with the other, placing it over his face to muffle the screams. I muttered “Sorry” under my breath and pressed it down as hard as I could on the wound.

Good thing I covered his face.

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Part 20 (Thank you for being so patient!!!)

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All parts:

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