1:2:6 Deeper (Part 1)

Shelves. The room was entirely filled with shelves. That was to be expected, after all it was a store room but what they hadn’t expected was the quality of the shelves and the paint that adorned them. They were solid and professionally designed; metal shelves, enamelled in a familiar grey paint. Posters featuring some of Earth’s greatest sporting heroes and its most iconic films hung on the walls. It didn’t feel like they were on Illia anymore. The shelves were littered with various human goods; there were rows and rows of tinned foods, pre-recorded music, bandage packs and short range communication devices. The amulet had stopped tugging at them for the time being allowing them to explore the room without the nagging pressure it had been applying. Lore grabbed one of the communicators to examine.
“That’s odd.” They examined another and then another, each time returned the same result. “They’re all tuned to the same frequency.” The communicators were old, possibly the original devices brought with the first colonists before being replaced by the second and final group’s slightly more up to date equipment, and still made use of manual elements. Each communicator was set to CC01.
“That’s a military frequency.” Char decided to more closely scrutinise the shelves ahead of her. “Who eats beef and beans?”
“Beef and beans?”
“Yeah. These tins all contain beef and beans.” Char removed one from the shelf and tossed it to Lore.
Unable to catch the flying cylinder of metal, Lore sidestepped it allowing it to fall to the floor. The sound of the impact was significantly greater than either of them had been expecting. Lore bent down and retrieved the banged up tin. They weren’t a weighing scale but even they could tell that the contents of the tin were greater in mass than what was stated on the label. To their surprise, once opened, they were greeted with a tomato based sauce with beans and beef floating in it. They gave the tin a slight jostle before beginning to look for somewhere safe for them to dispose of its contents. There was a subdued banging sound that accompanied each shake.
“Is there anywhere I can tip this?” Lore gestured with the tin.
Char was quiet for a moment as she scanned her surroundings. “Here.” She called over. “I’ve got a bin here.”
Lore made their way across the room and over to Char. As they passed the midpoint of the room, a cool chill blew over their neck. They continued nonetheless and proceeded to gently strain the beans and beef into the bin, leaving the heavier objects in the tin alone. They were around the same size as their ID card but nearly as thick as their thumb and covered in a thin residue of bean juice.
“What is it?” Char held out her hand wrapped in bandages. Lore gently tipped one of the devices out. Char used the excess bandage to clean off the sauce before examining the metal rectangle. She passed the mostly clean object to Lore.
“It looks like it separates.” Lore ran their fingernail down the centre groove and began to part the two halves. As they did, the objects true purpose became quickly apparent. As it folded out, a hollow semi-circle of metal appeared, spanning the top to the bottom and a small trigger filled some of the gap. Once at full extension, it made a satisfying click before it began trilling and whirring. Lore brought it closer to their face to see if they could gleam any more information from it.
“Compact Laser Regenerator: Five Thousand Watt?” They were about to add to that discovery but remembered the context. “I guess that makes sense.”
“What makes sense?”
“All of the tech in this room is nearly a century out of date. The communicators are the ones that would have been used by the original colonists when they first arrived, making them seventy years old by the time they reached Illia. These pistols would have been the same. Top of the line when they left Earth, not even worth the metal they’re made of by the time they got here. Well, at least not on Earth.”
“So they’re useless?” Char was a lot less cautious as she tried to remove the second CLR.
“Not at all. Going off of the wattage on the side, these pistols would more than likely be able to penetrate bare skin and even some light armour but would be more than devastating here in The Conglomeration. You don’t need armour piercing when most people don’t wear armour.” Lore checked the bin. The bag was almost empty save the contents of the tin in their hand. On the table beside it, a ream of replacement bags. Lore removed the bin bag and stuffed it back into the tin before replacing the bin liner.
“What are you doing?” Char absentmindedly took the bean tin from Lore as they continued to fiddle with the bin.
“They can’t know we were here. We clean up our mess, reshuffle the bean tins to make it look like there isn’t one missing and if we can, we edit the inventory.”
“I think you’re thinking too much.” Char returned the tin. “I agree we should do all of that but we don’t need to botch the inventory. Stuff goes missing all of the time. It’s two pistols.” She shrugged. “Don’t you think it strange that there are so many of these pistols here?” Char gestured at the shelves. The tins took up nearly a quarter of the room.
“Not if the military gifted them to Alex. They would be surplus anyway. Assuming there was a pistol for every one of the original settlers, which there was, that’s three hundred and twenty pistols. Three hundred and twenty pistols that were very quickly replaced by the six hundred and forty pistols the next ship brought.”
“And you know this, how?” Char was finding this strangely attractive.
“I didn’t go to bed on the way here.” Lore shrugged. “I had time to go over Destiny’s Illian archives.” They paused. “But the question is, why would the amulet drag us in here in the first place. It can’t have been just to show us the guns.”
Lore paced around the room, tin in hand, waiting for some form of intervention to strike. It soon did. They reached the centre of the room and again, felt a slight breeze on the back of their neck. They took a step back before returning to the midpoint. Again, another cool breeze. They approached the back wall and began their search for the source of the chill. The walls were all formed from compacted dirt and stone with a thin layer of painted plaster. There was a series of small cracks that were nearly entirely veiled by a floor to ceiling poster advertising some kind of trendy shoe. Gently, Lore peeled away one side of the advert revealing the reason for the damage; it was much thinner than they had hoped it would be. The reason for the amulet’s compulsion became clearer. Only just taller than Lore and similarly as wide, a crack had been formed. Behind it, a larger yet still equally claustrophobic tunnel.
“There’s no way I’m fitting through there.” Char measured up the opening with her hands and compared them to her height. “Sorry.”
“It’s alright, I’ll scout ahead and then you can Breach in.” Lore smirked. “Not getting out of it that easy.”

Moist. The walls were clammy or perhaps it was just their hands. They sidled through the entrance and into the tunnel, allowing them to re-orient themselves from the awkward crab walk to something slightly more natural. The roof of the tunnel still hadn’t grown but a faint orange glow in the distance made them optimistic for the future. They held that hope close to them as the uneven walls that dipped and dodged around them only served to induce anxiety. They couldn’t easily turn to see how far they had travelled but, from feeling, it must have been at least ten metres. They had maybe twice that to go before they could properly see where the light was coming from. The walls ahead seemed to curve away from each other, widening the tunnel further but until Lore was at the beginning of the curve, they couldn’t see the reason why. There was a junction. To their left, the reason for the windchill became apparent as it appeared to be an emergency route to the surface, somewhere just outside of the city borders, in the oxygen fields. On their right, more darkness. Not wishing to take any unnecessary risks and wanting to get out of the tunnel as soon as possible, Lore soldiered on ahead. It didn’t take as long as they thought it would before they were at the second, only just bigger than their body, crack in the wall. Their heart already beating like a hummingbird’s, they tried to calm themselves before beginning the process of re-orienting themselves into the optimal position for sidling through. They activated their Breacher and noted their co-ordinates; with a few minor changes, they sent them to Char.
“I need you over there so you can pull me through if I get stuck.” Lore shouted down the tunnel. The white flash of active transport told them that she had heard.
“Ready.” Even though Lore knew she would be there, it still shocked them.
Lore wriggled their arm through before making a stunning realisation that made them question their appropriateness for this mission. They withdrew their arm and tapped in the co-ordinates they had given to Char before Breaching beside her. “Should have done that in the first place shouldn’t I?”
She stifled a laugh while nodding. “Yeah, you probably should have.” She tapped them on the shoulder. “But excellent effort and dedication.” She paused and examined their options. “Left or right?”
The tunnel they now found themselves in was closer in style to the ones running around the conglomeration but was significantly older. Rotten beams barely kept the walls in place and the ceiling from caving in and the lighting was on its last leg with the lamps, while being recently replaced, being obviously older and not as efficient as those elsewhere.
“I think that way is an old surface door so our best bet is right.” Lore headed to Char’s left. She was about to head in the opposite direction but quickly realised what they had meant.
This older tunnel had aged spectacularly. Despite the rotting supports and the ineffective lamps, it was sturdy and well maintained. Given its proximity to a surface exit, Lore theorised it had been built as a part of the agreement to protect the city and oxygen fields during Celreagaire’s construction, making it older than almost all of the human inhabitants in the city above. Their respect dipped slightly as they approached their first junction and found that it was nothing more than a sunken pit with four paths funnelling into it. The lights in the tunnels ahead were long since deceased but there was a flicker of light in the blackness. Although obscured by either another junction or a corner, there was a flicker of something in the tunnel ahead.
“Straight on I think.” Lore spoke confidently.
“Ok… So how are we crossing this hole then?” Char took a look into the void beneath them. “How deep do you reckon it is?”
Lore grabbed a pebble, “I’ve always wanted to do this.” They placed their finger on their lips in excitement before releasing the pebble into the cave’s gaping maw. It fell. And fell. When it eventually made its way to the bottom, Lore judged incorrectly that the hole was only about twenty metres deep.
“So how do we get across?” Char looked around for any way to cross the gap before she settled on a swift run up then a jump.
“Five metres wide and twenty metres deep, I’m not liking those odds“ Lore watched in confusion as Char prepared herself.
“I’m Quararrian. If I miss, I heal myself and climb out.” Char smiled nervously. Lore was finding it hard to keep a straight face.
“Ok.” They moved out of her way and subtly played with their wrist as she began her practice run.
The nervous smile was quickly replaced by a look of surprised amazement as Char sped past them at inhuman speeds. It was their first time seeing a Quatarrian sprint in person, it impressed them. Char quickly circled back and returned to their starting position. Lore was still tapping at their wrist.
“What are you doing?” She asked.
“Just checking in with Magpie.” They smiled.
“Here goes.” Char began her sprint, jumped at the last moment and easily cleared the gap only to find the tail end of a white flash and Lore leant against the wall waiting for her. “I’m an idiot.”
“Excellent effort and dedication.” Lore returned her earlier compliment. She couldn’t help but smile as she shook her head. “This way then.” Lore walked off smugly. That look was quickly replaced with one of fear as several small, winged insects flitted past their face. Although they knew that the insects were likely harmless, Lore wasn’t taking any chances, dropping to the floor like a lead weight, desperately trying to ignore the buzzing above. Char joined them, crawling alongside them before coming to a stop.
“I bloody hate anything that flies.” Lore turned to her. “Especially if that thing happens to get in my face. Actually, scratch that, I hate most insects getting in my personal space.” Char waited there, smiling.
“How do you feel about arachnids?” The penny was in the air.
Lore caught it before it could touch the floor as they shot up and began their sprint away from Char. An admittedly rather large spider like creature crawled over her hand. “Same as insects!” Lore shouted breathlessly. “I bloody hate insects.” They repeated it like a mantra. Char shook the spider off and jogged over to Lore. She gently placed her hand on their shoulder. Lore’s breathing returned somewhat to normal pace thanks to her grounding presence. She waited for Lore to give the nod before prompting that they continue.