We head down to the sublevel and look through the water, hoping to find the drain. After a while, we can't find it, even though the water is rather clear. We start to look beneath the metal shelves, searching for the drain, and eventually, we find it beneath a collapsed shelf. We move it to see if we can remove whatever is blocking it. I take off the metal drain cover and reach my arm into the drain pipe. As I go near elbow-deep into the drain, I can feel whatever caused the blockage.

  The first thing I feel is something rubbery. I pull it out, and it’s a green rubber glove covered in some black goop with hair and chunks of waste—probably the stuff that rotted when the freezer lost power. I look at the disgusting glove and decide to rinse it off in the standing water. Once all the goop and chunks are out of it, I put it on to try and dig out the rest of the waste blocking the drain. Now with the glove on, I begin to pull out handfuls of whatever is in the drain. After a while, I feel something hard and pull it out—it’s the skeleton of what might have been the largest rat I would have ever seen if it were still alive. I throw it all into the bucket and plunge my arm back into the drain. However, when I pulled up the rat skeleton, a lot of the blockage came up with it. When I scoop out another handful of filth, the weight of the water becomes too much, and it flushes the rest of the filth down to wherever it leads.

  Now with the sublevel draining, we sit on the stairs to see if it will fully empty or if we have to try again with something else. After twenty minutes of waiting, the sublevel is completely drained. We head upstairs, and I take a shower before going to bed, as I’m fully exhausted. Monty, however, seems to want to empty the recycler before he goes to sleep.

  After I get out of the shower, I see Monty approach me with a large smile on his face as he hands me an air filter.

  "Where did you find this?" I ask him.

  He begins telling me, “So I tried to use that vacuum you had in the kitchen. It doesn’t work. I open it, and everything seems normal except that there is another latch I can open. When I do, these two fell out. It’s for when you’re vacuuming the dust while using an angle grinder on brick, I think. But it’s still an air filter. With this, we can upgrade the generator room.”

  I look at the air filter in my hand and tell Monty, "Go and get some copper and aluminum from the recycling room." As I head to my room, I grab the PVC pipes from my bag and bring them to the generator room, where Monty meets me.

  As soon as everything is gathered, we get a notification:

  I click Yes, and another screen takes its place:

  I turn to Monty, who looks at the screen excitedly and says, "Well, if it's going to take a while, we might as well go to sleep. When we wake up, we can take a look at the changes."

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  I agree and head to my room for the night. As I step inside, it feels good to have my own place—somewhere we can drop our stuff off without needing to be scared of getting robbed or ambushed. I put my soaked clothes over the desk chair to dry and climb into bed. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I fall asleep.

  The next morning, when I wake up, I put on my clothes and go downstairs to find Monty already waiting for me. He asks if I haven’t noticed it yet.

  I look him up and down—he’s wearing the same clothes from yesterday, he still has his hair, and everything else seems the same. I look around, and all the lights are working. We cleaned the entire atrium together yesterday, so what’s different? I take a deep breath to think, but the moment I do, I realize what he means—the smell is gone. The smell that lingered after we removed the trash is finally gone.

  I open the door to the new utility room, where I find two new machines next to the generator. The first seems to be a large water filter, and the other is an industrial air purifier that connects to the ventilation ducts.

  We go to the kitchen to celebrate our first achievement in our new base. I bring out the case of cola cans from my bag, and Monty prepares some cans of canned spaghetti. It’s not much, but in a situation like this, you celebrate the victories you can.

  Monty tells me, “We need to start exploring the dungeon if we really want to improve this place.”

  I agree and ask him if he’s ready to begin exploring again, to which he answers yes. So we begin to empty out our bags of useless items. Mostly, we leave the canned food here, along with items of no particular use, like the strong painkiller needles and some materials. Instead, we bring extra ammo, two MREs each for emergencies, and our canteens filled with clean filtered water.

  After a couple of hours of organizing ourselves, we head to the security room to open the bunker door. We look at the CCTV screen—out of the eight cameras, only two still work. But on those two, we don’t see anything, so we open the door and step back into the dungeon.

  As we step outside, we realize we can’t close the door from the outside. The only thing available is the intercom to alert someone inside that we want to come in.

  I tell Monty, “Well, shit. Either we need to upgrade the intercom to a keypad, or someone needs to stay here.”

  Monty shakes his head. “We can’t upgrade the intercom—it needs to be fixed first, and we don’t have a digital camera.”

  I lay out our options. “So either we leave the door open and risk something—or someone—getting in, or one of us stays here to let the other in after they’re done scavenging. And I’m just saying, I don’t like either option. I don’t like the idea of someone being able to get in here to take our stuff, but I also don’t like the idea of being alone out in the dungeon.”

  Monty picks up on the fact that I would be the one going into the dungeon alone. Before he can speak against it, he remembers that with my abilities, it would be stupid to make me stay behind while he scavenges. I could find six buildings a day, while he would be lucky to find one every couple of days.

  I then tell Monty that I will be going to explore while he stays here. But even if I find the parts to fix the intercom, that won’t solve our problem—we would need to find someone we could trust to stay in the bunker to open the door.

  Monty looks at me and nods. “You’re right. It’s best if I stay here and you go explore. But be careful. Don’t rush into things—if you see a large group of monsters, sneak away.”

  I promise I will, and he turns around to enter the bunker again. Before closing the door, he tells me to press the intercom button. I move to the intercom and press it. A loud buzzer goes off inside the bunker. Monty is in the guardroom, looking at the screen where he should be able to see me through the intercom camera. But he can only hear me. However, he can still see me on the CCTV camera.

  I wait outside while Monty checks the guardroom and then comes back. “I can hear you through the intercom,” he tells me, “and I’ll open the door when you come back.”

  He holds out his hand, and I shake it. He makes me promise again to be careful out in the dungeon before heading back inside and closing the bunker door—leaving me alone for the first time since we got here.