Vegis said his goodbyes to Marzy and took his stuff and left. It took an hour for Vegis to arrive at the southern major elevator hub from his relatively close location due to the heavy security that was still in place from the disaster a few days ago. The entrance to the building was guarded by 10 people instead of the original 4. Vegis walked up to one of them and stuck his arm into the device they were holding. This machine then gathered his blood from his pores. It then scanned it and cross-referenced the local database to see if someone matching the profile of the blood had a scheduled lift.
Vegis walked through the entrance and then reread the message to see what he needed to do. It instructed him to walk to take the left hallway and stick his hand into the vase. He did this and the Vase stabbed something into his arm and sent a message to him. This one told him that in 5 seconds, the tube elevator to his right would open and send him to the surface. He walked in and then saw immediately shot up. When the elevator stopped and out the doors, he saw an expensive multi-purpose vehicle.
Arrows soon filled his left eye’s line of sight and they were pointing to go into the vehicle. Vegis followed the arrows and inside, there were 3 people sitting on chairs. 2 of them had pods behind them and the podless one was sitting in the very front. “Hi, am I late?”(Vegis) “No. You just arrived on time.” was said by the one Vegis is assuming to be the captain of the vehicle. “I am Charles D. Coltman but you can just call me Coltman. I will be both your senior and guide for the job. Will you two introduce yourself to this guy before we go?”(Coltman)
The one to the left popped open a holo screen and began typing. As this was happening, the one to the right started to talk. “Hey there fucko. I’m Jonsa Vey. What got you so late?”(Jonsa) “Oh, the increased security and the pod trains made a short trip extra long.” said Vegis before the typing ceased and the words started to appear. “Hi. I am Jess Reeds. I can’t talk normally due to a curse.”(Jess) “Whelp it's time for me to introduce myself. I am Vegis Watt.” Said Vegis after taking a seat near the pods that had his name on it.
The vehicle started to float and then sped off to the south. Coltman turned around and started to talk. “Okay folks. It usually takes a day to reach the south labs if we take the current route. When I wake up, I will give you a run down of the basic rules and personnel of the labs.” The chairs expanded into full size couches and Coltman closed his eyes for a nap.
For hours, they said nothing to each other. All they did was look at their holopads and look at things on the LSN or took naps to pass the time. After 17 hours, Coltman woke up and looked at the others who had fallen asleep. He did some stretches and had the ship move them which woke them up. After they all ate something and got fully woken up, Coltman snapped his fingers and spoke. “Now that we are all up and rested, I’ll start with the things you need to know.” In between the 4 people, a rectangle opened up and showed a rough map of their new work place. There were 13 large buildings and numerous smaller buildings that kept popping in and out of existence.
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Coltman pointed at the buildings at the north of the map and started to explain the buildings and their purposes. “You see the buildings at the north, west, south, and east? These are the primary entrances to the base. The ones in the corner are residential buildings for those staying for a while. Workers, laborers, and janitors like us live in the north east corner. The guards occupy the south west, important guests or the bureaucrats live in the southeast, and finally the scientists live in the northwest corner. Any questions about these parts?”(Coltman)
After 2 minutes of silence, Jonsa asked something while pointing at lines that appeared to be leaving the northeast corner. “What are these?”(Jonsa) “No, these are shortcuts that we have main access to keep traffic down around the place. Only clones can use these since the opening to get there has several layers of detection magic, decryption magic, and several other things that read the stuff we implanted in the clones. What else do ya want to know?”(Coltman) “How large is this place”(Jess) “It's about 2.5ish kilometers and currently 1 kilometer deep.”(Coltman) “Do we have any form of faster travel other than running?”(Vegis) "Currently, the pods are down due to an explosion at one of the nearby mines which broke the lines.”(Coltman)
They stopped asking questions for a bit to allow Coltman to continue his explanation of the buildings. Seeing this, Colt man pointed at the 5 buildings in the middle of the map. “The blue one in the middle is the entrance to the large underground complex where most things are studied here. Currently, 30% of the underground is being used for archaeological research on the native civilization’s artifacts. 20% is being used on spellcraft and magic research. The remaining half is used for studying the anomaly of the south pole. The white building is a gym, the red one is a health clinic, green is the administration office, and finally, the yellow one is the check-in office and data center.”(Coltman)
Just as Coltman finished speaking, an explosion happened outside and shook the entire vehicle. The sounds of scratching, creaking, and roars could be heard from outside. Coltman looked at the dashboard and pulled up the camera view to see that there were 17 beasts of unusual size and proportion. “This is part of the reason there is so much research taking place. First discovered in the migratory native animals, it seems like organic matter undergoes a large amount of mutations when exposed to both the poles in a semi-consistent amount every year. This is why the scientists stay in place in the region they were sent to or are off planet.” Coltman said before pressing a button that shot a slimy looking net that caught the creatures and drugged them into submission.
