You would expect that a secret floor (that could be entered using a secret use of an elevator) to be dusted and abandoned, right? But somehow it was squeaky clean.
Ok, I was abandoned here by my supposed helping hand, with almost no information, but surely I came here faster than I thought. Before Nibba storm all over my scaping plan I didn't had a clue how I would get here.
But she also made a big fuss. Kicking everyone around. Stealing keys. Pff...
I couldn't help myself. I laughed out loud. She was crazier than me. I hoped she could get away with this.
I got the data chip she handled me and inserted on my neurochip. As it downloaded the data I looked around, searching for the door. It was quite easy to find it, since this floor was just a very big empty room. I walked to it and it looked very sturdy, with no locks. A touch panel was on the side and bipped alive when I approached it. The display showed 14 colored squares. I would never know the password to open this.
ALERT! YOU ARE DISCONNECTED.
Aaargh!! I put my hands on my head. It looked like it would explode. The neurochip started to show a warning sign on all my field of vision. It blinked like crazy. A smaller text below the capslocked letters instructed me to go back to a online zone.
I dismissed the alert with some difficulty and opened the data from the chip. It showed a list of numbered files, all of them with a locked sign. But it was expected. The pain wasn't.
The first file suddenly became unlocked. The pain started to diminish somehow. I clicked on it. A bip sounded on my ears and a square on my vision indicated that I should center the door's panel on my field of view.
Once I done that it guided me to click a sequence of colors. I really hoped that it would not sound a alarm or something. That or the fuss that Nibba made.
The panel blanked for a second and then showed a message.
UNLOCKING...
MAY THE PROTECTOR RULE
The door opened. But I took a second to step in. That phrase on the display was the one used on the army. Not from this planet. How? The? F**k?
The door closed. A series of jets started to spray a strange substance on me. Another door opened. I walked out like a zombie. I was on a dark corridor. The movement sensors did their job and the lights started to light up gradually.
Suddenly, the second file unlocked and started to show me a trail, some neon dashes appeared on the ground. Only I could see them, of course. I needed to get out of here as fast as possible so I started to run. There was no one here, thankfully.
As my head was spinning from the hangover, the fight, the disconnection pain and the message from the Guarded Ones' army... I ran.
The spring on my boots pushed me forward, the lights on the corridor lighted up and I ran.
I noticed that I was slowly going upwards. After half a interplanetary hour I reached another door. One touch panel by the side. I typed the indicated keys and it opened I entered and it closed. For my surprise I got sprayed with decontamination liquid again. Then the other door opened.
I was expecting a dramatic blinding sun on my face, but It was night. The two moons were in the sky. The rarefied atmosphere of this plannet made it easy see the stars. The tempture was quite low and I was glad that I put three layers of clothes. The chip automatically turned on the night vision and I could see around.
I had just woke up on the underground city, so I decided that I was going to run all night. The day hours would be scorching hot. I run a bit to get far away from the door to the surface and made a decent stretch.
A few kilometers around the door the field was completely flat, the floor was covered with concrete and probably a lot of different layers of crazy materials to maintain the underground city. Some lumps could be seem, my guess was that they were the above ceiling builds.
But after that field was a very difficult terrain. My mind that was wandering around needed to focus on where I was stepping. One moon started no go down on the sky. The other one should be very far, because it seemed like it didn't move at all. I was running for more than a few hours now. The night was very long on this planet. If I could get some other parameters I could roughly calculate the size of the planet and the distance to the sun of this solar system.
As the sun made the sky dark blue instead of black I reached closer to a area full of abandoned buildings. My lungs screamed, demanding air. My legs started to falter, my throat was dry. Don't mention that my nose was about to fall off, frozen. I didn't stop to look around, I kept my eye on the neon trail, hoping that the safe place that Nibba mentioned was covered and had a lot of salted water.
The ground became flatter again, but now I had to make a lot of turns, the buildings probably belonged to a long abandoned city. A lot of them collapsed but the trail knew about most of the obstacles. I had to go out the trail just twice because the path was blocked. It didn't adjusted itself since I was offline so I had to find it again.
At this point my mind and my muscles just worked by themselves. The autopilot me entered what seemed like a a old house. All of its windows and doors were closed with metal plates. The trail lead me to a basement. And then a secret basement.
Gladly there was water there. And a bed. And it was warm. There were blankets. The trail faded out.
I collapsed.