We rushed to the entrance as soon as we had a clear view of the station. When we arrived, the first thing that we did was to check our surroundings before proceeding deeper inside. Unlike when we were in the underground passage, the station was indeed illuminated by the light from outside. However, as a consequence, the fog from outside also enveloped the whole station interior.
Technically speaking, I would not actually call the station a building since not every sides of the first floor of the station have walls. Aside from that, on the first floor of the station, there were only a couple of escalators with a stairs between them, and two restrooms right under them. Since there were no unusual things for us to be cautious against on the first floor, we proceeded along to the second floor.
We took the stairs, and slowly began to walk up. Once we were on the second floor, the first thing that we saw was a no longer functioning big notice board. I took a glance of the second floor's surroundings, and found out that it had a rectangular shaped interior. I also estimated that it had to be around 10 feet from the ground to the ceiling, and no less than 15 feet from one side of the wall to the others.
When I looked closer, the second floor also had a couple of escalators and a stairs between them, but the stairs was around twice wider. There were no restrooms whatsoever under the escalators and the stairs, and instead the restrooms were located on one of the edge of the second floor, with six ticketing machines lined on the other edge.
It only took me a short time in figuring out that the station could be considered as a rather antique building, since the interior walls gave out a late 19th century to early 20th century style designs. Aside from that, the office that was located right next to the sixth ticketing machine also had a dominant wooden panels and decorations. The benches that scattered all around the floor in a mess were also made almost entirely out of wood.
The next thing I realized, was that the office's door was only partially closed. Seeing that, I decided to open the office outright. Just when I finished opening it, a dead body was lying at the ground, with dry pool of blood around it and face down.
I told both Jonathan and Ryan, and both them rushed to me. Jonathan told Ryan to stay closer to me, while he guarded us of any possible nearby threats as I decided to turn the dead body. The dead body turned out belonging to a male, and a couple of gunshot wounds were found at his left chest.
"Guess we are not the only one in this station after all…" Jonathan said with a low voice.
"Do you think this guy was killed by the aliens' rifle?" Ryan asked, restlessly.
"No. If he was, it would have gone straight through his chest, clean off." I responded, "Looks like we really have to be cautious in going upstairs to the third floor."
Nervous sweat ran down my back as I realized that there was a really high possibility a hostile with firearms was just upstairs, probably even waiting for us. Nevertheless, we had to go to the third floor since we did need to travel through the railroad which could only be accessed from upstairs.
As we reached just in front of the stairs leading to the third floor, Jonathan told me and Ryan to stay behind his back. As we changed our positions, I could sense a very tense atmosphere between us. We took our steps as silent as we could, until Jonathan seemed to arrive at the third floor. Just then, I heard someone held Jonathan at gunpoint at his head. Since Ryan might not hear the sound, I signaled him immediately to stop moving.
Jonathan slowly moved away from the stairs, still held at gunpoint. Since I was aware of what might be going on, I did not follow him. As he moved further away from the stairs, I could see another pair of legs following him from behind closely. I signaled Ryan again to stay where he was, and decided to sneak and attack the stranger by surprise.
I took my steps as silent as I could, until I reached the third floor. As soon as I could continue to sneak, I started to move faster. When I was finally able to catch up with them, I tackled the stranger, who seemed to be a male from behind, and held him on the ground with by fire ax butt. To both of my and Jonathan's surprise, the stranger was none other than Captain Quentin who greeted me back in the military base.
"Sir!" I said to my delight in seeing him again, as I helped him get up.
Jonathan picked up the handgun that he dropped earlier when I tackled him, and handed it back to him. When I looked again, the handgun was of an old model M1911, a seven round .45 ACP semi-automatic handgun. I assumed that either he somehow managed to escape the military base destruction with it, or he came across it earlier before we met him again. Since the situation was of no threat anymore, I called out for Ryan, who rushed to us immediately.
"Glad to see you boys are still in one piece." Captain Quentin said with a gentle smile.
He then took us to three train cars that were still parked at the station while saying that he also came across with three other survivors – Kyle Monett, a young female archery trainer, Virgil Clint, a male science bachelor student, and Della Fletcher, a female baker. They were all waiting for Captain Quentin's return to the train car, and we met all three of them once the four of us entered the first train car.
As we introduced ourselves to each of them, I also noticed the map of the whole Chicago elevated train lines. It showed that the station we were currently at, was one of eight stations located in a loop line – a hub of elevated train line tracks forming a rectangular shape located at Downtown Chicago. When I finished looking through the map, we caught up with Captain Quentin on how we made it so far until we met him again.
Captain Quentin told us that before we met again at the cafeteria, he received news that the gunpowder necessary for the first day of joint training had arrived at the base under the direct management of several senior officers. Therefore, he decided to go to the cafeteria to get dinner. However, shortly after he arrived at the cafeteria, he received a sudden call from the R&D laboratory at the eastern wing.
Captain Quentin decided to head there immediately and that was when I saw him rushing down the stairs with other senior officers. I asked him what the call was for, and he answered that it was a sudden malfunction that occurred at the prototype of a new defense system, a directed-energy weapon or DEW in short.
The original plan was to demonstrate the weapon prototype in front of every officers and cadets on the first day of the joint training that was supposed to take place right at the current moment. Since Captain Quentin was one of the members involved in its development, he was called in to the problem and was also one of the few people who were able to respond directly.
He also said that the engineers at the laboratory were just running a simple simulation test for the demonstration, when they suddenly lost control of the weapon's networking system. At first, it looked like as if another party was attempting to hack into the system, and so they ran the usual firewall defense procedure.
However, just as they completed the procedure, the whole laboratory networking system went offline instead. Of course, in response, they tried to restart the whole system. Captain Quentin, however decided to head for the backup electric and network panel center which was located inside a small shed near the central wing, to try an alternate way in bringing the whole system back online, or to find out if there was indeed someone or any party inside the shed trying to hack into the system directly.
Therefore, he rushed to the armory first to take any sidearm he could get his hands on before heading to the backup panel center. It turned out, that the sidearm was the M1911 handgun with a spare magazine. He then headed for the panel center, and along the way, he sniffed a strong gunpowder smell which turned out came from several ammunition trucks parked between the eastern wing and central wing for the next day's joint training.
As he thought that it would not be a big of a problem compared to what he was trying to solve at that time, he ignored them and continued heading to the panel center. He arrived there, only to see that everything was running perfectly as usual, but that was not the thing that made him confused. It was the sudden blackout that occurred in the whole base.
Not long after, he heard an alert from a speaker nearby, followed by loud screeching noise from the sky above. The next thing he knew, was that a large explosion could be heard from the eastern port, then the armory.
He realized that the trucks that were parked there could spread the explosion further to the central wing since they carried boxes of gunpowder should any fire spark fell and reached any of the trucks. He decided in an instant to move the one closest to the eastern wing, with hopes of preventing the spread.
He ran for the truck, which was coincidentally unlocked, and drove it away from the eastern wing. However, the next time he knew, was that the whole eastern wing exploded. He also stated that the explosion was more massive than the one at the port. He could only watch as in a very short time, another explosion followed the lines of the gunpowder trucks, which swiftly spread to the central wing and the west wing.
Captain Quentin knew that the destruction of the base would most likely left no other survivors, and thus he decided to exit the base and went to the city to go downtown. Much to his shock, the situation at the city turned out to be more horrifying, as he saw countless buildings and houses were destroyed by several flying objects. To ensure that he could avoid getting blocked by the ruins, he decided to take the railroad and proceeded to downtown, without even thinking if there could be a train on his way anymore.
About some time later, a T-shaped aircraft gave pursuit to him all of a sudden. It forced him to get off the railroad track, and it shot the truck a couple times. Fortunately, the truck did not explode right at that moment, and he barely got out of the truck as the gunpowder that the truck was carrying got ignited, and destroying the truck as a result. He got blown away by the explosion a few feet to the ground, making him unconscious.
He started to get his consciousness back when it was already in the morning, inside the station on one of the scattered benches on the third floor. It was Kyle, Della, and Virgil who found him lying on the ground not too far from the station when they were also trying to survive from the ordeal the night before. As he was regaining his consciousness, he heard a screaming sound from the second floor.
He rushed downstairs to see that it was Della who was being robbed by a group of four survivors. He immediately warned one of the people to stop and leave by pointing his gun at the person. Instead of letting her go, the person took her hostage instead, but Della managed to flee, and Captain Quentin fired a couple of shots to the person's chest, dropping him and killing him in the process.
That person, was the dead body that I found right behind the office door. Right after the shot, the rest of the hostile survivor fled from the station and into the street. Captain Quentin assisted Della on going upstairs again, and comforted her together with Kyle, and Virgil.
About an hour later, he heard some faint footsteps from the second floor. Suspecting that it might came from another group of hostile survivors, he told the rest of the other three to hide inside the parked train car, and attempted to neutralize the hostiles, should they came to the third floor. That suspected group of survivors, turned out to be me, Jonathan, and Ryan.
When he finished speaking, we immediately realized that the gunpowder smell Ryan sniffed must be coming from the other officers that were rushing to the laboratory together with Captain Quentin, since they might be checking out the contents of the truck.
We were also surprised to know that the explosion that destroyed the central wing and west wing did not come from the huge flying object that landed on the great lakes, instead it was caused by the line of gunpowder trucks and the fire at the eastern wing.
As we were still kept in the dark about the cause of the more massive explosion that destroyed the eastern wing, we assumed that it was caused by the rest of other not-yet-ignited gunpowder stored inside the armory. Since there were more survivors, we decided to share our intentions of going to the museum.