The door that kept the garage shut was built of thick metal. It's handle looked like one from a safe, but still needed three keys to open. After inserting the last key, Sabere spun the wheel counter clockwise five times. Masion heard the sound of the seal separating the atmosphere inside from the one outside releasing. Sabere walked in and gestured for them to follow.
The room inside was huge, but every inch of it was in use. There where cabinets lining the left wall, clearly hand built but sturdy. The cart Sabere had pushed through earlier had dumped its contents into a complex looking machine that was placing it into the appropriate drawer. There was a large work bench on the other side, holding blueprints, unfinished projects, and tools.
This work station didn't account for all the space the building took up, but Masion didn't want to press her luck with asking. Instead, she focused her attention on the fact that Sabere and Lucifer were talking off their masks. She quickly followed suit, the masks, though effective, weren't the most comfortable things, and she was excited to be rid of them.
"How are you able to get clean air in here? You got a sponsor or something?" Masion new it was rude to ask, but the clean air was definitely abnormal. For the filtration to be effective, it took a lot of parts and time, and was extremely difficult to get your hands on. Most people, including Masion, had to live in communal living quarters for safety. But Sabere seemed to be the only one living there.
"Nah, but it's a lot cheaper to build it yourself, so I made it without to much struggle. Plus, who wants to die of mana contamination, right? Kinda made it a necessity." Sabere said this like it wasn't some great feet, but it really was. Usually, only elves and nymphs could make actually usable filters. And even with that, it usually took multiple hands to make it. But Sabere made one alone for an area as large as this. Masion was in awe.
"Jaw off the floor darling, we do in fact have actual work to do." Lucifer smiled at her like she was a child and nudged her shoulder playfully.
"Right, so the base idea is for us to create and develop something to make a complex process more simplistic. Any ideas?" Sabere had dragged a glass pane she seemed to have made into a whiteboard over and uncapped a marker. She wrote in big letters "IDEAS." Her handwriting was atrocious.
"Maybe we could make a smaller version of the water filter? That way it can work on a smaller scale. It could also be cheaper to produce." Lucifer suggested. Sabere wrote the idea down.
Masion wasn't about to be out done by him. "What about designing something to speed up the transmission from communicators?"
They continued brainstorming until they ultimately decided on making the masks they wore more efficient and more comfortable. It would be a bit more difficult to do since getting the fibers for filtration were expensive and hard to find. Sabere did mention that she made her ventilation system herself, so her work could be altered to fit the mask.
They split up the work so Masion would create the seal keeping the air out, Sabere would make the mask, and Lucifer would build the filter. By the time they settled on this, the sun had begun to set. Walking around at night was highly dangerous, especially with the idiots driving. The amount of car related deaths tended to spike at night.
Masion gathered her things and prepared to leave. She needed to get to the school dormitory before curfew, else she'd get locked out for the night. If she got locked out and couldn't convince someone to let her stay with them, the filters on her mask that needed to be replaced every few hours would fail her. She'd be infected by daylight.
'What a great way to repay my sponsor' she thought to herself. 'Years of putting me through school for my supposed talent and they get a bloated corpse.'
"Lucifer, we should head out now if we want to be safe before nightfall." Masion didn't know how far the cults building was, but she was fairly certain it was far enough that he should leave now.
"Nah, Lucie's staying with me tonight. He needs st give me a hand with the fuel for my sorting system. It is cosmically inefficient right now and we definitely need to fix it."
"I hadn't realized you two where so close. Have fun then." Masion tried valiantly not to show her envy, but she didn't think it worked all that well. By the time she left, the other two were deep in conversation. She made sure to close the door behind her.