Foors took a deep breath as he slowly squeezed his lean frame through the narrow crevice in the rock. His heart pounded with excitement and apprehension as the beam from his highly advanced flashlight danced across the damp, rough-hewn walls of the cave.
He could hear his sister Reza's measured breathing behind him as she followed close on his heels.
"Are you certain this is the correct location?" Foors whispered over his shoulder, his voice echoing softly in the close darkness. At just fifteen, he tended to be more cautious than his headstrong sixteen-year-old sister.
"Yes, I'm positive," Reza insisted, shifting her small backpack to slide more easily through the tight space. "I overheard some traders back in town talking about a hidden research facility built into these mountains, with artifacts and tech preserved from before the Disruption."
As they squeezed through the crevice, the cave opened up into a larger cavern, filled with rows of massive vertical cylinders that resembled cryogenic chambers.
Foors' flashlight cast an eerie glow over the convoluted masses of wires and tubes connecting them.
He caught his breath as his light played over one of the control panels - it was marked Project Rebirth, with a date from just less than three hundred years ago.
"This is it!" he said under his breath. "This must be the place," he said, a triumphant grin spreading across his face.
Foors and Reza gazed around in awe at the cryogenic facility hidden deep within the mountain.
According to the fragmented records they had uncovered, over 300 years ago some of the world's youngest geniuses aged all the way from 6 years old to 24 had been placed into an experiment known as Project Inverse where they were frozen before their death.
They hoped that future generations would one day revive them so they could remind humanity of past times.
Along with the brilliant minds, this secret bunker held a treasure trove of knowledge and artifacts from the past - technology and research that had been lost for centuries.
As Foors headed eagerly toward what appeared to be the central computer interface, Reza wandered the aisles of cryo chambers, peering into each cylindrical pod.
Most held damaged equipment or long-dead remains, but a few still glowed with functioning stasis fields, protecting the perfectly preserved figures within.
Reza paused before one pod containing a young girl, perhaps eight years old, with dark hair floating ethereally around her pale face.
"Do you think any of them could actually still be alive after 300 years?" Reza called out. But before Foors could answer, the cavern was plunged into darkness.
"Oh no!" Foors yelled from across the vast chamber. "I think I accidentally triggered an emergency shutdown."
After a few minutes of fumbling blindly, Foors managed to route power to the ancient backup generators. But as soon as the lights flickered back on, blaring alarms began to sound.
The control panels on many of the surviving cryo chambers blinked with urgent warnings, and the icy blue preservation gel started draining rapidly from their pods.
"No, no, no!" Foors muttered, fingers flying in a panic over the central console. "I must have accidentally interrupted the stasis fields." But it was too late - without power, the cryonic suspensions had failed.
The young girl Reza had noticed now lay motionless on the floor of her pod, the glass door hanging open.
They had accidentally killed the facility's few remaining survivors, preserved for over three centuries.
"What have we done?" Reza whispered in horror, tears filling her eyes as she stared at the still child. They had found this lost bunker, only to turn it into a tomb for these brilliant minds and their irreplaceable knowledge. Not to mention if anyone found out they would charged with a crime.
"Holy shit, we need to get out of here now!" Reza screamed, but Foors grabbed her shoulder.
"We can still take anything valuable. We need money remember that's the whole reason we came here. Do you really wanna go back to living on the streets and being an embarrassment to our name? These people certainly don't need those relics anymore." He began rifling through storage lockers near the chamber doors. Foors reluctantly did the same.
Reza wandered toward the back of the cavern, her light illuminating more storage spaces built into the rock walls.
Down at the end of a hallway that was still dark, she thought she spotted something glittering on a high shelf and rushed forward.
But her cry of excitement then stopped.
As she ran down the hallway she had let her wants get ahead of her, and instead of being careful she tried to sprint down that hall
She crashed to the rocky floor, her knees now from her body. Blood gushing from her but she couldn't scream due to her shock.
"Wha-what's going on?" she mumbled as she turned around to see a piece of barbed wire. "Who would have done this, not just who but how?" she thought.
"Hmmm" A dark figure with his hands in his pockets shuffled in front of her looking down on her with an expressionless look on his face
"What is going on," he said coldy, almost looking down at her in disgust.
He raised his leg as high as he could and chopped down on her back, the splitting sound echoed in the cavern as Foors heard a scream from Reza.
"Reza! Are you ok? What's going on?" screamed Foors, a frightened look grew upon his face.
Instead than focusing about protecting his sister, he focused on his escape. "I don't have time for her if that was a harsh scream she most likely is already dead" he said.
Foors hurriedly turned and attempted to retrace his steps back through the dark tunnels to find the exit from the underground cavern.
His heart pounded as his light wildly danced across the rough stone walls. Where had he come from? Nothing looked familiar.
Just as panic began to set in, he spotted a weathered sign pointing towards where the exit tunnel should lie. But instead of freedom, he found himself emerging onto a platform overlooking a massive subterranean abyss, the darkness echoing with the dull roar of a distant underground waterfall.
Fear and awe mingled within him at the sight. He pressed himself against the wall, struggling to slow his rapid breaths.
He needed to think - where was his sister Reza? Was she safe? And what was that strange sound he had heard echoing from the caves?
As the adrenaline rush of fright dissipated, Foor's careful, no-fear temperament took over. He wanted to run away; he didn't want to be afraid.
The one fear that all people must face is death; however that was something which he did not want to confront.
He carefully climbed atop onto the roof of the room he came in as there was a decently big ledge above it.
Now he was concealing himself but allowing a view over anyone entering the area below his lookout.
There he waited, listening intently to the moans of ancient rock and thunder of plunging water, watching for any signs of movement in the yawning darkness below.
One minute passed, then another, as his breathing finally steadied. Perhaps he had simply let his imagination run wild in this strange forgotten place...
Just as he began cautiously debating his next move, Foors heard an odd, sharp sound echo up from the abyss below - was it real, or just his mind playing tricks? He silently dropped back down to the platform to investigate, curiosity helping master his fear.
He crept to the rail and gazed out into the shadows below.
"It's just my thoughts," he said, relieved; yet, he wanted to keep alert and get out of here. He tried to turn around but someone grabbed the back of his head.
He was going to scream when another intense pain struck his leg—someone had punched him in the thigh. A pressure point.
Foors collapsed to his knees, his face looking through the barred fence that surrounded the dark pit. Someone was holding him from behind.
"Hello," the voice continued, "how's it going?"
Foors managed to turn the fracture in his neck sufficiently to gain a glimpse of the person doing this. It looked to be a skinny man, maybe around the age of 20, with short black hair drenched in water as it hung down towards his face.
"This person must be a former member of the cryonics lab," Foors thought. Which was rather impressive as it would be difficult to think of anything else if they had same scorching pain in their leg that Foors did.
"Now, what year are we in?" the guy said. "Tell me!"
"2340!"
The man stopped in his tracks, seeming to be shocked by the answer. Then a smile grew upon his face.
"Haha wow really? You know I actually expected to be right about my theory about AI's taking over the world" the man replied. "The name is Suma by the way but I doubt you will ever tell anyone that since you won't be leaving this place"
Too many thoughts were going through Foors' head that he couldn't compute with reality. "Is this person really from the past? Who is Suma what is he talking about? How is he laughing if he just killed my sister? Wait, maybe he didn't kill her. Did he?"
Foors' thoughts were interrupted by Suma who let go of him and dropped him to the floor.
"Well it was nice meeting you!" Suma smiled sarcastically as he placed his hands on Foors' shoulders. "Is martial arts still practiced nowadays? Anyway, when I knock you out, I'm going to have to go back to that girl and kill her off along with you. "Can't have anyone knowing about this," he mocked Foors as he raised his knee in the air, preparing to kick.
Foors' face went from whimpering to terrified. But he couldn't move. "This is the end for me" he thought as he braced for impact.
As Suma lowered his leg, recollections of Foors' life passed through his mind. He experienced 15 years of anguish. He didn't know why he was leading such a miserable life. Such awful luck. He deserved some good fortune. However, this marked the end.
Then there was a thud. Foors slowly opened his eyes to see Suma on the ground, his eyes wide open, with a bullet through his head.
Foors turned around to face the staircase at the room's entrance. There stood what appeared to be a 15-year-old, around his age. He had messy brown hair, a skinny pale frame, and piercing brown eyes. He held a pistol in his hand.
"You know," the man with a pistol in his hand said cheerfully, "there is no skin that's bulletproof!"