NationStates Jolt Archive

2200

Crypt 1-Ω

The cold, tasteless wind of subterranean atmosphere floated through the air, almost motionlessly - pushed along by the occasional exhale of a purifier or ventilator. It was cold underground - cold as the winter wind, cold as a sheet of ice that cast a shadow over life and growth, over a depressed society that was eventually doomed to a death by genetics - though only the intelligent would have figured that out by now. Life underground was perfect - safe, secure, clean. Clean from waste, clean from filth, and clean from whatever dangers lurked outside every speculated paradise looking to infiltrate it from the outside...or the inside.

Before the war, the sovereign nation of Amazonia had established the Crypt System - a network of underground refuges that, as promised by the Dominion government, were "100% fallout proof and capable of withstanding potentially indefinitely the effects of total, cataclysmic nuclear war." The odds of such a war happening across the world were less than one in 79,235 - and no one, to this day 160 years in the future, knew who fired the first launch code. How unlikely was it that that one chance turned out to be the correct path of a globe that, for all its turmoil, had sustained human life fairly well? The Amazonian government surely hadn't thought something like this would come to pass, and it was doubtful any other nation was well-prepared at any means, just the same. The Amazonians barely even had known who had launched their weapons at them - they simply returned fire with everything in their conventional, nuclear, biological, and chemical arsenal that they could muster at hot spots across the globe.

The lucky ones had escaped to the Crypts in time - those who had been fairly close to the designated sites, and had escaped in good enough time to make it into the 600-person capacity underground vaults. Many others had either not made it in time, or had simply not been able to escape the disaster that soon became the entire land of Amazonia and truly, the entire Earth. The international community was wasted, nature was terminated, and humanity itself was left clinging to the edge at the brink of extermination. Humankind, however, was tougher than even nature itself - and the humans of Amazonia had persevered beyond a doubt underground. At least, from what the members of Crypt 1-Ω believed, humanity itself was relegated to living underground for the remainder of its existence. That was, after all, what they had grown up with - the 264 current members of 1-Ω, none being over 80 years of age, had all been born inside the underground tomb.

1-Ω was no place a child should have ever grown up - its sterile environment, cold atmosphere, steel walls and low ceiling adorned with fluorescent lighting that cast more of a dusk across the Crypt rather than artificial lighting served as a chilly and aggressive reproach to children attempting to find a place in the world. Nineteen year-old Natalie Hanson had none of the luxuries of the former children of the world who had grown up in sunlight, amidst life and the dynamic environment of the Earth - instead, she had faced 19 years of vitamin D light treatments, a cramped and limited environment she had never ventured forth from, and a populace that was ever inwards thinking and immersed into the present.

Natalie was a different breed of individual to arise in the Crypt - the daughter of the Administrator of the enclosure, she had grown as a single child under a single parent (her father had even told her she was the child of an affair...whose mother had died), with her father enforcing a strict parental law - mental, physical, and psychological - that had served to both toughen her inner fortitude and create a sense of alienation to the ideals of Crypt 1-Ω that now focused more on survival rather than the original mission of all Crypts - to repopulate the Earth with the survivors of humankind. 1-Ω had turned against its goals, and Natalie was one of the only ones smart enough to see it.

What truly grated on her, however, was her father. As Administrator, he had orchestrated every part of her life - how she did in the one-room school of the Crypt, how the Crypt's three medical staff cared for her, even telling her privately with authority that she was going to be the Administrator once he stepped down - without any room for argument, save for an unleashing of his volatile temper. The younger Hanson had found succeeding the Crypt's surgeon to be more interesting, but simply resigned herself to her fate once all was said and done. What the Administrator said, more and more often, went. The authoritarian atmosphere wasn't just being noticed by his daughter - others were under the breaths talking about just the same thing.

Natalie's sleep patterns continued to be disturbed by dreams, nightmares, and otherwise odd things her mind came up with - deep in REM sleep, her eyelids fluttered and twitched, alone in her own room adjacent to the Administrator Offices. Her father still, surprisingly, hadn't discovered her relationship with Adam Morrison - the son of one of the Crypt's maintenance techs and one of her peers in the Crypt school. He plagued her dreams, telling her something was wrong - something wasn't right. A ridiculously bright sphere suddenly materialized in her dream - showing up where one of the fluorescent lights should have been, blinding everyone as the ceiling materialized into a field of light blue. Something rotten looked her dead in the eyes, its skin dropping from bones and flesh as it emitted a noise halfway between a snarl and a gargle, running forward with anger -

Hanson jumped from her sleep, starting in her standard-issue bed with slightly not enough bedding to keep out the persistent cold of the Crypt. Her heart rate jumped suddenly, racing and shortening her breath. Natalie looked around the room - all the same, no blinding yellow orb, no billowing brown wads of cloth in the receding blue field above - just fluorescent lighting and the cold of the steel surroundings. The artificial-ness of the Crypt persevered despite dreams and the like. Something about Natalie's sleep, however, had seemed slightly too real - slightly odd, almost as if it was telling her something.

Though she thought nothing of what the symbols in her dream meant, Natalie decided that maybe it was telling her to look into her father's dirt - he was undergoing a slight medical procedure that would keep him out for at least another two hours until 12:30, and his computer wasn't the most difficult thing to pick. It would help if his password wasn't his name - Brandon - which Natalie wondered how many times it had been hacked into by enterprising individuals around the vault who gained access to the Administrator Offices without being detected by the security turret in the ceiling. It was an ancient defense first and foremost, but even more in Natalie's favor, it was programmed to ignore her physical description when it targeted her. Robotics weren't exactly a forté in the Crypt.

Quickly bypassing the easy passcode and maneuvering a newer, yet still easy block - a word puzzle that Natalie, smarter than most others her age, blazed through easily - and accessed the later files. Most of it was fairly basic - thoughts on individuals (including her father's rather aggressive view towards Morrison's future), security dossiers, repair messages, and several private messages which Natalie had no desire to look through. She really just wanted to find some incriminating stuff on him that she could hold in case he ever DID find out about her and Adam...so maybe the personal messages were where to start.

She skipped over one discussing declining medical supplies - which was probably not a good thing - but moved into some stuff sent by the more experienced and veteran leadership of the Crypt. Natalie was savvy enough to know her overbearing, suspicious father really didn't trust anyone as leader of the Crypt - but he had a "circle" of sorts that he had better faith in. One in particular caught her eye by the subject line - something about dwindling numbers. Natalie glanced at the clock and seeing plenty of time, delved in.

Brandon,

I'm seriously starting to think we may need to mount another expedition out into the wasteland. Supplies are starting to run a little low and I know we haven't gone out in three years since Harris was lost to one of those irradiated savages out there, but the food processor will only last so long without a steady stream of material.

-Terrell

Natalie rubbed her eyes slightly, going back to the medical message with a quizzical look on her face.

Brandon,

That bitch Shire was complaining again about his lack of medical supplies. I figure if we go out to the wastes again and kill a few of those rotting fools out there, we can take some of their things and at least satisfy his blathering mouth until we can shut him up for good like we did with Coral. Sound good?

-Denny

Natalie fully blinked. What?

She flipped over to security detailings, moving to a section on the computer terminal marked "security images of question." One that stood out to her eye was clear of to purpose: excursion pictures of question.

The very first picture was of something she had clearly not ever seen in the protected environment of the Crypt - a humanoid of sorts, with its skin drooping off and completely in absent in parts. It was clearly dead but its eyes blankly stared out from overemphasized sockets, bones clearly evident from the loose skin and thin muscle. It was an abomination, something that may have been born from devices unknown.

Natalie quickly made copies of the archive elements she wanted, glancing up at the clock hurridly and scampering out of the Administrator Offices.


* * * * *


Above Ground
The Wasteland

The two children's corpses smoked with a strong odor wafting around the house that had somehow stood throughout the 160 years since the war. The female had died quickly as well, and now only the younger female and the older male remained amongst the five wastes settlers - in a place they really shouldn't have been.

The dealer of judgment was Styx - who had once been a man. He was known informally around those like him as a "New" - Styx had at one point been a Crypt-dweller, but his Crypt (4-ß) had opened far too early - after only twenty years after the war. Styx, in turn, was now only slightly human...and one could not necessarily tell that by looking at his features. The former man was already untold years old, somehow surviving all this time due to whatever had happened to his ravaged genome through the process of mutation. The irradiated zones of the wastes had taken a toll on the former man, warping his skin, leaving him with only one eye while the other socket rotted, and leaving one arm still very usable but with sinew and tendon very visible to anyone who looked at it.

The older man swept around the staircase swinging a bat encrusted with sharpened, rusty nails - straight into the torso of one of Styx's raider crew. The board slashed straight through the irradiated frame of the attacker, sloshing through rotting gut and flesh as the attacker doubled over and fell to the ground, dying as it oozed black fluid from numerous holes. The man swung again - this time at Styx's companion, Lethe - but the top raider was quicker than his irradiated form showed. The notorious mutant's time out in the irradiated, biologically hazardous wastes had done nothing to dull his senses or slow his movements as he caught the man's hand - his fingers, which ended now in sharp points, tearing into the human's wrist. The man screamed and dropped the bat, giving Lethe all the time he needed to raise a curious-looking gun - salvaged from one of the military depots of the former Amazonian government that had survived the bombs and the plagues - and blew a sizable hole with a blender blade straight through the abdomen. The man gasped, his eyes billowing wide open as Styx smiled with a mouth full of brown, sharp teeth. The raider picked up the nail-bat, snarling at the critically injured human, and with a burst of super-human strength, impaled the bat straight through the human's head. Eyeballs imploded and brain spewed out as the bat blew through cortex and cerebrum, jutting out the other side with little head on either side of the bat left intact.

The younger female had picked up something her mother had left on the ground - some old, crude ranged weapon apparently that Styx cast out of his mind without a second thought. With the mutilated and bloody corpses of both irradiated beings and her family around, the younger female barely even had the composure to raise the gun and aim it straight at the notorious mutant's head.

Styx simply laughed, uttering with a grave and deeply serious voice, "Little human...your antics, so brave indeed. Your family is dead, and they killed two of my own...for that, I will not kill you."

The door, already partially blown down by Lethe's well-aimed kick to start the raid by the irradiated, was blown totally in along with adjacent wall by a bigger force. A large, twelve-legged monstrosity walked in - looking slightly like a spider but grown far larger than it should have been, with four too many legs and a hideous eye cluster in the center of its forward body pod. It was as if some twisted author had taken old Earth creatures and thrown them in a genetic vat and set the setting to "monstrous," forming the abomination that bore down on the young human now.

"I don't need to kill you, fleshling," Styx uttered, grabbing the young female by the neck with his rotting hand. "He will be gladly satiated by what you have."

Styx threw the girl by the throat towards the spiderlike monster, which gladly jumped on the prey. A shrill scream was all the young female had to utter before three spiked jaws slashed down from mouth mandibles on the scaly irradiated spider. Styx laughed and drank a bottle of alcohol he had found in the refrigerating unit in the settlers' house - the fleshlings still hadn't learned since they had been trying to restart their civilizations that the wastelands were the property and territory of radiation...and all of its sons and daughters.



OOC: See the Sign-up thread (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=587836) to sign-up at any time you want during the IC thread. Just make sure to post a character before you enter the IC. Feel free to introduce your character however you'd like, it's up to you how you'd like to proceed at your start.

Joshua stirred in bed. He could never sleep well, the bed he had being so uncomfortable as one would expect for something over 150 years old. It did help that he enjoyed sleeping in a cooler environment, so the blankets served him well as he slept in shorts and no shirt with no problem.

Joshua ended up waking up. There really wasn't much of a "morning" given the environment they woke up in. Just an artificial one to keep things running smoothly. And by that account, he was awake a couple hours earlier than usual. Never the less, he made his way to the showers - always so cold and thus quick. He only slept four hours but knew he couldn't get back to sleep.

He took a five minute shower, longer than usual, before getting ready for the day. Quickly getting dressed, he made his way out of his residents. His two parents were already up and out at work. His mother worked as a cook, his father worked as a maintenance worker. And Joshua himself? He was a student, but did some basic work afterwards, as all kids had to by the age of 14.

He made his way around the Crypt. He didn't enjoy life in it, and on occasion would even sneak out of the Crypt through the maintenance shafts, though he'd never been caught and this was a rare trek indeed. Today would not be one of them. He just wondered the halls and the various floors looking for something - anything - to do. This little world he lived in was repetitive beyond belief. There was not a corner of the place he had not been a million times seemingly each week.

As he walked down one of the halls, he saw Natalie rushing out of an office with a bunch of papers. "Hey!" he shouted, waving as he began to jog towards her. "Whats up? What's that?" he asked loudly as he neared her.

The fabric of time and space was very similar to the mechanisms of radiation. By all means it should have been completely unable to tame for beneficial purposes; and in a sense it was unbeneficial. For radiatation ravaged people but often endowed them with intriguing, and occassionally beneficial, traits. The mysteries of time and space were very much the same, occassionally they would favour you, but as a result they'd often put you in an unfavourable position.

For the personality plagued persona, Drake Antony Gabriel Dewairt, this unfavourable position was twenty meters above a shattered irradiated wasteland to which he was destined to crash into; did I mention he was not in a plane or other contraption of aeronautical prowess, but a solid steel drum. This ungainly object was a time machine, a now powerless time machine which had been dragged through the space time continueem against all odds and ended up here; it reentered reality smoothly with little fuss, indeed it had been sitting on the third floor of a small pleasent building... which was no longer there. The machine fell.

Six seconds later it landed with a thump which sent waves of mud hurtling in all directions, lodging itself firmly into the mud it's multitude of owners residing in a single body scrambled to the back of their subconcious to avoid any possible pain; one of them lost out.

"Oh Jesus Chri-" The person currently at the forefront of consciousness, Gabriel, whacked his head sharply as he tried to stand up; he passed out... and forced someone else into his place.
"Arghh! You foolish fool of fool!" Cried another personality in pain, "None of this!"
"Oww not me!"
"Dilemm-"
"Zarrghh!
"Ahhh... ah... ah" Drake, the remmanent of the single consciousness that had once inhabited their mind, bit into his fist to deal with the pain. He steadied himself carefully, the odds of hitting himself would have normally been very low; but now his machine was upside down. Managing to sit on the ceiling he nursed his head for a few minutes whist his head rang in pain, his psyciatric companions remained silent to grant him some peace.

A few minutes passed, during which the machine groaned and shifted as it settled, finally his head had cleared enough for him to look out a porthole.

"Wow." he said simply
Theres nothing impressive about this heap...
Sarcasm my dear chap.
The only thing impressive about this place is the inevitable destruction of humanity it has entailed! Mwhohahaha!
The technology reqired for this endeavourmust have been truly impressive.

Turning to look at the control panel he realised it was now above his head, craning to look upwards his more technologically able companion took control.

"High levels of radiazion... Ze Giga counter is vay above normalcy."
Where are we? Inside a nuclear reactor?
"Ha. Ha. No, if I were to hypothesise I vould zay za-"
"You would say that the whole of humanity has been destroyed in an epic confrontation spanning the globe!" Cried another persona seizing control with over the top drama, "Nuclear warheads zooming towards helpless civilians running for their puny little lives! Hahahahaha-Argh!" He gripped his head as he whacked his head against the upturned chair in his melodramatic laughter.
"Well what now then?" Drake asked openly stepping up to consciousness.
Vell ve cannot sit here. No power.
Or food, supplies, anemities, and I for one am not sitting here in squalor!
I say we go out into this wasteland, harness the remmanents of civilization and enslave the remainder of the human race!
Will it involve the reinvention of the jacuzzi?
Oh very well...

Two hours of gibberish passed, during which time they fought for control of their body as was normal for them, argued, which was also normal, and prepared for what the one calling himself Gabriel termed a "fun filled role playing game like journey filled with magic, quests beautiful women to rescue." Another called Von Tony called it "suicide". So finally, after much preperation, the hatch of their downed time machine opened up, stepping from it was what seemed to be a great mechanical beast.

Created from an old scrapped stainless steel diving suit upgaded by their host the self proclaimed "Professor" Egadd to survive virtually everything it had also been shamlessly modelled on a Big Daddy from their collective favourite game, Bioshock; which explained whislt as they stepped from the machine Egadd cried "Copy right laws come get me now!".

With this, they set off across the wasteland in... they didn't know what direction, the compass was going beserk, but confident that eventually they'd find something of interest... even if it was merely an interestingly shaped rock.

Crypt 1-Ω

Natalie wasn't expecting anyone to come around the corner, and indeed was looking for the one person she felt she could really trust in the crypt, what without means of a family and all. That person, however, was not Josh as he barreled around the corner shouting at Natalie as she looked towards another hallway. Hanson almost dropped all the copies she had made of various threads, messages, computer mail, and other data she had picked up from the console as Josh called out for her.

He wasn't a bad kid - since the schooling for the children of Crypt 1-Ω was more of a "collaborative" thing, she knew roughly who he was around the vault. Seemed more of a guy who didn't belong there and wanted to explore his surroundings, unlike Natalie who just wanted to find her own place on the world, regardless if it was underground or aboveground...her own place minus her father's influence constantly pushing back in her life. She appeared to most of the dwellers of the crypt content and happy with where she was heading - to most she was already on the supervisory track in the vault, while she knew what her father already had planned for her - but she hid her emotions and real feelings under a facade of mental strength.

However, she started and tripped over nothing as Josh called, holding onto the papers and righting her balance.

"It's nothing," Natalie stammered as she collected herself, closing the door's automatic switch as it proceeded to lock behind her. "I'm fine."

She glanced momentarily up into Josh's face with her emerald green eyes, trying to figure out what he was doing. It wasn't if that she was suspicious - she was generally an open and trusting person - it was just that she was trying to uncover something that looked like it had the possibility of proving her whole life a lie.


* * * * *


South Pacific Ocean

The bio-vat activated its lift, a middle-aged human, maybe 35 to 40 years of age with dark brown hair touched with a hint of gray to its sides emerging on a rising platform. Completely naked from the bio-vat's immersion, he stepped into a hot-air blast-dry for a minute before stepping out and quickly into a set of clothes available. A quick glance by the man out a porthole window revealed a dirty, murky blue-brown ocean extending as far as the eye could see. The man did not sigh, nor felt much emotion for the dirty, grimy water that still had not refreshed into life-giving fuel once more after 160 years of consistency. Rather, it was merely another point to start from...and this man had plenty to do.

A robotic unit - primitive but still, a capable robot - moved slowly behind the man on a set of wheeled treads. Robots hadn't even been out that long in the world before the wars had started - and robotics had not gotten to a level of the movies, or even close. Robotics had barely even allowed for use in warfare besides drones and supply and the like - several heavily-armed but slow-moving behemoth-type units were around, but none were particularly capable of engaging threat priorities and other higher-level thinking concepts. This robot was simply a civilian thing, intended to simple tasks.

"Sir," it vocalized in a synthetic, metal, female voice. "Your aircraft is ready."

The man smiled before stepping forth and away.

"Oh c'mon Nat," Josh said. He'd never called her that before, but he had a tendency to give people nick names and that just happened to come out, "You came out of there pretty quickly... and you look anxious. It says something on there, doesn't it?" he said as he quickly grabbed at the papers, managing to get a little bit of a grip on it as she withdrew the papers from him.

Natalie swiped the papers away again, giving off a slightly angry edge. Adam was the only one to the point who called her "Nat" as a playful thing between the two in their secretive relationship away from her father's prying eyes, and seeing Josh up and use it was both slightly comforting and slightly offensive at the same time.

"I'm serious," she replied, placing a hand on her hip defensively. "It's nothing bad. I'm just..."

Natalie's voice fell away slightly as two of the Crypt's security team walked by, heading quite noticeably down the stairs towards the residential department. While that wasn't odd, the fact that one of them carried not the standard batons they usually did, but a very large and serious-looking rifle said something normal wasn't up.

"I'm just gonna..." Natalie murmured, moving towards another set of stairs to see what was up.

"OK... I know somethin's up now..." he said to her, quickly following her. "Somethin's got you worried... I'm not dumb you know... just because I'm not as old as you and all..." he snipped at her. Josh watched as the two security men walked out of sight and then kept his eyes on her.

What's going on... he wondered to himself, now becoming a bit uneasy himself.

Crypt 1-Ω

"I'm sure its nothing," Natalie said, more trying to reassure herself than Josh.

Her father had preached calm in the face of a storm and as much as the girl hated to admit being even the closest to picking up some of his traits, here she was trying to keep things even-keel as something that didn't happen every day went off.

"I don't know if you should be out for this kind of thing," Hanson mentioned as she descended the staircase with Josh in tow, but she did nothing to ward him off - rather, she didn't want to be alone if something got ugly. "I don't know what's gonna happen."

She got to the third level of the crypt just after security did, the two officers walking a slight way down the first hallway before moving into a residential entrance. Each "apartment" had a window leading a view into each "apartment's" "common room" or living room, giving her a fairly clear view into the room as the two officers entered. One said something on a hand-held radio before a woman came out - Charise Saunders, the wife of the crypt's resident hairdresser, Jonathon Saunders. She seemed to be quizzical of the scene as Natalie watched, her eyes barely poking above the bottom of the frontal window with the blinds wide open. The scene didn't last all that long as the leading security officer grabbed her arm and threw her to the side, yelling something unperceivable through the thick glass. Jonathon Saunders came out, yelling something in reply.

Natalie glanced around to spot any possible people snooping, before she riskily grabbed the steel handle on the door and poked it open just a tad. It was enough to let sound out, but not enough to make a noise from its opening. She simply wanted to hear what was up.

"...told you, I, Gene, Rick, Kerry, and several others figured out what you and your cronies under Brandon are up to!"

Natalie swallowed a bit of acknowledgment on that one. Were her efforts behind the game? She thought she had been the first...

"It doesn't matter what you think old man. It's for the good of the Crypt...and frankly, Brandon and the rest of us can do what we please. We are the law around here - its adjudication and its enforcement. Just go against it and we can see what happens."

"This won't end with you leaving, Nel...word's going to go around faster than you think! We're not just going to settle for this, soon everybody else can know. Deal with all of us against you."

A small silence played, followed by the security's voice once more, slightly more menacing:

"Well then, I guess we'll have to settle that here."

Natalie almost poked her head in when the resounding clash of a gunshot rang out, followed by a scream and another gunshot.

"Oh...oh God..." Natalie stammered, somewhat becoming unaware of Josh. "I...I..."

The second security guard took that moment to open the door and peer out straight into Natalie's wide green eyes.

"Hey, Nel!"

Natalie took the momentary second look of affirmation by the guard to break for it down the hallway - not only would she be in hot shit if her father found out, but now real shit was hitting the fan.


* * * * *


Aboveground

Drake's arrival via time machine had gone mostly unnoticed by what little irradiated life lived out on the wastelands - and life, for all its destruction, had somehow persevered - but something else did noticed him. A small floating drone wandered by, a stream of air much like a hovercraft cushion propelling the small arachnid-shaped drone along, its legs serving as different detectors and systems as it and countless other ones like it seemingly care-free danced across the atmosphere of the wastes. This one seemed absolutely perplexed by Drake, coming up and waving one of its detectors at him while its single red orb in the middle of its frontal body sphere stared him in the eye. It blorped out a robotic noise before turning around and moving off again back into the wastes, intent on completing whatever it did.

Josh quickly bolted down the hallway with Natalie. He had been spotted more than once in areas he shouldn't have been and was quite good at outrunning alot of people. Mixed with him knowing every nook and cranny the Crypt had to offer, he decided to take the lead. "Follow me Nat! I know a hiding place!" he said as he booked it up one level. On the left he quickly opened a lose vent that was about 1'x1' on the wall, "Hurry, get in here..."

"No," Natalie breathed, knowing the documents she still held crunched in her hand told the story of probably why two people had just been shot. "No, you go!"

She caught herself right after that, proceeding to add, "I don't know where you can get help but I think this is something bigger than just that. Now that they saw the two of us I don't know what will happen...you don't need to get involved in this."

With that, Natalie inhaled deeply and passed him the copies of the computer terminal: "These say it all. Find some place where you're safe, they won't kill me but they could harm you without thinking."

She turned from the wall standing up to use her body to shield the hole somewhat as a bullet clanged off the wall next to her. Perhaps they will shoot me...

She turned as her least-favorite security guard who seemed to have it out for her bore down. As she turned to run, her father's voice boomed out over the vault-wide intercom.

"This is the Administrator...all residents of Crypt 1-Ω are required to now stay inside their residence suites. Any resident outside in hallways or unauthorized areas could potentially be targeted as an unfortunate instigator of the current problem and potentially harmed. For your own safety, stay inside your residences."

The message began to loop as Natalie took off, dashing upstairs as the guard followed closely behind. She jumped into the door of the Administrator Offices, slamming the door on the guard's hand and blasting it shut as he yelped in pain and retracted it. The lock went into place immediately as she watched with a slight bit of joy as he glared at her in pain through the glass window.

She had no idea where Josh was going to end up, but she figured he was a fairly smart kid...the security wing on the 2nd level had, as she had figured during her time around the higher echelons, police batons as well as several light pistol weapons and some ammunition for them. Security might have vacated the area and gone out to round up more of the people behind whatever their original purpose was, but now that they had spotted her seeing the whole thing, she didn't like her chances much.

She didn't like them even more when her father and two security guards came around the door into the private Administrator bedroom.

"I...uh..." Natalie stuttered, running out of options. Where the security had come up with the rifles they carried was questionable at best, but one of the two in front of her now carried one.

"Have a seat Natalie," Brandon Hanson said sternly, with no lack of seriousness. "We have some things to discuss."

Josh had been through the ventilation system nearly as much as the halls themselves. He rather enjoyed going through it... there was more to explore, and there was privacy. He quickly made his way through it. He'd setup his own little 'room' in a small area. He collected things over time in here. It included a pistol, a couple knives, some rocks and other things he did not know what they were from the few times he'd been on the surface of the earth, among other things from within the Crypt.

He quickly grabbed the pistol, which had three bullets, and the two daggers, and began making his way from vent to vent, looking to see if he could find Natalie... or maybe others that would be in harms way with the guards.

Suddenly, he thought he had heard "Natalie" and he hurried towards the talking. It took him a couple minutes before he found the vent. It looked into room where the men stood around Natalie.

He pulled out the pistol and looked at it then back out at the men. Three bullets... three men... he thought to himself. If they try to hurt her... he held the gun and began to train it on the guard who seemed the most threatening towards her, waiting to see if he would dare touch her.

"My guards tell me you were snooping around where you shouldn't have been..."

The girl stayed quiet, only speaking up when it seemed critical to - although that seemed fairly often with the tone being levelled by the Administrator.

"Yea, I happened to find them shooting someone," she replied in a snide manner.

"Clever," her father retorted. "God cursed me with having an insolent bitch as a daughter. I nurture you and raise you by myself - single-handidly! - and this is the respect I get for it. Clearly, treating you nicely for eighteen years - oh wait, it's been nineteen - has clearly not paid off in my favor. Perhaps that was the wrong approach."

Natalie let him rant, keeping her eyes up but refusing to speak up.

"Now we have a security threat and you just happen to think that something out of the ordinary is going on," the Administrator continued. "You have absolutely no idea to the magnitude of what could happen with your involvement. You personally are responsible for what could be more losses of life from security concerns."

"You lied!" Natalie interjected, finally having enough with the torrent of insults thrown down by her biological father. "You said we could never get to the outside because the door had failed and we were better in here! You said we were destined to live down here and people believed you...and then I find out just today that you yourself and your people travel up to do God knows what!"

"Oh, God does know," Brandon Hanson replied back, his eyes fire. "We're keeping this crypt running - and you're too stubborn, to self-centered to think about anyone but your own little ideas...and that disgusting friend of yours. I know all about him."

Natalie reeled back a bit. She had thought her relationship with Adam had been safe...

"Oh, I think I touched a nerve," the elder Hanson mocked. "What, you think your little friend in the lower class could remain secure forever? I knew about him - and that is an absolute disgrace that I named you as the future Administrator. I see I made a mistake..."

Natalie steamed momentarily over Adam, until a third guard appeared from the shadow of the Administrator's private room and threw down a body.

"He tried to fight back," her father pointed out with a bit of a derisive tone.

Brandon Hanson was one who had not wanted a child to come out of his affairs, but that was what had happened...and even worse to his psyche, not a son. And for a daughter, one that didn't even aspire to the highest position in the Crypt that she had a straight shot to. In turn, Hanson had lost much of his respect for his daughter, who he viewed primarily as a failure. Not his fault, however...

"It's a shame, really," the elder Hanson continued as Natalie's face of anger turned into pure shock and dismay. She had figured out who it was right after her father had transitioned topics.

"Because of you he's dead...and three others as of now, all for getting in the way. Another saw your little escapade, and that led to two others. You should have stayed out of what was happening," the Administrator levelled.

Natalie was reduced to tears by now as she sat paralyzed in an office chair. The body, face-down, was obvious to who her father had decided to kill intentionally over his displeasure with her relationship.

"Now as for you," the Administrator moved on. "Your little adventure has proven to be time-consuming and proven to me why your mother was clearly a mistake nineteen years ago. But you were reported as running off with someone else - who did not match this traitor's description," he indicated down at Adam Morrison's body that Natalie could barely stand to look at. "And we're going to find out who that was, for the good of the Crypt."

As Natalie was still reeling at her father's sudden power trip, the third guard that had stepped up pulled out a police baton, slapping it into his off hand as he walked slowly up to pull out what information he could from the shaken teen.

Josh was fuming at this point. Enraged, nervous, afraid... not for himself, but for Natalie. A range of emotions was rushing over him. And now this man walked towards her with a baton? Aiming the gun at the head, he fired. Before taking note to see if he even hit the man, he aimed at the man with the gun, fired. And then aimed at the third guard and fired.

Dropping the gun, he gave two swift kicks to open up the vent, and pulling out the two dagger, made a run straight for the father, and then jumping towards him, daggers facing forward to strike the man. "Run!" he yelled towards Natalie.

The glass pane shattered with a crack as the bullet zipped in. The security officer hadn't even been paying attention to much else than the immediate satisfaction of inflicting pain, and the bullet smashing into his forehand and exploding in his frontal brain node. Immediate thought dissipated at once with the bullet's impact, an instant death assured. The other two bullets weren't as clear-cut, one clipping the guard with the rifle on the shoulder while the other zipped past the ducking third guard's ear lobe. The Administrator took note of what was happening immediately - but he wasn't exactly a fighter, backstepping towards his room as Josh moved forward with the knife and closing the automatic door as fast as he could punch the button.

"No come on!" Natalie shouted, grabbing Josh's arm with one last look at Adam's body. "Follow me. I know a back way out to get to the main entrance - we might be able to find some others at the same time. We're bound not to be the only ones getting caught up by now."

The Administrator's loop recording continued even as he continued to hide out in his personal quarters now. Natalie knew the Crypt back and forth from having so much time around the vault's chieftain. She picked her way through the second level and descended to the third floor, running into another security guard.

"Hold on, hold on," the guard said, raising his hands against his chest defensively. "Just want to talk."

Natalie relaxed slightly - she was a little more cool around Kendall Tyler, one of the vault's more sane security members.

"Your father's more persistent guards are looking out for you - and I don't think, despite their orders, that they're just not going to shoot," Tyler mentioned. "I'd be careful if I were you. I won't say I saw you, but hurry if you want to get to...wherever you can go."

Natalie affirmed, before motioning to Josh and getting a move on towards a *locked* service hallway she and few others knew about on the reactor level.

"You sure we can trust that guy?" Josh asked her as he looked back at the security officer while they made their way down the hall. "I'm not sure I can trust anyone now... your dad turned on you! What is going on around here? I didn't get a chance to read that letter, I left it in the vent accidentally." he said.

Aboveground

As Drake and his psycological circus trudged their way through the wasteland, his various personalities providing a running commentary on the situation; finally, after becoming to jumpy at what he perceived as a highly disturbing landscape, he slunk to the rear of consciousness amongst the others and let Gabriel take over.

If the truth be told, Gabriel was more like the former psycologically intact Drake than Drake himself was; Gabriel was forever upbeat and optimistic like Drake had once been, now Drake was more inclined to sarcasm and being cynical; sometimes he wondered if he was merely a fragment of his original psche that had split off.

Regardless of the reasons behind what he had become, or rather the people he had become; they had now spent the last ten minutes managing to skip through the wasteland whilst Gabriel sung whatever obscure melodies came into their head. Which was why the appearence of the robotic spider took him completely by surprise.

As they stood there, staring at it through the same set of eyes behind the various portholes dotted into their helmet, they arrived independantly at the same conclusion; it was a drone of sorts. What they didn't reach a consensus on however was what to do with it. Drake suggessted they follow it, albeit carefully, Gabriel agreed on this point, Von Tony also agreed with this, whilst Professor Egadd advocated dismantling it for spare parts and the most megalomanic amongst them, Kyzburg, demanded they destroy it out of spite and amusement.

In such a situation, the strongest urge and desire won out, and the colelctive will to follow it was compromised with Egadds desire for spare parts, Kyzburg was left yelling angrily in the subconcious.

And so without further ado, they set off once more after the drone to whever it intended to go, for better or worse, for richer or death; Gabriel started singing "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life".

"There's a few...few...people that are still ok," Natalie said remorsefully.

The weight of her boyfriend's death, her father's accusing of her essentially putting all the events into motion, and now faced with the distinct possibility of either losing her life or losing the only home she had ever known was starting to creep up on a fragile consciousness that had already been strained to the near-shattering point by the day's events. Natalie had grown up fairly tough and accustomed to challenges under her father's varying moods, but nothing she went through really could have prepared her for this. Apparently her father's teams had made it on the surface, but as far as she had known her entire life, it was a lifeless waste of nuclear, irradiated sand and nothing else up there.

"It's my fault really for getting this...looking where I shouldn't have looked," she spoke up a bit solemnly, walking quickly down a quieter hall of the fourth level. "I hacked my father's secure terminal today and looked through his files and got into his private messages and security notes - and apparently they've been up to the surface several times. All they did was tell us that the door would never be able to open and we were going to live here forever. Live in the Crypt, die in the Crypt, familiar? Now I find out they have some sort of ring going on amongst my father's select few and he's been lying to all of us...and then this apparently happens."

She stayed quiet for the rest of their trip down to the reactor level, where Natalie looked at the energy source for the Crypt as she passed it...for perhaps her last time. She felt like it was stay here and likely get killed by overzealous security, or leave - middle ground died with the first shooting, however her father's information leaked out to the Saunders couple. The locked security door with an "inaccessible" sign crudely painted in red over the door was no real inhibition to her; it had a weak second hinge up that, when picked into loosening the screws, allowed for the door lock to be picked and the door to actually be yanked open. If it was in tiptop shape even picking the lock wouldn't have allowed entry, but that was the state of the Crypt these days.

Natalie knew how to do the process by now, rummaging through an engineer toolbox on the ground before finding a screwdriver and pin and manipulating both the hinge and the crude lock. It certainly wasn't any sort of good security, that was for sure - though the crude "inaccessible" sign had kept anyone from really even trying before.

With a sharp heave the door budged, revealing a bit of a hallway in red lighting that Natalie trotted down. A door at the end, when opened, revealed the last impediment to the real world: a console of electronic controls, and the massive two-sided Crypt door.

"I guess it really does exist," Natalie mused. "They told us when we were real young that we just kind of ended up here. You kinda had to think it living down here for your whole lives...but then there's a whole new world right out there."

She glanced back down the hallway for a last look into the Crypt's sterile hallways that had been her home for the last 19 years before punching two green buttons simultaneously. The Crypt door still worked well, just as the Amazonian government had intended 160 years before...unlike what her father had preached. The door collapsed on either side into the wall, slowly creating a small dust cloud as it revealed a dark, dank, dusty tunnel of rock that seemed to lead even farther underground before darkness swarmed what one could see.

"I guess that's where we go," Natalie mused, before a side door abruptly slammed open.

The girl had hoped to not see her father again, but the man was back for a parting farewell...with two security with him.

"Quite a trip you led us on," Hanson mused.

Natalie almost devolved into panic mode right there and then at both the guards, armed with the same rifle the earlier officer had been - one taking a stand right at the Crypt entrance into the eerie darkness.

"Game's over now children," the Administrator chided. "And I'm afraid the consequences aren't going to be to your liking. Officer!" he motioned for his two security guards, "take her back with us to the security wing. Shoot the other."

The two raised weapons as Natalie froze, unsure of a clear way out. The security guard in the front seemed to make a quick motion with his weapon at the two when something, finding a new place to explore, rocketed out of the dark, slamming into the back of the guard. The new arrival seemed to be humanoid - but with an excess of skin drooping from bare, naked, rotting flesh hanging from brown bone. The face of the new creature was also human, but eye sockets sunk far deeper than any normal person and features were far more defined with little to no muscle mass.

The irradiated cave dweller took all of two seconds to proceed to viciously, savagely tear the guard's face off, leaving a bloody mess blasting all over the steel floor.

"Shoot it!" shouted the Administrator, pulling a 12mm pistol of his own. "Shoot that!"

The other guard raised his rifle, plugging a bullet from the barrel. The ammunition round sliced through the creature's hip, blasting bone chunks but hardly slowing it down as it sprinted with superhuman speed towards the guard. It let out a bloodcurdling scream as it did so, seemingly much more animal than human at this point of whatever had happened to it.

Natalie was not one to miss a chance, however...despite her overloaded senses at the completely new encounter.

"Come on, into the tunnel!" she shouted to Josh.

The drone floated at a leisurely pace over the landscape, bobbling over rocks and irradiated sand and simply flying right over water that was far too infected with irradiation and acid rain to be anything remotely drinkable. It seemed to be seeking out some place but at the same time somewhat lost as to what it was exactly doing. It led Drake and his consciousnesses over several low hills into a salt flat, occasionally pausing to "sniff" at the terrain and inspect the infrequent tiny bug that caught its sensor pikes. Bugs had been so many times called tough enough to survive even nuclear war - and well, they had.

The drone finally reached a spot next to a blasted tree - and at the base a blackened skeleton, cradling a tote bag, lay in some sort of death position. The drone floated around the skeleton as if inspecting it - as if noticing something - before finally turning its eye back towards Drake. A small box came out of the bottom of the frontal body sphere, a grating opening in the man's direction.

"This unit is programmed to answer basic questions based on vocal patterns by still-living humans or humanoid survivors," the vocal box responded. "Glory to the race."

"At least you know now..." Josh said as they made their way down the hall. "Although... to be honest... I've been out there before. I've snuck out more than a couple times... it's kinda creepy... but cool."

...

As the guards blocked their way, Josh slowly reached for the dagger on his right hip, slow enough as to hope not to be noticed when all hell broke loose, the human creature attacking the guards.

He didn't have to have her say "Come on, into the tunnel!", he was about to make a run for it anyway. He grabbed her hand and they rushed away from the scene.

"This unit is programmed to answer basic questions based on vocal patterns by still-living humans or humanoid survivors... Glory to the race."

Wow
Well I never.
How intriging, I wonder if it is sentient.
Shush you fool, it clearly places us as the masters of humanity! We must utilise it to take ove the.... world?
That won't be hard...

Egadd cleared their collective throat and decided to speak to the drone.

"Hello there, I am... Drake Von Tony Dewairt... you can call me Egadd [At this point the others screamed "berk" at him inside their mind.], anyway... wait... forget I said that, um... I am a human being, just inside this mechanical suit [he banged on his chest for emphasis.] Who may I ask are you? What's your purpose, who made you, and most importantly what on earth, I assume that's where I am yes? Happened here?"

Smooth... the things probably buggered as it is without you rambling...

ooc
sorry about not posting sooner, stuff has come up, I've only read the OP so if anything else contradicts this...

IC
The Chazakans, Chazakains, Chazadans and others on the Cerymbasic subcontinent did not know whom fired the first shots or even what finally drove them to do so. All they knew was that one second their defense satellites were beaming back information of a massive launch before being destroyed in the first wave some by direct impact of the missiles, others by EM pluses rising to their orbits and knocking them out for a time, far to long of a time once the satellites finally rebooted and focused on their targets, targets that were now totally and absolutely destroyed by unholy man made fires, Chaziton, Acis, Norina, Janus, Carmenta each was just gone. The last members of the ruling council were able to set and launch the Chazaka arsenal at their targets, whether any of them hit was another question though it wasn't one that anyone wished to figure out instead the few cities that had not been destroyed in the initial attack fled. Fled into the Catacombs that had been carved out of the heaviest and deepest Soils possible...

June had been lucky, due to her increasingly showiness she had been relived of her normal duties and sent to guard the Catacombs surrounding Hota, she was still guarding them when the first nukes fell destroying all she knew in a moment then they came, metallic beasts from some god forsaken country that had always been jealous of Chazaka and decided to attack in its moment of weakness. At first they had an easy time picking off survivors in the various coastal cities but as they advanced into the mountains they had faced stiffer and stiffer resistance until finally at the Catacombs they were defeated, for a time. June had lead the defenders, getting non lethal wounds for her trouble, finally her teammates were able to convenience her to retreat to the back lines. They did not last long without her, some how a squad or two worth of the beasts were able to break into the Catacombs where they began to slay the defenseless within, arming the few that were still awake they were able to drive them back though June was knocked out and some way or another was stuffed into one of the Vats, they were programmed to release the inhabits once the radiation levels returned to "normal" levels but something went wrong with June's, it could have been the side effect of being wounded or maybe the two months pregnancy what ever the reason, June was not revived until now...

June slipped out of the Vat, her shoulder was killing her, though once she looked over she couldn't see the wound she had received by a very lucky robot. As she continued to stress her weakened muscles she looked over at the other Vat noting the heavy layers of dust on almost everything, then quickly ran over everything she had been warned about, how to best survive from any lingering radiation and other possible hazards. She could almost hear her lieutenant telling her and the rest of her teammates how scifi movies got almost everything wrong.
"First there wouldn't be any dead trees standing around, any humans that would survived would have cut them down long ago and if no humans then nature herself would at the first large blizzard/storm after the strikes.
Second depending on the severance of the strikes and where they hit either you will find an empty wasteland for miles or you will find a bunch of strange new plants, again it depends on how long your out but even 100 years should be enough for such a radical change in environment to "evolve" new species.
Third, Dogs will most defiantly not be your best friends, unless you froze them for some stupid reason, they will have gone wild years before you waked up and likely attack you if you seem weak.
Fourth, again depending on the severance of strikes you will either see a massive amount of wild life all over the place or nothing but bones.
Fifth, don't drink the water without massive amounts of purging there could be strains of new bacterium that make you sick not to mention your own native cultures likely wouldn't have fared very well in the Vats.
Now are there any questions?"
Like usual there weren't, the lieutenant was good. After going through several different postures she checked her equipment.
1 pack of wintery gum
several pistol rounds and pistol, *fires a shot into the ground* in working condition
2 liters of dehydrated water, Just add water!
2 granola bars
and one box of purity tablets
also my brain implant *speaks a bunch of usual German, Greek, etc words* also still in working order
June decided to began by saving anything she could from the Vats and other supplies that were suppose to be there...

_____

TN-2 gazed at the horizon, trying to estimate the distance to the nearby mountains. "If only my range finder hadn't failed a week ago." It muttered before shouldering its pack and heading towards the mountains and what he hoped was still a working transmitter...

TN-2 had been abounded, even the Technonauts had been surprised by the sudden attacks on a number of nations so surprised that they had been unable to account and withdrawal all of their personnel in the various nations, some had died in the initial attack waves, their death screams echoing throughout the Link, others were destroyed in the second wave their screams thankfully were largely cut off. The Overmind came up with a quick solution, in the few surviving nation capitals there was a massive exodus as the Technonauts guards, ambassadors and other personnel vanished into nothingness creating mini air booms where ever they went, when it had gathered as many as it could the Overmind of 42 left still trying to come to grips with the sudden destruction of so many of its members.
TN-2 had been lucky in a way, it had been in his embassies safe rooms as it often was when the first strikes arrived, besides being thrown into the floor it had suffered no physical injuries though it did receive multiple psychological blows the first was the death screams of its personnel and guards as their shields failed and their "lives" were ended and unlike the Overmind it could not simply block them, it heard the deaths of its batch then the others in the next country and the next and the next, it was a wonder that it did not break right then and there but still had presence of mind to began the fail safe programs. First signaling that it was still alive though the transmitter was destroyed which it did not notice as the Wolf Hold Technonauts were engulfed when it tried to check, it then powered down the remains of the embassy, the embassy shield had to greatly reduce its radius but it had kept the embassy itself largely safe as it noted the increasing radiation levels, TN-2 began its own hibernation confident that its sphere would return, they didn't.

TN-2 came up with many theories as the years passed slowly but surely, from the Sphere itself had been destroyed that had been discounted quickly as it knew it had not heard enough Voices silenced for that to that the Overmind and the Technonauts on the sphere either had become insane due to the massive destruction of members or had suppressed everything it knew from that planet to save itself. Eventually TN-2 knew it couldn't wait any longer, it's own shields and power levels had began to run dangerously low and it awoke to Hell while the embassy had survived nothing else in the city had, all had been reduced to ashes and swept into the nearby rivers. The seeds of insanity were planted as it wondered through the area that had once held hundred thousands of humans and tens of technonauts. Finally TN-2 had decided to try and reach the hidden beta commutation hub that was located in each member nation, it knew that the Alpha or "Yacht" commutation had been destroyed and hoped that the secondary one had survived.

TN-2 continued to run...

The wooden chair burst through the glass windows, shattering them utterly and piercing the morning silence with a great shriek. The man slowly grinned, placing a cigarette between his lips.
"Sorry, gents." He said, stepping over the window pane and into the shop. The shop was beginning to light up, as sunlight was lancing into the dark confines of its corners now. Opening up a dirty and worn sack, the man started to pile in masses and massses of packets and tins, uncaring of what he took.

Suddenly he stopped, and glanced down the aisle in which he was standing. For leaning against one of the shelves was the half destroyed remains of a man. Or was it a woman?
The man stopped piling in the food, and slowly pranced over to the body, its skull peering at him with cold, dead sockets.
Stopping in front of the body, the man stood there, grinning. Then, with slow, deliberate movements, he lifted his foot, and smashed it through the thing's chest. It collapsed the second he touched it, and bone fragments flew burst out of the body as the man's foot utterly cleared its chest. As the remains settled, the man giggled, and then he suddenly stopped and looked hatefully at the mass of parts that was once a body, and said.
"Don't you stare at me, bones. Don't you stare at me, no no no no, DON'T YOU STARE AT ME!". His shout echoed throughout the shop and into the morning sun.
As if nothing had happened, the man laughed again and started to pile in more and more tins. When the sack was ful, he hefted it onto his bag and made his way to the counter.
"Put it on my tab, good man." He said as he passed. Stepping out into the sunlight, he finally lit the cigarette that he had placed in his mouth earlier before. As he did this, he looked out into the wasteland that was once his city. It was truly his city now. His city. Nobody else's. Just his. And Ronald grinned happily yet, again, and started to walk back into the wastes.

Entrance to the Crypt

Natalie rushed off in Josh's tow, but something snagged her insides as she cleared the metal ramp leading into the rock tunnel. That was the farthest she'd ever been away from home...and ironically, the farthest step would be the first one as an exile from this life she had only known for nineteen years. A world devoid of life, technology, intelligence, or humanity lay before her - or that's what everyone had always said - and she was simply running from the last bastion of true humans just because of her vendetta against her father. It almost didn't feel right - she was abandoning her home, her people, her very way of life for an instant's burst of thought and a slight bit of chaos that, according to her father, was probably more her own fault in getting involved than anything else.

Hanson hesitated slightly as Josh tried to keep the two moving, her eyes darting back as she took a last look back towards the vault. The second guard was dead, and Natalie's eye flicked around just in time to see an explosion of blood and bone erupt from the mutant's torso. The creature fell backwards to the steel Crypt floor as the Administrator's eyes met hers in a piercing gaze, his stance serious yet somewhat knowing. Natalie felt a pang of regret momentarily as the Crypt door began moving forth to shut the two steel and lead plates together, coming to close her father's image as he stared out until it shut completely. Natalie was on her own now.

She slowed her pace as the tunnel went eerily quiet - a tiny haze of light came from luminescent growths on the ceiling of the path, but besides that near total darkness enveloped the two as the tunnel winded on towards some entrance on the way.

"I know ways back in... it isn't easy getting back in, but it's manageable... if we ever need to get back in there for some reason." Josh said, sensing her mood change and hesitation. "But for now... we need to get out of here. It's not safe to be out in the open, but there's places we can go to. I've been to a couple spots that'll give us shelter and safety..." he said, trying to be a leader, but it was something he wasn't used to doing.

Being out here, seeing new things, exploring, setting the pace... that's what he was good at. Being "the man of the household" though? Being a leader, if they managed to gather anyone else into a group? Who knew? He didn't, that was for sure. But he did know they had to keep going.

"It'll take us about half an hour to get to one of the spots. We gotta hurry." he said.

The drone could show no facial movements or the like to Drake, but responded with a programmed hearty emotion that countered its previously boring expression of greetings. Whoever had decided to make this thing had

"God bless pure humans," the floating drone replied. "We are all that's left of true civilized and cultured thought. The disgusting abominations that roam these lands are a real blight against what humanity once stood for. Culture has truly died good sir."

The drone apparently couldn't figure out that it was not human, or was merely just stating something reprogrammed earlier with personality from a human - it was not exactly what one could deem as smart.

"I," the drone sparked up proudly, "am TST-348T83U1, drone messenger and conveyor of the duty of the Unity, the single, lone organization looking to embrace those values we lost in the fires of awful conflict. Do not see the lies others in these very wastes may claim to any sort of interim government in the last 160 years - the Unity is working for every human in the wastelands still pure and unharmed by the rampant mutations through the biological agents and radiation still on the loose. My friend, we will rebuild this glorious world we use to live together on - and we will, through cooperation and peace, restoring our virtues and morals of old to a land embracing the qualities of new! I ask you fellow citizen, are you on board with the vision of the Unity? President James Thomas Paraiso stands before us all in the Unity to lead humanity into this new age!"


* * * * *


Natalie nodded, fighting back some emotion welling up of the latest situation as she settled into a quiet mood. She barely even knew Josh - well, that wasn't entirely true, she knew him fairly well. But now as much as needed in the current predicament they were in. He claimed to have been on the surface - she was currently in some doubt over that claim - but finding somewhere safe on the surface was even more doubtful in this time. Even breaking it down logically in her head, Natalie couldn't find a way how the world topside would even be somewhat habitable, what with rads in the truckloads still floating around the sands that were likely the surface of the planet now. But what choice did she have? None.

They came across the "official" lead to the Crypt - and it was apparent by this entrance that the Omega Crypts were the last ones finished, in somewhat of a hurry, in Amazonia. Rather than any official entrance of lead, steel, or otherwise, a steel ladder rusted over the years with the moisture of the tunnel ran up for about forty feet to a rusted metal flat plate that served as a sort of block against the outside world. Giving Josh the cautious eye a moment, Natalie simply pushed forward at the point, grabbing her hands that had never been worn in the advanced "comfort" of the Crypt and grasping the ladder rung third up tightly.

The ladder was anything but secure - each rung was wet, cold, and somewhat slimy with some serving as growing pads for luminescent fungus forms. Natalie got about halfway up fairly easily before slipping on a rung nearly falling entirely off the ladder. She caught her breath as her right hand held fast to the ladder, letting the adrenaline and heart rate settle for a moment before continuing back up. Apparently that sort of thing was going to be common out here...Great, not even at the surface and problems already starting.

Ascending to the top, she tried to push the plate but it was held fast. Seeing that she was above Josh on the ladder, trying to ask him for help was not going to be much of an option here, so Natalie looked a little harder to see if there was a catch. Not really a catch at all - simply a smallish handle that she had missed at first. What was she doing out, again?

With an effort, Hanson slid the plate into the solid rock with a slight hole for it - and for a change, it was actually a solidly sunny day without the frequent brown, dust-filled clouds that often coated the sky. Pure, unadulterated light flooded the tunnel, nearly blinding Natalie as she slipped again on the ladder and flatly placed a foot right on Josh's head.

"Oww!" he hollered, "Careful!" He steadied himself to keep from slipping off the ladder. "Man I love the sun... we'll actually have come color to us now... I heard that if you're in the sun for extended periods of time, your skin gets darker." he said excitedly.

TN-2 wasn't the lone soul out on the wastes - apart from the survivors that had begun basic repopulation. As it ran, it was being watched - watched by a set of four red, glowing eyes. They weren't organic by any means, but rather electronic photoreceptory units capturing visible and infrared light as its sight snaked across the wastes. The eyes followed, "blinking" as they snapped various shots, tagging the visual image of TN-2 as it tracked its progress across the barren wastes. The eyes stayed as they were momentarily as a larger shape phased into view behind it - a six-legged metallic unit seemingly futuristic in shape and designed like some sort of old animalistic predator that had prowled the world's savannas and grasslands before the devastating two-week planet-killing war.

Animals, however, never had evolved the small dish that extended from the unit's backside, quickly streaming some data to an unknown point source. The whole process was done fairly quickly, in under six seconds. As soon as the dish retracted again the metal form of the unit seemed to "disappear," blending into the environment as an active camouflage field came into effect. The unit's eyes, however, remained - a floating rectangle of four red points that underlined a deeper threat as it tracked TN-2's quest across the wastes.

With silence, the eyes moved fast - the unit was on the move, and TN-2 was the target.


* * * * *

"Sorryyyyy," Natalie said from the top. Oops.

She climbed out of the tunnel entrance, stepping into the warm sunshine of the flat ground. Amazonia had been a warm, tropical climate before the war, and the midday warmth of the sun now was partly due to the closing of summer in the August month and partly due to the lack of clouds around for once - but the atmosphere was certainly no longer tropical. The air was dry, sucking the moisture out of the tunnel as the dusty dirt of the hard ground was tossed around by the slightest wind. Odd-looking trees sprinkled the landscape, seemingly dead but simply mutated themselves like so much else out on the wastes. Civilization was not in sight anywhere - though it didn't help that Natalie now found herself standing in the bowl of a valley.

"People don't just get darker," Natalie scoffed at Josh's suggestion. "Some are just born that way, look at Terrell Keith..."

Natalie gazed around, still squinting at the sunlight and the new environment. It was certainly not all that hospitable, and only the survivors would make it out of this landscape successful.

"I think we've got to find someplace soon enough," Natalie remarked. "Does the sun just sit up there forever? I'd think that'd get kinda annoying."

Natalie's naivety was partly due to education in the Crypt - her father had certainly never informed her about the outside world, and the educational standards of the Crypt barely covered such matters.

"Well, I donno... that's just something that... I heard." Josh said. "Now, c'mon, I'll show you where we need to go. It'll give us a chance to rest for a bit. A couple months ago I stored some stuff in one of my forts." he said.

Forts... he seemed to be the only boy in the Crypt that had interest in such ideas as making "forts". None the less, it was likely for the better he DID have interest in such things. They would be needing it out here it seemed.

Josh laughed when Natalie asked if the sun stayed up in the sky like that. "No... it goes away. It gets dark then light then dark again up here. You'll see. It's really pretty cool!"

He led her through the dusty, desert-like landscape. They walked. And walked. And walked. About forty minutes into their walk, "Aha! There we are!" he shouted, then running forward. There was a large bolder, much of which was underground, that rose about five feet above ground.

The rock, at the surface of the ground, was a good fifteen feet wide. He began to walk counter clockwise until he found another large rock resting up against it. "Come here! Come here!" he yelled at her, waving quickly before beginning to pull at the second, smaller bolder. "Help me move this!"

Ronald wasn't the only one on the wastes this day, however...another was there to see him, and convey his messages. Rather than in TN-2's case, however, this messenger was brutally honest and up front about things...as Ronald turned back towards the wastes, a man heavily set in a suit of powered armor, things not seen since the war days out in public over a century ago, stepped forward, toting a nasty-looking weapon with a green tube attached near its stock.

"Stop where you are, sir," the man commanded, aiming the weapon at his chest somewhat nonchalantly as his voice projected as a metallic baritone through his helmet modulators. "You a pure human, or a hybrid?"

The man in the armor was clearly not playing around - his technology alone was probably worth more than anything out on the wastes, and the full-body armor suit complete with a sealed helmet sported a pack on his back filled with ammunition and other supplies for a trek on the wastes. Whoever he was, he meant business in his dealings, and the gun he sported meant that even more so - this was no bullet-laden hunting rifle or small arm, but rather some dastardly-looking device capable of dealing out copious amounts of pain.


* * * * *


Natalie walked over to help before spotting something a little ways off. She squinted through the light that her eyes were still adjusting to, unable to really identify the object.

"Hey Josh...what's that..."

The creature was a large, bloated object with six stubby legs and a waddling gait that traversed fairly slowly across the landscape. The occasional hair stuck out of its fleshy brown hide, though hair would have been more of a hinderance in the dry climate. Its snout was tight against its small head, disproportionately small compared to the rest of the rounded body frame. It was sniffing across the ground, kicking up dust as it did as two other similar creatures followed up behind it. They weren't exactly threatening, but more comical than anything.

To Natalie, who had never even seen animals alive apart from humans and in pictures from pre-war material covered in Crypt education, it was definitely a new experience.

"Umm... I don't know. I think we should move this rock so we can get in here... like now. I'm really not feeling like being eaten today..." Josh said as he began to pull harder on the rock. "We will be safe if we get in here... we can relax and regroup ourselves." he said as the small bolder finally began to move slightly.

OOC: Sorry for shorter/crappy posts, I'm sick :( and about to crash now.

Yes, civilisation is truly lacking here... I wonder what happened.
Evidently they were all destroyed by nuclear weapons you fool!
Or biological agents... What do you suppose these abominations are?
Mutants I suppose... How... what was that film we saw?
Shuan Of The Dead?
Ahh yes... most entertaining.

The drone could show no facial movements or the like to Drake, but responded with a programmed hearty emotion that countered its previously boring expression of greetings. Whoever had decided to make this thing had

"Well TST-348T83U1" Egadds personality replied drawing upon his excellent memory, "I know little of this Unity or President, but anywhere that leads to a place with good enough technology or remanent of civlisation is good enough for me. Lead the way my good man; and enlighten me on this world and it's status."

"Yea...alright."

Natalie fired another glance towards the bizarre animals before giving Josh a hand with the boulder. It wasn't particularly heavy and at least the rocks themselves didn't seem to be exploding with radiation like some had suggested down in the Crypt. The world at a whole, from the little she had seen, seemed somewhat barren but not like it would kill you with every step you took. However, first days didn't always tell the story about everything...


* * * * *


"Very well!" the droid emphatically proclaimed. "I will deploy a message to bring forth personnel shortly that will escort you far quicker and easier to Unity facilities. The Unity asks patience in your time, concerned citizen!"

With that, the drone protruded another vane from its rear spheroid, sending off a quick message to whatever had built it before turning back to Drake.

"A craft is on its way to see to your safe departure. Your current location has been marked and within the hour a team will arrive here. A thanks from pure humanity, citizen!"

The drone floated away, projecting patriotic music from its vocal box as it floated towards other ends amidst the wastes.

The psycotic circus which was Drake stood there as the Drone bobbled off; suddenly feeling rather stupid.

"Great" someone said.
You know we're walking into trouble right?
Obviously
Yep
Perhaps we can prove to be useful enough to warrent our safety, who knows.

With that he collapsed on a small rock to await whoever this visitor was.

TN-2 continued to run, it had already covered many kilometers worth of radiated territory some times doubling back to avoid pockets of radiation that would sourly test its increasingly weakening shields, looking across the planes it scanned for a place to rest that would protect it from any gusts of radiation or worst seeing a spot about 2 kms north of itself it turned and stopped, its scanners had detected something. It quickly reviewed the data. "Power structures suggest a drone of one of the human's enemies designs, unknown weaponry and intentions suggested protocol, Red-2 avoid at all costs. It is still far enough away that it may just avoid the drone." muttered TN-2. Reving up, TN-2 began to run towards the possible shelter, hoping its own scanners were still accurate enough, as it had pinged the drone about 12 km behind itself...

____________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________

Dropping her newly scavenged supplies Gopher sighed, it was a whole lot less than she hoped to find and she had run through the last of her water finding it all. Seems I can't avoid it, I'll have to reach the surface and try and find some water, but there is one more thing I need to find out", she muttered to herself. Pulling herself up, she felt a brief surge of vertigo steeling herself she marched towards the outer perimeter of the catacombs hoping she was wrong but dreading that she was right. She quickly covered the tunnels and hallways arriving at the outer security room waving her card and thanking the Goddess that the card reader still had power she walked through the door way and looked at the clocks, each was fitted from the most impressive and accurate atomic clock that the Chazakans had built, they had a dual purpose noting the year month and day and if Chazakan and the world really was drowned in unholy fires to note a countup of how long ago it happened, most were burned out their screens blank, destroyed either in the war or its aftermath but one was still functioning. Gopher's heart sank as she read the numbers, resolving herself she grabbed the parts she knew would be there and marched out the door not looking back, not seeing the slowly flashing lights on the console that warned of a breach of security and walked out into the sunlight...

"Yea...alright."

Natalie fired another glance towards the bizarre animals before giving Josh a hand with the boulder. It wasn't particularly heavy and at least the rocks themselves didn't seem to be exploding with radiation like some had suggested down in the Crypt. The world at a whole, from the little she had seen, seemed somewhat barren but not like it would kill you with every step you took. However, first days didn't always tell the story about everything...


The two managed to dislodge the large rock, revealing a small cave partially carved into the rock and curving down below it. To the left were a couple peculiar looking cylindrical objects from a time long past.

Josh grabbed one of them and flipped a switch, four LED's lighting up. "Check out what I found when I was out here a year ago! It makes light!" he exclaimed, pointing it into her face. "Come in so we can cover the entrance."

The unit picked up a change in direction from TN-2, maintaining its active camouflage while engaging into its full speed - 70 MPH, slamming the ground's irradiated patches and regrowing portions without a semblance of thought as it simply maintained its programming and primary current directive - to find those as of yet unaffected by the radiation or biomutations and secure point for its masters, the Unity. The drone, to the unit, seemed simply from the exterior like another humanoid out on the wastes...whether or not it was the subject of the plagues of the wastes were yet to be seen.

TN-2 was faster than a normal human but nowhere near as fast as the organically-designed mechanical hunting unit, created by the last vestiges of technology for a purpose not beneficial to humanity but for needs unseen. It quickly closed the gap between TN-2 and itself, moving at a considerably faster pace with six limbs to use rather than two. As it moved further, the unit's occular receptors failed to pick up anything unusual in the area - the drone seemed in perfect place to be run down by the Unity unit, barring unforeseen obstacles. In this part of the wastes, away from any semblance of civilization, there were no worries.

The unit closed in on TN-2, dropping its camouflage as it rushed up and produced a speaker box from its top hull. A metallic voice came out, booming, commanding.

"Citizen. Identify yourself."


* * * * *


The flare of sunlight that streamed at Gopher was quickly drowned out by a patch of dark, dust-brown cloud layer that passed by, a partly cloudy sky making a patchwork of dirty blue and light brown in the sky. Nonetheless, Gopher's arrival to the open wastes was clearly not enjoyed by all.

As soon as she ducked out into the open air, a shot from some old weapon of a bygone era cracked, a bullet whizzing by and smashing into the ground. A small blast of dirt shot up as the bullet crunched into the ground, disturbing a colony of nesting radworms.

"The hell you doin' comin' outta there?" a scratchy, elder voice called out from behind a rocky outcropping amidst a hill that backed up the entrance where Gopher had emerged from. "Nobody ever comes out of there!"

The disembodied voice was clearly not happy exactly as another shot rang out, the bullets possibly intentionally missing - or else the holder of the voice had truly terrible aim, this shot off by a clean ten meters.


* * * * *


Drake's position was quickly noted by the drone as it moved off, alerting an inbound remnant of technology exactly the coordinates. As Drake waited, the low-lying arid grass of the wasteland began blowing with a newfound wind, the humming of something mechanical began in the distance, and a vibrant energy began stirring. Something began settling out of the sky - odd enough for the quiet skies of the wastes, but even odder when one truly looked at what was descending. It was not natural, or born from the radiation or mutating biological strands of the wastes, but crafted from the hand of humanity...whether from before the bombs had fallen or long after.

The craft was some sort of helicopter-aircraft hybrid, utilizing two tiltrotor turbojet engines that cut to near-off levels as it slid to a hover, settling down upon several opening struts in the low half-dead grass near Drake. The jets cut out as three human forms entirely clad in large, metal full-body suits emerged, wielding sharp-looking instruments on their combat belts as well as having some sort of elongated projectile weapon on their backs. Their faces were not to be seen - rather, a fierce-looking steel-gray combat helmet completely shrouded their faces from any look by observers. They were covered in such a way that they almost seemed non-human...what little humanity there was in the wastes seemed not inclined to emerge any time soon.

"You uninfected, sir?" the lead soldier came up and asked loudly after unsheathing his side weapon - some sort of long, pointed saber weapon. "We don't take in irradiated survivors."


* * * * *


"Ow," Natalie laughed as Josh shined her in the face with the light. "Point that somewhere else."

She climbed into the top of the cave, the darkness beginning to envelop her again from both the cave and the sun setting behind a myriad of brownish clouds and darkened hills. The multi-legged animals seemed to be wandering off - not likely to be malignant - but Natalie figured it was best they find someplace to stay in shelter while the sun dipped down and apparently it would get darker after this. It was, after all, her first night out on the wastes...she wanted to at least make it through this much. After all, everyone said the first time was always the hardest...right?

They're much nicer than I had presumed...

Drake, the little psycological shard of sarcasm and cyniscm that was left of his former self turned and looked at the soldier through his multi-port holed helmet; he would have liked to have yelled "duh" or something along thsoe lines but given that he was currently wearing a converted diver suit he couldn't blame them.

"Well i'm perfecty normal if that's what you mean." he replied in a droning flat voice at a normal volume; making it perfectly clear that his hearing was up to scrath. "I'm a little annoyed about this whole area though, god knows it's gone to hell, oh and one of your little robots, I assume it's yours? Has been wandering around... led me over god knows what. In short, i'm fed up." A spilt second later his tune changed to something more upbeat and friendly as Gabriel his more friendly personaliy took charge.

"In anycase, your here now which is a welcome relief from this desolate wasteland. Tell me? From where have you come?"

TN-2 looked at the unit from the normal human light frequencies up and down to the ultraviolet and the infrared while it switched on its own translators.
"I am no citizen of these lands nor this planet, my own initial scannings show no markings or rank on yourself that would compel me to identify myself now if you'd get out of my way, I wish to remove myself from this Hel spawned landscape or at least learn what happened to my own kind and why they have yet to return. My own scannings also suggest that you have no weapons or other systems available at the moment to stop me without killing me and as I doubt the ones that made you wish that, I would suggest you let me pass."
TN-2 continued its own scannings, looking for critical system points and likely areas that shielded any weaponry it did not initially find incase it had to demolish the unit, it also noted the worrying signs that darkness would soon sit upon the lands and it knew not to be out in the open without knowing a planet's nocturnal predators...

__________________________________________________________

Gopher ducked behind a nearby boulder and tried to figure out where the voice was coming from and whether killing her first contact would be a good idea, knowing that a live guide was alot better than a dead one she decided to not kill the voice though she did wish it had asked a better question.
"If you'd stop shooting maybe I'd tell you!" she yelled as another round wizzed by and slammed into the ground about 6 meters to her right...

Ronald turned at the sight of the armoured figure, interest playing across his face.
"Oh I'm human alright, do you think a mutant could look as good as this?" He grunted, showing his worn out clothes. "Why?" he added, looking at the man's large gun. "What's it to you?"

OOC: My apologies for lateness on the post, I'm gettin' into that college time of year where everything goes to hell...GPA-salvaging month!

USU, I'll get to you tomorrow on a new post...

IC:

"No laughing matter, wastelander," the armored man replied to Ronald. "There's danger around here, what with the...'zombies'...and mutants and whatnot. Their sympathizers are even worse, agreeing with the half-dead radioactive freaks. Gotta stay safe around here...but I'm digressing, wastelander. You're not safe out here, and stay out much longer and you're gonna end up food for the mutants or worse."

The armored man pulled out a small box from his waste, punching a button on it before turning his covered faceplate back towards Ronald.

"I'm going to call my superiors, you're going to come with us to get back to a safer area. If you're really an uninfected member, we're going to need to evac you from this area to insure that we can protect what's still left of the pure strain of humanity from all the ghoulish crap that's out here. It's for the best. I'm gonna ask you to sit tight for about an hour here while I call in and wait for their arrival."


* * * * *


The voice stopped momentarily, the shooting also ceasing. A lull settled over the snipe-fest as silence reigned for a brief interval on the wastes. As abruptly as it stopped, the male, scratchy voice called out again.

"Who the hellar yah? Yah don't sound like none of them mutant assholes - but yah just think yah can come from thuh groun' like that? Thuh hell you come up to this sheethole for? You gonna get yerself killed by them mutants or become another onuv them ragtag bandits roamin' round these parts here. Why don't you tell me what you doin' and we here can have a little chat?"


* * * * *


The unit was unfazed at TN-2 - it was out of the reach of the drone's limbs, and had a few surprises of its own.

"Query unknown. Hostility detected from audio levels of user voice. Be aware, opponent, that this unit is equipped with Unity-standard advanced pre-apocalypse weapon retracted emplacements - standard time for deployment, less than one tenth of a second. Lethal force will be used to protect this unit if the case arises - opposition remains will be collected and analyzed for defects, radiation, and/or infection."

"Query repeated: identify yourself, citizen."

TN-2 weighed its possibilities, it knew that in its prime state of condition that it could have disable the contraption before it even knew what had happened but in its time warned state and depleted power cells it was not as certain of the outcome and was fairly certain even if it could win that the reduction in its own internal supplies would make the trek to the commutation systems that much harder as the contraption had said nothing about stopping TN-2 from continuing so TN-2 decided to ignore the contraption and continue on and if it did try to stop TN-2 then that was that.


_________________________________________________________________

June sighed seemed the Chazakan education system had failed another. Laughing at her private joke she spoke up.
"I am Specialist June Gopher of the 501st Catacombs protection brigade, I was assigned to protect the sleepers at all cost before the Great War and Fire, I somehow became a sleeper myself, I have just woken up from my slumber. As far as I know the radiation levels were never high enough in the chambers to create any lasting mutations on myself, I finally left the chambers because my water was running low and the insytem supplies seemed to have failed or evaporated years ago. I am not unarmed and have finally picked out your position, its a decent one though I do believe I could hit your left shoulder if I so choose to."
"But I don't choose to." she shouted as she left the protection that the boulder afforded her.

Ronald blinked at the armoured man thinking to answer back in his most preferred way- the finger, he quickly remembered the fact that this warrior clearly meant business, and wherever he was going meant that Ronald could get one of those guns the man was hefting.
"Whatever you say, big guy." He said, turning his back to the figure and taking a large puff from his cigarette, and watching the horizen of the barren wasteland.

OOC: Now that that week's over, back to posting...hope everyone's still here.

IC:

The armored men facing Drake weren't in the know that he was new to the area - to them, the wasteland was all the same, and anyone out here who wasn't a general wastelander eeking out a living was a potential enemy. Drake didn't seem like a hostile threat to the men, so the immediate assumption was that he was one of the roving traders or caravan men who managed the "economy" of the wasteland in a sort of barter system that the survivors had put together over the years since humanity had been repopulating, with the benevolent mutants and Infected occasionally throwing something into the pot. That is, what few benevolent Infected there were...

The point man ignored Drake's more antagonistic personality - some wastelanders these days - but chose to respond to the one with the slightly better attitude. His outlook on wastelanders as a whole wasn't great anyway, but he had a mission to do here and wasn't about to defy orders for personal bias. That could come later.

"We're a Unity recon group," the point man replied to Drake's inquiry. "Ordered to find some of those still not affected by the rads or the mutant strains of virus still out there. We'll have to run a test on you when we get back to make sure you ain't affected down at the genetic level, but we'll find out."

"But enough about that," the man continued. "Get on the craft - we need to head back to HQ with you in tow."


* * * * *


The soldier with Ronald simply stared off to the distance for a while as Ronald watched the sky - to a normal observer he may have seemed to have let his guard down, but beneath his armored suit he was entirely in control and ready to jump at a false move by the lackadaisical man before him. His weapon spoke more to that part - his fingers twitched at the safety, as if he almost wanted Ronald to try to jump and fight or run so he could let loose a flurry and reduce him to a bloody pulp.

A similar craft to the one that had landed before Drake came out of the sky, rotating its turbojets as it dwarfed any noise from the wasteland. It had done a quick forty-five minutes from the nearest point, but the Unity soldiers knew what they were doing and had mastered the wasteland's ins and outs by this point. The muddled sky - a good day, as cloud cover and acid rain didn't coat the atmosphere today - had begun to fade into darkness with low cross-current winds as the aircraft parked upon three struts, two other armored soldiers jumping out.

The first soldier abruptly snapped out of his funk, turning back with his weapon towards Ronald.

"Get aboard the aircraft, wastelander," he said with an air of command, "Not talking about options here, either."


* * * * *


"Next time you don't choose to, an opportunistic Infected is going to blow your head off," the voice shouted back towards Gopher. "You're lucky I'm so nice."

The voice revealed itself to be a fifty-something year old man with a head of gray hair who stepped forth from a rock cluster up a hill. A hunting rifle lay in his hands; it was an older bolt-action model not dissimilar to the many standard guns in the hands of wastelanders in the area.

"Arthur Kellis," the man said walking forward, still cautious and toting the gun with both hands. "I don't know why you came out - there's nothing but shit and dirt around here, unless some asshole wants to rob and kill you for fun."

(OOC: Give me a day or two to get to it, am seeing relatives)

(OOC: Give me a day or two to get to it, am seeing relatives)

OOC: No problem, take ya time.

Ronald glanced nervously at the newly arrived ship and hefted the bag over his shoulder again.
"Whatever you say..." He repeated, dropping his cigarette onto the ground. Grinding it into the dust, he walked to the ship, trying to look inside, and being very aware of the man behind him. Stepping onto the ship, he looked around.

"Get on the craft?" said "Drake" as Von Tony stepped up, exhibiting his dislike for rudeness, "If you think you can boss us around I hope you'll reconsider your conceived perceptions of us." He stood up, brushing dirt of his diving suit with his free gloved hand and accidentally banging the large drill against the side of his leg, he stepped onto the craft to be whisked to whatever installation awaited him. Although he didn't like putting his faith in an organisation like this it was better than running around in the wasteland.

"I ran out one of the basics of survival Arthur. And I don't trust any of the streams within those caves, all kind of radiation/chemical or biological particles could have entered and concerted there after the war. They could be perfectly fine or they could kill me in a few hours, so I decided to venture out here and see if anything improved in the couple hundred years. It also seems that any of the other sleepers left the caves a long time ago and took their water and other supplies with them. Don't suppose you'd mine telling me while you're out here? The sleepers would have left a long time ago to see if any of civilization survived to the south and the mountains and hills of Chazaka aren't for the faint of heart and were never populated even in the best of times. So your either a sleeper like my self that woke up later than expected too, or one of the few remaining mountain folk..."