Age Of Machine

Chpater 3 - What do you hold?

(Sorry the chapter was a day late, fell asleep writing after a friends b-day so I had to finish and polish a little before posting and once I thought I posted it I went about my day and turns out it didn't post, nor did it save what I wrote yay! Anyways enjoy my struggle and the book)

Click

Clack

Click

Clack

The echoes of our shoes hitting the thin, metal steps while we go ever down the stairwells and halls into the depths of the bunker. So far we haven't seen to many machines, besides a handful of ticks sitting in the stairwells or side rooms.

(All conversations are slightly muffled due to the gas masks they have on so yo Ivan imagine that if you want, doesn't really matter)

Y/N: Well by my best estimates from other bunkers I've seen, we should be upon the power room in a few seconds here, expect ticks to be in all the corners and a couple runners to be in there to prevent us from turning on the power along with the gas, under no circumstances should you take it off until I say it's safe to.

Aloy: Alright, what will happen when the power is turned on?

Y/N: Among the lights turning on and some of the heavier doors being able to be opened, I'm suspecting the computer to turn on and I'll run through some codes we've gotten in the past to see what it's got and if it can help at all in figuring out what exactly happened

Aloy nods and we press on eventually reaching a closed metal door with a just barely noticeable white mist flowing out from the bottom of the door

Y/N: You see that? That's the gas I was talking about. If yo didn't have a gas mask in there's a good chance you'd get some effects right now like drowsiness, nausea, and you'd probably cough up blood and bits of your lungs. Not a good way to go out I'd imagine

Aloy makes a face of disgust at that comment while I step towards the door and open it with the gas flooding out like a wave breaking on a beach. I gesture for her follow me in to the generator room and begin looking around the room with the flashlight seeing the power box on the wall. Walking towards it I hear a high pitched screech coming from it and raised my pistol opening the metal latch allowing the covering to swing open and reveal a prototype tick sitting on the switches. Quickly pulling it off and throwing it against the concrete wall damaging it but not killing it, it attempts to leap at me only for a bullet to pierce through its body destroying the tiny machine.

Y/N: Just for the record I had it covered, but thanks

Aloy: Someone's gotta watch your back down here

Y/N: Fair enough, always better to have a companion to travel with

I walk over to the breaker box while saying; But now I believe it is time we turn on the power so we can see

As the power is switched on the lights across the bunker power on and many of the auxiliary functions of the base also turn on

Y/N: Now that the powers back, let's find the command center and find out what's so important in that thing

As we begin to backtrack moving through the now halls lightened by the fluorescent light pieces hanging overhead it's easier to see into what appear to be bunks in a barracks room.

Y:N: Let's check this out, probably something worth while in here

Entering the room it is clean day for a few of the blankets being disheveled. Looking around there are a few basic amenities you could take, which we did, bullets, which we also took, books, pictures of people, and letters. Most were worthless but one in particular caught my eye.

Y/N: Hey Aloy, look at this.

I hand her the note and she skims through reaching the part about a family member of some soldier that was stationed here talking about some floating object coming from the northwest and reaching the edges of the town before leaving.

Y/N: must be from before the machines rose, probably something worth checking out in the future, you guys ever see anything strange come from the northwest part of the island? We have seen some higher levels of machines among other things.

Aloy: Not that I know of, out hunters mostly stay pretty close to the walls of the city.

I'll have to take a deeper look into the northwest sometime but for now I gotta take a look into the main computer of the bunker at the command center

Y/N: Alright, let's get to the command center and get the hell out of here

Packing up whatever we needed we came across the command centers large, green titanium doors down a hall further along and press the button to open it. A few seconds go by before a red light starts blinking above the doors signifying it's opening. Once the doors are open I notice the main computers screen in the center below a map of the island with a couple racks in it signifying some locations on the island. Logging on I try a couple passwords before getting the right one and look into the files of the computer.

Y/N: Just roughly skimming through these files it looks like this was some sort of bunker meant to overlook the 9 others each tasked to a region of the island. If I had to guess, with each one cleared it would be easier to figure out how to stop the machines with what information I can scavenge from each computer

Aloy: So what I'm hearing is more trips in the future then?

Y/N: If your up for them and Queen Annie allows it

As I place an external hard drive on the table and hook it up and copy the files before leaving the bunker and heading back to the city to give a report to the queen

(Words: 1041)