The Cold Core

Part 4

16

We were screaming so loudly that Ra Asthulla actually gestured to her men to shut us up. The soldiers clamped their hands (or is it claws?) on our mouths as Asthulla pulled a lever and we came to a gentle stop on what looked like a metal road.

The commander turned to us. "Are you finished screaming? Because I cannot drive with such shrill noise in my ears."

We were all panting, trying to catch our breath. "Yeah, we-we're done," managed Matt, who was still clutching Izzy in a tight bearhug.

"Good." Asthulla pushed the lever, which I now realised was a joystick, forwards and the platform obeyed.

The city was impressive from above, but being inside the city was a whole new level of impressive. Most of the buildings were made out of some sort of metal. It didn't look like iron. It looked stronger. There were shops that sold rocks (which I still didn't understand), minerals, clothes and food, all closed down though. It felt like we were driving through the aftermath of an evacuation, but a much cleaner and less boarded up evacuation. I mean, the streets were immaculate! And there wasn't a single boarded up window. In fact, all the buildings had metal shutters on them, making it look like we were driving through a very big, but very bright warehouse.

Curiously, I risked looking over the rail and yelped. "Where are the wheels?"

"The what?" Asthulla asked. "Oh, no we don't need wheels. Here, in Agartha, everything is run on magnetism and heat. Right now, this vehicle is driven by magnetism."

"So we're basically on a mini maglev? Sweet!" exclaimed Ruby. Sure, she would enjoy this, seeing as she saw herself as a genius engineer now after building and repairing the Red Rocket.

"Don't you have any trees here?" asked Matt.

"Of course we don't!" Asthulla laughed. "Would you expect those dirty green things to grow this deep underground?"

"Good point," he mumbled.

"When did this war start?" Izzy asked. She made me jump because she had been so quiet.

Asthulla glanced at her. She seemed to have a bigger interest in Izzy than the rest of us for some reason. "It started around four or five months ago. We started losing food when the Sun lost its heat and it started getting colder. Water supplies ran dry – no, froze – and other resources like rocks and minerals became impossible to mine. And even the ones we did get were not very good. We have been trying to figure out what caused this catastrophe for the past few months now, but still have no idea."

By now, we were entering the skyscraper level. The maglev platform vehicle was fast. I was gawking at the height of one of the skyscrapers we were passing by, when a massive explosion blinded me. When the white light was gone from my eyes, I realised that the top of the skyscraper had been blown off. Metal pieces were raining all over us and the maglev was whizzing through, swerving pretty much every piece.

"Do not let any of the burning debris touch you!" Asthulla called over the chaos. "If you do, you could die."

"Thanks for letting us know!" I yelled back, and dodged an incoming projectile.

After dodging almost all of the debris (a few had gotten stuck on the hand rails), Asthulla sped the maglev up. The closer we got to the central tower, the louder the bombs and explosions and gunshots got, and the darker it got too. The tower was blocking most of the core's light, and the clouds around the top seemed to thicken as well. The building itself was insanely high. The top seemed to cut right through the clouds above and I could just about see some light inside the clouds too – different to the core's light – suggesting that it was much higher than I could imagine.