OUR FOREST OF THORNS | tbosas ✔️

019 || Motherland Calls

CHAPTER NINETEEN -        Motherland Calls ..

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          They arrived in the heart of District 2 just around lunchtime, having passed seamlessly through the border checks and the desolation of the parts that have been abandoned for a long time now. There was indeed very little walking involved from the moment they exited the back of the van and met with Thaddeus. Coriolanus hadn't even the chance to get a good look at how the District itself looked because their walk was merely down an alley flanked on both sides by the outer brick walls of rather tall buildings, an alley that the van blocked on one end, while the other, within sigh, presented itself with a heavy door, unlocked by Daphne with a cipher and scanner.

To Coriolanus' surprise, the door led only a short flight of stairs downwards before they were greeted by an elevator which needed yet another code to be accessed. This place, though it did not look nearly as futuristic or sophisticated as Dr. Gaul's laboratory, sure took its security seriously.

Once in the actual elevator, he had unfortunately lost count to just how much further down they were descending, try as he might to count the lights which flashed through the blurred small window of the door old enough to be cackling without sign of stopping. It created the eerie sensation that one day, the speed of the elevator would become too much for its rusted hinges to hold and it will fall apart with someone inside.

"This is one of the bunkers used to survive the nuclear war which wiped out the surface," Daphne explained, leaning over to nudge Coriolanus. "It was abandoned for a time, highly deteriorated, so after some renovations, we repurposed it for the New World project. And don't worry," her tone sang as she joined arms with him, "you will get to meet who I am talking about. The 'we'. I see the way you scrunch your nose every time I use that word."

On cue, the elevator came to a stop. Outside the elevator door a long corridor awaited them. The air in there was stagnant and humid, but the most concerning part for Coriolanus to notice was that he could not see the where the corridor ended, only that it seemed to be branching out into several rooms on both sides.

"How big is this place?" Coriolanus inquired.

As they started walking past doors, he paid close attention to the labels he saw on them — K-67, K-66, K-65... —, soon to realize they were a countdown spread across the length of the corridor, at the end of which he assumed they would find their real destination.

"It doesn't go past District borders," Daphne responded in such an ambiguous manner that Coriolanus simply had to deduct on his own that she didn't really know for certain how big the bunker was. "We only use about forty percent of the whole underground structure," she justified after perhaps realizing how concerning her answer might have sounded. "There's at least twenty percent that has collapsed or cannot be used anymore due to high levels of radiation."

"How did you know about this place?" Coriolanus asked, failing to remember the mention of locations for such ancient bunkers, thus only proving that they haven't touched upon such details with the official Academy curriculum.

"Public archives," Daphne shrugged. "You'd be surprised what you can find when you look hard enough. Old maps, blueprints, those are only the more common things you get to come across, things that most of the people in the Capitol pay no mind to anymore—"

"Ravinstill!" A man had called from further down the corridor, bringing Coriolanus to realize that not only did the end of the hallway finally appear in the distance in the shape of large metallic double doors, but he's also grown so used to hearing Daphne's voice explain to him all these things of such deep importance to her that he's forgotten they weren't alone and eventually, he'll have to deal with the company of others who may prove to be less quiet than Thaddeus, whose presence was a neglectful shadow stalking behind them thus far.