Lucomocious

Chapter 3: Light and Dark

Despite all the expectations Thomas had on where they were going, the ruined city that stood before them put him at a loss for words. Endless rows of skyscrapers and houses extended out into the distance, covered in gravel and dust. Abandoned supercars and scattered pieces of billboards laid out on the street in front of him. The street name hung from a nearby building, the name was crossed out.

The whole place seemed as if it was decaying to the strength of time.

"How did you find this place?" Thomas asked. The abandoned city would've been extremely easy to find if it weren't for the unexplainable storm-portal thing. From afar, the area looked like a deserted field.

"Pure chance I guess, it doesn't seem like there's any intended way to find it,". He picked up a piece of scrap metal and tossed it as far as he could. A loud clang sound echoed through the row of buildings. Jade laughed at Thomas's annoyance. " What? If you can't take the sound of metal we might as well turn back now,"

Thomas tried throwing a crumpled piece of paper at Jade but missed horribly. He laughed even harder and Thomas's face turned red. "Your face is glowing brighter than Rudolph's nose, did you know that?"

After the Thomas Humiliation Show was over, Jade asked Thomas if he was ready to begin exploring the abandoned city in front of them. After Thomas agreed, they began walking, slowly moving further away from Cery and ever so closer to the answers he wanted.

As they made their way down the street they had entered from, Thomas looked for any sign of the answers he was looking for. It would probably take more than walking down a street to find information but he looked anyway, not wanting to miss anything.

The place around them probably would have been some sort of shopping plaza, instead it looked as if a meteor had run straight through it. The shops were plastered with red flyers. When he tried to read them, the wind picked up.

The wind was lifting small scraps of rubble beneath them, making it impossible to see anything except Jade. They walked a bit more in the sandstorm before Jade entered an alleyway.

"In here!" he called over the wind. Thomas hurried into the alley and helped Jade barricade the entrance with loose debris. When he finally turned to face the dark alley, he noticed that it wasn't dark at all. In fact, the alleyway was nothing like Thomas had seen before.

Instead of a traditional, long, narrow passageway, the alley curved and bent at every step they took. The walls were painted orange with matte black doors built into the walls, each leading to a different place. Thomas felt as if he was in some sort of fever dream. Trapped in a maze, running from some insanely buff monster.

"It's overwhelming at first, and it may seem like the paths are random, but they aren't. There's a secret pattern that I happen to know about," Jade announced proudly.

"Yeah, that's the least of my worries. Has Arachane ever popped out of the ground and started chasing you through these alleyways?"

"Who?"

"Nevermind," Thomas replied. "So, tell me about this 'secret patten' you know about,"

"Oh, sure! Okay, so you see the doors on each side of the walls?" he pointed at the doors as if they weren't the most apparent thing in the entire alleyway. "Some of them have zero's written underneath their doorknobs. If you see one, open the door and repeat the process,"

Thomas laughed. However, Jade didn't return the gesture.

"You're serious? Isn't that really time consuming?" Thomas asked. He didn't have all day- in two hours he had to meet with the mysterious person. Wait, how long has it been since he joined Jade? His thought was interrupted before he could think about it.