Nuclear | Edgar x Colette

The Secret Passage

Edgar POV
"Huh? What!?!?" was the collective response from everybody in the room, in perfect unison.

One of the police officers, who must have the power of controlling technology, snapped his fingers, and all of the machinery in the room lit up with an eerie green glow. But this time, a lock symbol appeared below our feet.

"He's right," the officer said. "I don't know how I didn't notice that."

"Well, Liam, can you open it?" Rena asked hopefully.

"I think so," Liam said, closing his eyes and twisting his fingers back and forth. Everyone, everything was silent until there was a soft whir, then a click as the trapdoor slid open to reveal a flight of stairs descending down.

Rena went down first, with me by her side to scan for traces of anyone. The rest followed suit, with three officers guarding our rear in case somehow there was a surprise attack that sprang out of nowhere.

The stairs looked very old, crawling with dust, cobwebs and mould. Even more machines lined the walls, full of odd inscriptions that one of the officers translated to be "Gaseous conversion" and "Transformation". Nobody had any idea what it was even about at all.

Finally, we reached another trapdoor. In case there was someone there, Aditi created a portal, which was more deft instead of letting thr trapdoor clink and whir slowly.

We all teleported into the room, and everyone leaped into their positions. I scanned the whole room, then my shoulders fell with a slump. Nothing at all except more of the same things we had seen in the other part of the facility.

"He must have escaped while we were delayed," I told everyone.

So Liam opened the door, and brought us back to the first floor of the orphanage.

"Hold on, this is when I saw Bull come from during the day of the blinding smoke! I knew there was something odd about this door..." Colette muttered.

The police officers left after that, but the SSOs came back with some sort of machine. They asked us to stand in it while it did something to our body, removing the radiation somehow. Had to be yet another power I didn't know about.

There were at least a thousand different ones, after all. And counting, because there were new ones appearing like once every week or something. The government would know.

Later on, they got somebody to use their telepathy and search Bull's mind for more about the "plan" that he was talking about, and that Emerson was going to carry out. All that was recovered was a theory about mutating Retropolians to give them power—but apparently, it had failed and the criminal duo was trying to find out how to make it work when Bull had been captured.

And one day, we would find Emerson too.

Edgar POV (Present)
"And....that's the story of how we know Emerson. Not a very nice relationship—he was the accomplice of a madman trying to take over the world with nuclear power and mutate everyone with it.

If we hadn't discovered him, he probably would have started a nuclear war or something.

"Wait...then how did you guys get into the school?" Janet asked in confusion.

"Oh, yeah, that!" I remembered. "I should explain. After that incident, the next day, a new manager came to our orphanage..."