Remainers

Lost Mementos of the Past, Part 6

Caleb headed back to the place where he camped, but Mina had still not returned. He thought about waiting around to see if she'd return on her own, but he quickly realized that would be a bad idea. Instead, he started searching the neighborhood to see if he could find her first. He had gotten a sense of her search patterns while exploring the city with her, so he knew which places she'd look for and which places she'd avoid.

However, Caleb did not find Mina this way. Instead, he found a completely different person from the one he was looking for: Rick. He seemed concerned, and the moment he saw Caleb he stormed right towards him with an urgency that worried him.

"Mina. Where is she?" Rick asked without even offering a greeting.

"Huh? We separated last night. I was just looking for her."

"You left her alone? When she was clearly in a bad state of mind?"

"H-hey, she asked to be left alone in the first place. And in any case, if she's in a bad state of mind, it's clearly because of what you said!"

Rick scoffed. "We can talk about that stuff later. First things first, we need to find Mina."

"What's the rush?" Caleb asked curiously. "She's just out searching the city, right?"

"Idiot! She's desperate. And when people get desperate, they start doing things they normally wouldn't do."

"What? Like what?" An idea suddenly flashed in Caleb's head. "Wait, you aren't saying she's underground, is she?"

"It's not a good place to be right now. Even without the demolitionists going around, the city is already falling apart here and there. If she's in the wrong place in the wrong time, then..."

An old memory Caleb had buried deep into his memory suddenly waded to the forefront. It was a memory he hardly wanted to remember, but the image of Mina being buried in rubble pulled it out of him like a magnet.

"How do we find her?" Caleb asked, voice now full of concern.

Rick crossed his arms and grunted thoughtfully. "Let me think. Where did you split up?"

"Not too far from here. It's only been half a day at most since I last saw her. I can't imagine she'd have gotten too far away."

"All right," Rick said as he scratched his chin. "Mina might be desperate, but she's not so desperate that she'd forget about common sense. I can't believe she'd do something as bone-headed wandering the city at night."

"If that's the case, should we split up? Cover more ground?"

"No. We're better off sticking together. Don't want you running off if you find her first, anyway."

"It's not like we're committing a crime," Caleb said, slightly exasperated. "In any case, I'm not so dead set on supporting Mina that I'd let her do something so obviously risky."

Rick didn't respond with a sarcastic jab, which was what Caleb expected. He glanced over to see his eyes blinking with an eerie light, a sign that he was accessing one of the functions in his nanomachine brain. "Looks like there used to be an underground mall close by. It should be caved in, but looking at the maps old surveyors uploaded, there should be an opening downwards."

"You think she'd go down there? You said she wouldn't do anything risky, right?"

"I said she wouldn't do anything bone-headed. I'm sure she knows that exploring the underground is risky, but if she decides to gamble on it, I wouldn't put it past her to ignore the danger."

"Then let's go find her as soon as possible!" Caleb said firmly. "The longer she's in there, the more likely a cave-in will happen, right?"

"No need to get too excited," Rick said with a sigh. "If you don't make too much of a ruckus, I doubt it'd fall apart so easily."

"Oh, I see. Then is there really a reason to worry about Mina, then?"

"Think a little. What do you think she's going down there for in the first place?"

"Right," Caleb replied sheepishly. "I suppose even if she's being careful, there's still a chance of a cave-in happening."

"Enough talking," Rick declared as he picked up his things. "We'd better get after her."

Caleb and Rick quickly made for the closest underground entrance, which happened to be a few blocks from where Caleb had set up camp. The entrance was slightly caved-in, but there was still enough space for someone to squeeze through. Rick walked up to the entrance and studied the debris blocking the way in.

"I don't think she came down here," Rick mused as he softly brushed the dust off a fallen pillar. "This place seems undisturbed. If she did pass through here, she'd have left sign of it."

"There's no chance she found a way to squeeze through without touching anything?"

"It's possible, but there's no reason for her to be so careful." Rick turned around and pointed out towards the city. "We still have plenty of places to check. Let's keep going."

Rick and Caleb continued running through the city, looking for the entrance Mina was most likely to have used to access the underground. After an hour of searching, they finally chanced upon a tunnel that was both largely intact and seemed unlikely to collapse.

"Is this the place?" Caleb asked, somewhat exhausted from all the running.

Rick didn't answer. Instead, he knelt down to the ground and inspected it with a flashlight. It was the merest of traces, but he eventually made out footprints in the dust and dirt. "Yeah," he replied. "She definitely went this way."

The two of them walked deeper into the tunnel, cautiously checking every nook and cranny to make sure that the place wouldn't collapse on them. Once they were confident they were fine, they started looking for Mina in earnest.

"No need to look too hard here," Rick noted as he started walking at a brisker pace. "Mina's probably going to be somewhere with a lot of stores."

"Did New York City have that many underground areas?" Caleb asked.

"It didn't used to, but as nuclear pollution started to get worse, more people started moving underground," Rick explained. "The underground became a great place for people to gather and stay social, especially when the war got worse."

"Was it that bad?" Caleb asked gingerly. He didn't want to drudge up bad memories, but he couldn't help feeling curious about an era he might have lived through.

Rick answered with a wistful look. "All I'll say is, we did well to make it this far."

The area fell silent as the two walked through the city's underground. The area had been preserved much better than the buildings outside, and now that he wasn't searching relentlessly, he finally had the time to actually observe the various buildings around him. The signs had faded and much of the merchandise was either rotted or worn down, but little elements of past civilizations remained regardless.

"It must be appalling," Rick muttered as he noticed Caleb looking around. "Thousands of years of growth and development, and we still couldn't stop ourselves from blowing each other up in a war."

"I suppose that's true," Caleb mused, "but that's not what I was thinking about."

"Really? Then what were you thinking?"

"That humanity was truly strong."

Rick chuckled. "What gave you that impression?"

"Even when the world was falling apart, people didn't give in. They still tried to stay together rather live alone and in fear. They continued to live on."

"An interesting perspective," Rick remarked with an amused expression on his face. "I don't hate it, though. Maybe I've grown too jaded over the past few centuries."

"Oh, I don't mean to speak as if I know better. I just thought–"

"I know, I know. Don't freak out. Come on, let's keep searching for Mina."

Caleb nodded and followed Rick deeper into the underground."