The Bunker

smoke and mirrors.

"What the heck?" Dylan whispered as he stepped into the room cautiously, looking around him in awe. The four of us stood and surveyed the room. 

It was circular in shape and just like the passageway we had just come from, it was made entirely of stainless steel. It was also really small. About the size of my bathroom, so basically, cramped. The steam that had seeped out the door seemed to pervade the entire room, along with the horrible smell. The overhead white lights flickered rhythmically and added to the general feeling of unease we all felt. The whirring and clicking we had heard earlier was louder in here and seemed to come from somewhere above us even though we couldn't see anything other than more gray lifeless steel.

The place looked startlingly clean. Like it had just been given a good scrub. Rows and rows of filing cabinets and drawers lined the walls, each with a small key pad next to it and what looked like a name tag attached to the handles. It looked weirdly like a fancy morgue. The floor, also entirely metallic, was littered with small circular depressions in what looked like was intended to be a pattern. The only piece of furniture in the room was a long rectangular metallic (surprise surprise) table with a single laptop on it. Of course the laptop was silver and blended in perfectly with the rest of the interior. Whatever nut job had designed this place had no taste in interior that much was evident.

Suddenly, I could hear Q breathing loudly next to me, taking in shallow breaths and gripping my hand even tighter. I had forgotten that he was claustrophobic. The kid was about to have a panic attack. I quickly turned to face him, trying to get eye contact. His gray eyes darted around the room in fear.

"Hey...hey it's okay...we can leave if you want to" I said gently

The gray eyes stared back at me, momentarily confused, then snapped back to the room around us, fear registering again. I sighed. We had to get out of here.

"Look Dyl, we gotta go, Q doesn't look too great." I said not bothering to look in his direction and afraid to take my eyes off  my best friend.

"But we just got here" was the predictable response. I was about to pick a fight with him when I felt Amy's hand on my arm, eyes wide. She was probably just as scared as I felt but hid it well enough to smile reassuringly at me.

"It's okay, I got him," she said softly detaching mine and Q's hand and replacing mine with hers. I eyed her questioningly for a second, then satisfied she really did have him, nodded and walked over to Dylan who was standing before one of the file cabinets gazing quizzically at a tag.

"What does it say?" I asked

"Well it doesn't look like English, so I don't know" he replied sounding puzzled.

"That's weird. What did you say that this place was supposed to be again?"

"Well, the guy who told me about it said it was a research center during the Second World War for some special unit project."

"Okay, that sounds creepy as heck, and like something that comes out of a superhero movie," I commented irritably.

"Well, the guy was a soldier who used to work on the project but wasn't interested anymore. Said the government abandoned the project and that there was nothing confidential left behind. They were supposed to shut down all the bunkers after the war, but missed a few. He said there's nothing dangerous in here just a few interesting historical documents"

"Right. This gets worse and worse. First he's a crazy person, but now he's a crazy traitor sharing government secrets with reckless college students." I was thoroughly upset now.

Dylan turned to face me with a wide grin. "Yep. I mean what if it's some like super soldier stuff? Like in the movies"

I stared at him in disbelief, then shook my head in defeat. "Where do you find these people?"