New World Order (TNE) [Original]

Chapter 6 - Even Deeper

Plum closed the book remembering that it wasn't the time to be reading and realized that they hadn't been eaten. Plum hadn't been eaten, but the worm had managed to break the bridge below it bringing them all down with it. In theory, that would be good news because the worm creature falls deep down and will stop chasing them. That would be the case if the worm hadn't gotten so far down the bridge and managed to hold them in their mouth too. A loud clang sound began as the giant worm hit the ground.

"We're alive!" Geoffrey shouted, as loud as the could after just having the wind knocked out of them. The dirt had a flaky texture that gave your back the illusion that it had been saved from the fall that it had just endured, sadly that was all a mirage. In front of the group was a town. No, a city; a city of once humans who had all gained new powers and transformations after the recent events who all gathered here at the last subway stop possible. Currently, it wasn't much. Certainly nothing amazing. But, compared to the piles of debris and destruction aboveground; it looked like a utopia!

"Where are we?" Plum asked nobody in particular. She wasn't looking for a literal answer but more of an explanation for what this cityscape was and how it had been built here. The answer in fact, was right in front of Plum on an oak signpost with numerous directions to get around. People were talking, worm creatures were having races to see who could excavate tunnels faster. Timothy even noticed the creature who had previously tried to eat them joining in on a race and communicated with the rest of the town with two bony tusks at the front of its mouth to make sounds. An entirely new society formed in mere days when the time came for it.

"You are in the town square. I am the gatekeeper to this city which we call The Botanist's Club. Did you buy any land here before hand?" A lady with 2 tall black wings and green skin called out to them. Timothy looked over at her with a drunken stare you could've sworn he just got transported to another planet. That's how the whole group felt; completely out of their element.

"Buy land?" Geoffrey repeated. He heard exactly what the lady said the first time but saying it again was what he did to confirm those words were real. Or at least that's how he explained it to the group defensively later that same day.

"Yes, we have a website to buy some of this cavern for those who weren't signed up for the initial government sanctioned testing. Or did you think that those in the botanist's club actually stayed in that clunky safe?" The gatekeeper continued jokingly. Her 3 eyes seemed to have blinking patterns slightly off from one another which annoyed onlookers to no end.

"So this place was here since the start of the whole botanist's club experiment? I'm confused," Plum asked feeling unsure how exactly to feel about this. She explained her emotion as predominantly confused but a more accurate interpretation would be absolutely mind boggled. Although with Plum's upbringing a term like that would never stand.

"No, this here is a city that was created much more recently when the transformation toxin was released much further above ground. The original botanist's club had a small piece of this land and was given the toxin first as a preliminary method to see how it affected humans," The gatekeeper elaborated.

The group tried to stand up but as soon as they did their legs get shaky again and they crumbled back down into the ground. Geoffrey tried to use his powers to magnetically attract himself upwards and that worked well enough. After a bit of looking around town they all decided to go to the mayor's office maybe they could put their money together and pay for some land here that way. But, as they entered the mayor's office a sound echoed through on the speakers throughout town. The sound was hard to make out at first but sounded the beginning of a terror the whole city had never experienced before. A monster had broken into the government building monitoring this whole program and taken control.