Cairo

Chapter 4: Fear of Blood

Not a word was said when the group arrived at a large metal fortified structure in the middle of the Basia Desert. With one swipe of a card, Doctor Savas walked into the building, the doors closing behind him before the trio could walk inside. Cairo had heard that the place was built by the Government a long time ago, and the doctor used to come out here for research quite a bit, but he'd never think he'd hear the doctor would live out here. There was a breeze of cold air that flew at Cairo's face as soon as the doors had opened; at the very least there was air conditioning along with state of the art technology in there or he wouldn't still be researching here.

"Don't lean against that," Cairo said.

Cane's eyes flew open. His body shook as he tried to pull himself away from the metal walls of the research facility he was about to rest against. "Huh?"

"The metal's heated from the sun. It'll burn you if you stick to it too long."

"Oh."

A man in a labcoat walked out of the door with another woman behind him. Like him, she was dressed in the same pure white uniform. In her hands was a single clip board with a mountain of papers that were attached. She flipped through them with ease, lazily swinging one of her fingers to the area where the sand camels were before flipping through more pages. The man hurried off behind the facility with the sand camels, and when he was gone, the woman sighed, looking up at the trio. She nodded her head to Cairo.

"We'll be walking from here on out. I don't want any buried artifacts that could be shifted to the surface ruined if one of the sand camels stepped on them. It's a mile and a half walk, by the way."

There was no talking except for the idle chit chat of Cane and Cairo. Sometimes Aerie would make a few comments every now and then, but for the most part she stayed quiet and mapped out the location as Cairo had ordered her to do as they walked. When the ruins were in sight, Cairo pulled Aerie back to him. He walked slower as the woman led them closer.

"Go scout out the runes and see what you can find out from just looking. Wait until she leaves to come back."

Aerie nodded as she ran off to the side. While her strides were smaller than a man's her speed was still faster, and within minutes of running, she was completely out of sight. The woman turned around when she was standing on the first step to the ruins. Her eyes stayed on Cairo as she looked around him.

"I thought there were three of you," she said. "A girl... did she get separated from us? We should head back now if we want to find her in case she wanders. It's easy to get lost."

"This place looks rather old," Cairo said, giving Cane a pat on the shoulder as he walked up the stairs, the woman following right behind him. "I'd interested to know what the name is. It's like a place full of history. At some point I'd like to come back here and really take my time to study the history here."

"These ruins don't have a name," she said, leading the two boys through the ruined remains. "We assume the city that was once here was a small town that didn't have a name-even if it did, though, such a miniscule place isn't important. Around here we call them the Basian Ruins, for scientific purposes we sometimes we'll refer to them as the Ruined Ruins as well. Though there are many other ruins in Basia, these are by far the biggest and most famous."

Cane touched one of the half standing pillars that was left in the sandy desert city. "But in a sense all ruins are ruined, aren't they?"

"It's the place itself we reference. Once, in the beginning, there were more pieces and parts, but time, weather, and vandalism played their roles to destroy this place. We've tried, but there isn't much we could do. It's here." She pointed to the largest structure-a large, circular mound at the outskirts of the ruins. "Many of the structures here we were unable to identify what they were or their purpose. Being one of the last standing structures, it's been explored many times by officials. From what we've heard, there are tunnel-like systems that were dug throughout the ground. It's very easy to get lost, and once you start getting deeper down, the air becomes much harder to breath in. I suggest finding the Ruby Jade as fast as you can and getting out without delay, or you might not make it back."