Present
__________________________________________________________________________________
"Tatsu?" Rei called, frowning. She had been in bad situations before; worse ones, even. That didn't make this one any less shitty, however. The hole they had fallen into had been filled in debris, and Tatsuya was nowhere in sight. She let out a nervous breath, holding a hand to her earpiece. She glanced at the time on her watch.
7:12 AM.
"Uh, hey guys, this is Rei, password 24-ES93-PI81-39, can any of you actually hear this?" She stood motionless as she waited for a response to her message. Rei watched her clock, anxiously staring at the second hand tick.
7:38 AM.
With a defeated sigh, Rei clicked the trigger on her sword, relighting it and illuminating the area with its glow. In front of her, of course, sat the large pile of rubble covering where she had come from. She turned around and found herself staring down a long hallway, the light from her blade not reaching far enough to see the end. With no other option, she steeled her nerves and began to walk.
8:04 AM.
Rei finally reached the end of the hallway. Two tall, solid steel elevator doors stood in front of her like monoliths, with a small, unlit panel beside it with only one button on it: down. She set her sword down and cracked her knuckles, before grabbing the doors. They provided quite a bit of resistance, but that didn't stop Rei from prying them open. She peered down the shaft, and after seeing zero signs of an end, shrugged, and started to climb down.
8:31 AM.
With a grunt, Rei landed on the top of the elevator that sat at the bottom of the shaft. She took her sword and stabbed it into its roof. After carving a somewhat round shape, she kicked the cut-out onto the floor of the elevator and dropped down. Rei ripped open two more sets of doors, feeling a twinge of annoyance as another corridor stretched out in front of her. With a growing sense of frustration, she broke into a run.
8:57 AM.
Rei reached another door, except this time it was a gigantic, featureless triangular surface with a simple keycard slot on it. Fortunately, it was cracked open just enough for a person to slip through. She slipped through the gap and looked around. Surprisingly, lights clicked on, revealing a large spherical room with strips of lights encircling the equator of it. Some of them flickered, however, and a few didn't even light up, but there was enough to make her blade redundant. Rei sheathed her sword and looked around, aghast at the sight.
She stood on a glass walkway that stretched out into the middle, before it split off and encircled a large metal pillar in the center of the area. Doors sat on either side of the room, but the pathway that used to connect to them sat in glimmering shards all the way at the bottom of the sphere. Rei walked towards the pillar, and after a surprising distance, came to a stop in front of it. She stretched out her hand and placed it on its surface, tilting her head curiously, before walking around to the backside of it.
There was another door, but the walkway that lead to it stretched out in perfect condition. Rei followed it and arrived at the opposite end, trying the handle. It refused to budge; locked. With a sigh, she braced one foot on the ground and slammed her heel onto it, pushing herself forward. The door buckled and then flew off the hinges, slamming down onto the ground.
The same lighting system lit up the room. A large collection of computers sat in a half circle arrangement around one central terminal. A large screen took up most of the space on the back wall, and as soon as she had stepped foot into the space, it lit up with a prompt:
>Hello! Press Enter Please! :D
Rei paused, taking a quick step back. Her sensors hadn't alerted her through her earpiece, and she couldn't see any immediate danger. She walked up to the terminal and looked down at the keyboard. Her finger hovered over the keys as she thought it over. Curiosity, however, got the better of her.
9:15 AM.
Rei hit Enter.
YOU ARE READING
Scavengers
Science FictionAuthor's Note: This was a co-op project between me and a friend way long ago in middle school, and I decided to bring the idea back and inject some life into it! A big thank you to my friend, he's the main reason this story exists, as he was the one...