The Curious Adventure

Chapter Five: A City all in Grey

"Ellowyn you look like you've seen a ghost."

In a way I had. In the lab I poured over notes and diagrams, detailing what S.E.B had done to real people in his quest for a working limb. He was ignorant of the inner workings of the human body, he was no master of invention, he was a butcher. All the children brought down here were marked as failures, all except one, Everett Green. His survival spelled out by the only word I was able to decipher with confidence, "Sucess!"

"I feel horribly sick," I said with a forced laugh, "I think I've been underground for too long."

"I'm sure you'll forget about it as soon as you see this," he beamed.

How was he even standing here? Blissfully unaware that he had been here before. It felt unreal, I wanted it to not be real. But it was and I had no intentions of telling him. The doctor, on the other hand, needed to hear it. We followed a false lead and it ended with a monster and a criminal. To think I had intentions of bringing that book to him as a gift.

"Here it is!" He presented with open arms.

"Everett, It's a wall."

Everett smirked and we waited for a mechanical spider to scurry by and press itself into another false outlet. This door was not a quiet click like the others but a low slow rumble that shook the items from the workbench. I wondered if the tremors could be felt by the people that lived above us. 

The far wall of the main workshop slid away and was now open to a large glass tube.  I jumped onto one of the metal bands that made up the glass tunnel that stretched out before us. 

"We're under the ocean, Everett, literally under the ocean." The water wasn't as clear as it could've been considering we were in the bay and not the open ocean. It was clear enough that I could make out the glow of New Ellington's skyline. Beneath my fingertips fish swam by, blissfully unaware of the human visitors they had in their world. The buoys above us blinked to warn ships that there was something impassable underneath the shore. I was always under the impression it was a reef. I wondered how many knew it was a tunnel from Fairburg to the mainland, probably not many.

"It's amazing" Everett mused running his real hand down the glass of the tunnel.

"I wonder how far up this goes, Government wise," I added, thinking more of the lab and less of the wonder of engineering we stood inside.

"All the way to the top" Everett answered dryly, "It would have to be considering that the two of us have walked the length of the entire island. In my non-expert opinion, Fairburg is 50% hollow." His hand met the glass, "It's an undocumented marvel that's for sure."

The pair of us stepped out on to the tracks, "How far do you think the doctor made it?"

"Walking? Not far, if he took a cart," Everett raised his eyebrows "probably all the way to New Ellington."

No sooner did we start walking we were greeted with the shriek of breaks on metal and the growing light of a cart heading down the tunnel from the other side. My heart sunk before leaping back to thrum in my ears, we weren't alone.

In unison, the two of us turned running for the office. Each step sent stabbing pain up my leg from my ankle. If it wasn't sprained before it was now. We ducked behind the row of carts, my heartbeat pounding in my ears loud enough to drown out the steps of the person on the cart.

Everett nudged me, mouthing "It's the doctor."

I peered over the edge of the cart, only to have the doctor come rushing over, arm raised and attacking. Rage flashing across his normally cool face. This was it, this was how I'd die. He slowed to a stop, his expression softening into something I'd never seen from him before, was it sadness? Anguish? No.