Sub Terra: Et Reditus

Seven

Daniel

"Huh?... Yeah... I'll tell you all about it when I come back... alright, see you soon, D."

With that I ended my call and stuffed my Screen back into my pocket. Aries and I sat on opposing red leather couches in the almost majestic living room, in a house that made Alana's look tiny.

"You two are like that? You're a thing?"

"Four years and running."

"Well, damn. I'm happy for y'all. If I wasn't grinding out for my dad's company, I'd probably have a girl too."

"Alright, what does Caldwell know about my dad?" I asked, still cranky at the fact that I had actually agreed to visit the Lee family mansion at 1 in the night.

"Man, if I wanna tell you that, I'm gonna have to start from the beginning."

"Say it."

"Ah... well, Caldwell spent almost a year in the hospital, after the incident at the hotel. You remember that?"

"All too well." I said.

"Well, after he was released, he decided that he wanted nothing to do with the Citadel anymore. So he decided to join Associated Medicine."

"Something to do with doctors, I suppose?"

"Spot on, Sterling!" He said. I scorned at his enthusiastic remark, although I made sure he didn't notice. "They're a group of travelling doctors who visit lots of small communities that wouldn't have access to care otherwise."

"What community wouldn't have access to that? All the cities have adequate healthcare systems, even Citadel One."

"They don't visit the Cities."

"What? People only live in the Cities. How is that even possible?"

"Not everyone lives in the Cities, old pal. There's a bunch of small towns and villages that survived the Terran-Narkephian War."

"You don't mean-"

"Yep. There are still people living on the surface. None of them are nearly as populated as the cities though."

I always thought it was some kind of legend. People living on the surface? Impossible. The war was so destructive, so powerful, even after doing my own research, there was not a single nation in the world that the Narks didn't utterly crush.

"And... Caldwell's in one of these surface communities?"

"Yep. About a month and a half ago, I learnt that Caldwell and his team visited a village in what used to be called Morocco," He opened his screen and opened a Plexon search page. "Can you read this? I still have trouble pronouncing it. Really beautiful place, though."

He turned it over to me and I read the words appearing at the top of the page, enclosed in a white triangle with black borders.

"Ait... Benhaddou?" I whispered. I pressed the 'Images' tab. I was blown away. Pictures of simple, yet extravagant red-orange buildings took  my attention away for a moment. Their condition was far better than any building on the surface of Quito. They looked like they were frozen, in a time that has since been forgotten.