by Ryan DeBruyn
Continuing my spin, I find more. A kitchen that appears to have a new stove top and cupboards. A group of ten cots that have blankets and pillows. A little part of me squees a bit, but there’s more. An entire section of the space is enclosed by concrete walls but with a green tiled door leading into it. Am I in the basement of a Toronto building? If that’s the case, the place is no longer standing. I glance back at the pile of rubble. . .
That is still the only explanation that makes sense. This must be a basement that was converted to be some sort of apocalyptic shelter after The Rise. I’ve seen enough of those on my travels across Ontario. Usually, these places are really secure. Meant to withstand massive explosions, right? So, if the ruins fell on top of it, how will I get out? My heart begins thumping madly against my chest as a feeling of being trapped washes over me. If I am stuck down here, won’t I slowly dehydrate and die? Or waste as my two drops of liquid run dry?
“Anyone there?! I need help!” I shout as my brain chooses to add to my stress. This is the first time in my life I appear to be alone. The silence of the room echoes my own words back to me, but nothing more. I place a hand to my head as the world spins. My body shivers. Am I hyperventilating? I force my breathing to deepen. Okay, it’s fine, the first thing I need to do is figure out a way to live down here. But how am I going to live on my own? I don’t even know the first thing about how people survive without others. Slowly, my brain begins reminding me of tasks I’ve done that will help me.
I cooked every day for the mercenaries and Leah. I always listened and attempted to learn when they spoke. I butchered meats and scavenged towns for foodstuffs and even the wilds for berries and flora. I fight down an overwhelming resurgence of fear when I recall that I relied on the mercenaries accompanying me on those foraging missions. I restart, going over all my tasks and accomplishments throughout the years. Finally, the dizziness abates, and I distract myself with the other curiosities I found. I definitely have the resolve to fully explore the interesting basement before panicking again, right? The tight feeling inside my chest remains, but I slowly move to the faucet in the kitchen.
Turning on the tap, I hear a loud groan before the water begins flowing. That isn’t unheard of, as many abandoned towns have water pipes with enough pressure to still dispense. However, the water inside those pipes is usually hundreds of years old, meaning rusty, dirty, and undrinkable. To my surprise, this water doesn’t have a sulfur smell to it or the brown coloring that I’ve come to associate with old water sources. For it to appear this clean is an exciting development. The tension around my heart eases slightly.
Dipping my fingers under the stream, I touch them to my lips, tasting. Nothing that makes me spit it back out. After the taste test, I take a small mouthful and swallow—using the same method the mercenaries do when finding a possibly contaminated water source in the wild. If I don’t feel sick in the next few hours, that will confirm no bacteria or contaminants in the source. After that, I turn off the tap, not wanting to waste the reservoir. I will want to preserve it if it’s clean. My hopes surge as I consider the possibility that water may be taken care of. A further ease of tension around my heart gives me additional energy as I continue to explore.
As I open drawers and pull out pans, plates, cutlery, and other pristine kitchen appliances, I continue to think. If this was the basement of a building, the owner must’ve been quite wealthy and ready for The Rise. There must be non-perishable foodstuffs around here somewhere—right? If nothing else, I may be able to boil the water to clean it.
After The Rise, appliances and tools like these weren’t expensive. Still, they also weren’t commonplace, especially among a group of mercs who travel light and only send a few members to suburbs to shop for the rest. To me, this place is a treasure trove of luxury, and I can’t imagine everyone living like this. Still, when I don’t find any foodstuffs in the kitchen, that ‘treasure trove’ sours. All those amazing items might as well be weights around my neck as I sink into a lake.
I leave the kitchen and approach the blackening grout and tiles of the green door. Strangely, the dirty black appearance is not on the floor tiles and seems to slowly disappear as I watch. I kneel down and stare at the junction of the wall and floor, trying to see if my eyes are playing tricks on me. I think I see the black grime receding another fraction of a millimeter, but it’s too hard to tell. Shrugging, I walk inside after making a mental note of the approximate height of the dusky film.
Please, let this be a pantry or a cellar. I have found some old canned and jarred foods in houses in the past. Some of those wouldn’t be edible now, but I may be able to find something . . . like those big boxes of protein powders—Leah’s mercs didn’t think they ever went bad.
Inside the door is not a pantry but a room with rusty boxes stacked on top of each other, their lids facing wooden benches that are old and cracking. My hope surges because the metal boxes look like they should store something, but they all seem to be empty when I open some of them. Toward the back of the room, there is a hallway that has two doors leading off of it. One opens to a public bathroom, which actually has water in the toilet bowl. If this toilet still flushes more than once, I will be better off than before!
The lever does depress, and the water rushes away before refilling. Strange, this toilet doesn’t have a tank on top, so where is that water coming from? I lean down and inspect the toilet’s base and find a few inches of new white ceramic. Why has everything in this area aged so strangely? The water comes out of a pipe on the wall, leading directly into the back of the thing. It appears I have a working toilet, but it may come at the cost of my reservoir of water. The sinks nearby have rusty faucets, which I am used to seeing at this point, but when I try one, water flows from it, just like in the kitchen. This place is already far better than any other I’ve stayed in, except for the no food thing.
The final room in this area of the basement has columns with—surprise, surprise—rusty showerheads. I test one of these and find running water here as well. I hope this room is fed by a large store of the stuff, or somehow a connection to Etobicoke still exists. As I leave, I consider what the room reminds me of.
We saw something very similar in some large buildings the mercs, Leah, and I used to explore in small towns. The older members of the group call the buildings ‘high schools.’ They often contain rooms with metal storage lockers, bathrooms, and showers, and those rooms are termed ‘locker rooms.’ I even recall one of those locker rooms in a small town with functioning water and a sewage system. Alrick and Leah guessed that there was a town reservoir on one of the nearby mountains before The Rise. Maybe that was what this was? But unlike the blue mountain regions north of Toronto, Toronto itself didn’t have many large hills with man-made water sources on them. Maybe the nearby lake?
Taking showers in that school had been far more relaxing than baths in the rivers. As cold as those showers were, they were much more comfortable than always worrying about a dungeon monster dragging you under. I keep moving and check the only other two areas with objects in them: the cots and weights.
These areas are pretty wide open with no places to really hide items; so, after a cursory search, I move on to checking walls and the floors for something I might’ve missed on the first inspection. I find a silver pocket watch on top of a flat-bottomed piece of concrete on the floor and pick it up to examine it. I press the circular top button, and the device slides open on its hinges with ease. Something this old-looking being in such good condition suggests that someone left it here recently. However, the inscription inside makes me pause.
Alrick, always try to do your best and succeed at everything you do.
A small click sounds as something hits the ground near my foot. I look down to see a little glowing yellow pill on the floor. I have seen Leah hand these to the mercenaries from time to time as payment. Through Alrick, I even know what they are. This is a Sun Pill, a particularly rare and expensive item in this world. This pill is the prim
ary function of Elysium Cities. The True Silver Arrays that surround them collect sunlight and mass-produce these. When consumed, they transfer liquid to the individual. One of these is worth a year’s salary for non-rankers and is part of the excellent pay Alrick claims to get from Leah.
However, Alrick wouldn’t just leave this here, would he? I scratch the top of my head and look at the watch before picking up the pill and placing it back inside. Could everyone have been captured? No, that wouldn’t fit with the collapsed staircase and building. For this to be here, shouldn’t Alrick be in here with me?
“Alrick!” I shout, and receive only the echo as an answer.
The only other possible scenario I can come up with is that Alrick threw me down here and then went to rejoin the fight. That sounds like an Alrick thing to have done. Maybe he left the pill for me? With it, some of my worries about food and wasting fade away. With a Sun Pill, I can replenish my liquid, which can replace my need for food at a rate of one drop per day. It’s not a preferred or popular way to use liquid, but it helps in a pinch like this.
After my eyes have been over every remaining inch of the structure, I wind up at a massive round concrete table with a strange black circle protruding from the top. I have seen two similar, almost puck-like discs in the kitchen and weight room. Shaking my head, I sit down on one of the rickety metal chairs. Leaning back in it, I admit the terrifying reality to myself: I don’t have any food. . .
Chapter 4
August 22nd, 151 AR
Jeff Smith
The dizziness returns, and I can feel my brain sinking into that same dread that froze me earlier. Before it succeeds, I shoot back to my feet and begin pacing. I start thinking fast. I don’t want to only have my two drops of liquid and the Sun Pill to fall back on. I already went through the kitchen, and it didn’t have a single can of food or other foodstuff, but there was one place I didn’t search—the fridge!
Usually, opening those is a bad idea. A lot of people died before they could finish the fresh food. Many people supposedly stocked up heavily right after the Towers rose, preparing for some sort of apocalypse. Many of those same short-lived individuals died with an overabundance of toilet paper. What had they been planning to do with it all?
Moving to the fridge, I begin second-guessing my desire to open it. The one time I opened one, the dead mold and dust eddied right up my nose. The level of coughing and crying that followed made me throw up, and the old musty smell stuck with me for days! My nose didn’t feel normal for a week, but I need to know. Maybe the owner stored long-term foodstuffs inside. . . I place my hand on the handle, plug my nose with the other and take a deep breath of fresh air before flinging open the heavy door, with my breath held.
It’s empty, which makes me breathe out my lungfuls of air in delight. There aren’t even plastic containers or glass jars inside. There’d been a few of those in that other fridge. They had gunk inside that I don’t think should ever have seen the light again. Then I remember that I still don’t have any food. That nagging, walled-off part of myself begins beating on the distraction-divider, trying to tell me how doomed I am. I desperately fight back. I know eating isn’t entirely necessary for humans anymore. Instead, I can slowly consume my Dantian liquid to counteract starvation. Still. . . that comes with a time limit.
I notice something and use it to distract myself further. Is that a functioning light inside the fridge? And cold air? I stick my hand inside and find that the space is chilly. This basement has a functioning fridge too. I force my brain back to the LED lights overhead and in the bathroom. Where could this place be getting its power? I didn’t consider that before. My first guess is solar panels on the roof, but the rubble pile and hanging stairs make that highly unlikely.
I open the freezer below the fridge and find no food there either, but I find the air as cold as winter. This place is absolutely amazing, but it won’t matter without food to store in the functioning fridge and freezer.
Stop it. I force a change in direction for my thoughts. Is this how all suburbs are? Wait. Why did Leah never enter the safety of suburbs? I never did get an answer to that question. In my current situation, a higher base of cultivation would certainly be helpful. . .
There is no reason that I can recall, but she, and by extension the group, definitely avoided them. When I was really young, I thought she was protecting me from something inside. As I grew older, I became more and more confused by that choice. Easy access to the sun was available in the suburbs. Wouldn’t I become stronger if we stopped in one for a time? Now, I just recall the mania in her eyes. It bordered on fear, but why would she be afraid of me?
I perform a secondary search of the room, while I continue mulling that last thought over. It’s a bit too huge to pick apart right away. I was an F-rank, and no one feared a fish. Then was she afraid of the suburbs themselves? No, that’s not right. Leah never let me have access to a single sunspot that the mercs found out in the wilds either.
I did summon the courage to ask her about it one day, too. I recall her being in one of her saner moods. What was her response again? I remember it decreased my assessment of her sanity. Oh right, she told me that the entire world was wrong about how to cultivate. The entire world!
My cheeks flush hotly as I recall the day I realized that children were allowed to cultivate. The day I realized that Leah, my own mother, was a tyrant. Up to that point, I had just thought the way I was treated was the norm. I think I was eight or nine. . .
Our group had a chance encounter in the wilds and it changed everything. We ran into a merchant group who camped nearby, and I managed to sneak away to bravely talk with another kid my age. I’ll never forget the embarrassment I felt when the kid looked at me like I was a country bumpkin. The child even asked what dungeon I grew up in. I think that means he called me a monster, but truthfully, I’m still not worldly enough to understand his insult.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t answer the question or completely take my mind off starvation, and I’ve circled right back around the room to where I started. I close both doors on the fridge, remembering that power can also be a limited resource. Alrick had compared it to liquid in the Dantian, I think. I try to search for another avenue of thinking as I return to the central table. The pile of rubble at the entrance catches my eye. That’s the only option left really, trying to escape. I turn my chair around and find myself staring at the massive pile of broken concrete. I need to begin digging that out, but avoiding a cave-in isn’t going to be easy. At least I have two days, but if I am injured by a falling stone or strain my muscles too much, I will significantly shorten that time and risk exhausting my liquid.
Closing my eyes in concentration, I consider my options carefully. If I am going to be working at a dangerous job like that, I should have a liquid reserve just in case. Using the Sun Pill now should also let me increase my Dantian size. According to what I’ve overheard, an F-ranked pill gives twenty-five drops of liquid.
Most of the higher-grade Sun Pills are reserved for high-level cultivators to replenish their energy while in the Tower. So, this is likely a low-rank pill. Alrick wouldn’t just leave it for me if he didn’t want me to use it, right?
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission.” Alrick told me that after I got in trouble for ranking up to F-2 with his coaching. It had taken the man multiple tries to finally convince me that I should try it. He gave me some sort of soupy tonic that contained fifteen whole drops of liquid to complete the task. I remember he finally convinced me after explaining that kids were usually brought to the local church to increase their ranks the first time. That reminded me of that boy who looked down on me.
I pull out my small journal from my torn and ragged cargo pants, and scan the first page. The information is the same as before, and I already know it by heart, but I figure having the reference can’t hurt. Before I change my mind, I pop the Sun Pill into my mouth and pull my legs into a crossed position. Then, like Alrick coached me, I dive into my
center. I really wish I were better at meditation, but I was only given the single coaching lesson with promises of more once we escaped and had access to the sun. Alrick was a mercenary, after all, and parting with coins for cultivation aides when all I needed was sunlight didn’t seem to sit well with him.
I have the notes in the journal, which have some breathing exercises, and I begin there as I recall Alrick’s instructions. A low rolling heat begins growing in my stomach and I realize that I’ve kind of started a timer too. “In the F-ranks, you must open and purify the pathways around your God Organ. In this way, you can increase your organ’s size but also increase its density. Density will allow the liquid to later be put under pressure.”
The heat begins turning into drops of free-floating liquid. I start circulating the liquid outside my Dantian and into the vessels around the organ. The God Organ is just under and behind my heart, while also remaining above the liver. Only the largest ‘vessel’ called the ‘River’ is cleaned and mostly purified, the result of my only rank-up with Alrick. I begin there and force the liquid energy to flow alongside my blood. It’s strange because while both are fluid-like—or appear that way in my mind’s eye—they don’t fight for space. They flow directly on top of each other, almost like the energy merges with the blood. I don’t know much about the human body, but I feel like the vessel is also an artery.