A World Long Since Dead

Chapter 10: Searching for Elysium

“Jade… When you said you had seen other artifacts like my watch, where did you keep them?”

“What does it matter? It’s all gone now anyway.”

She lay imitating sleep on a crude mattress of scavenged plastic packing foam.

“Jade, just answer the question…”

She sighed, in frustration or resignation, it was impossible to tell.

“Elysium is a front for the syndicate” She said without opening her eyes.

“We operate under the radar, noone knows about us.

In the basement Tyran runs a… research facility of sorts. It’s where we keep any artifact that turns up.

But none of them work without their owners, I told you that. Even if you could find another watch there, it wouldn’t help us.”

“It’s not a watch that I am trying to find” Mason said.

“According to the inscription, it was made this year. I don’t know how my grandfather got it, but it was made here. I’m willing to bet that the others were too.

I think that this Syndicate of yours still existed, right up until the very end, and that they found a way to harness the alien technology. Then they sent it back, through the dimensional rift, to help us… To help you…”

Jade sat up, the her eyes flickering with a hint of their old fire.

“So, you think, there might be something still there that we can use? That we can bring back with us, to stop this?”

“That’s exactly what I think” Mace grinned.

“Besides” Mason picked up the Watch’s bronze housing.

“I can’t fix this here. I don’t have the parts. Maybe Tyran’s lab might?”

Jade stood, and immediately began packing the few remaining tins and supplies.

“We need to move fast then” she said.

“We will need to use the light to move through the streets, we can rest come nightfall”

Mace smiled. It was good to see the old Jade back again.

“Where do we start?” she said.

“The city… I don’t even recognise it anymore, we could be anywhere…”

“I don’t think so” Mason replied. I think that when we phase shifted we stayed in the same place, we just shifted dimensions.

“So, we have to get all the way across town, to Elysium, without a maglev car?” Jade replied.

“We don’t even know which direction it’s in!”

“Actually, that’s not quite true. That entity that I saw? It was searching for something. I could feel it. I thought it was me, but now I’m not so sure.”

“I think it was searching for Elysium.” He added after a pause.

“That’s a start… Jade said. Did you see which way it went?”

Mason nodded, and the two started walking.

Their excitement and burning hope held off the piercing cold for a time, and the two made good progress.

They climbed over rubble, under twisted steel I-Beams and the remnants of a once proud city.

“There are no bodies” Mace finally spoke the thought that he had been trying to banish since he arrived here.

“Yeah. I noticed that. The greymen were here. There’s nothing left. Not even bones.”

They walked in silence after that.

Finally, in the gathering dark of an early night, there was the faintest electric flash in the distance.

“Jade!” Mason shouted in a whisper.

“I saw it too!” She said.

“That’s the creature you saw?”

“Yeah!”

“We must be close” she said.

They inched closer, moving cautiously now. Jade gripped her empty Stellar-Patterson in a combat stance, as if its presence alone reassured her.

Even if she had ammunition left in her revolver, Mason was sure it would have little effect on these strange entities.

The pair took nearly an hour to cross the few remaining streets between them and their goal.

It was dark now, and, framed by the mangled rebar and torn concrete, they could see them.

There were three at least, maybe four, it was hard to tell. They seemed to fade in and out of existence like spectres.

When they were visible, they took the form of amorphous spherical balls with a texture that rippled just like ocean water in a stiff breeze.

The structure of the creatures morphed and shifted radically as they floated, great undulations from within caused the surface to bulge outward, as if some great beast was struggling to get free.

The electric blue glow that Mace first saw from the department store seemed to emanate from the core of the entities. As they moved, flashes of thin, jagged lightning shot from them and ionised the air with a bright spark and rumbling boom of thunder that could be heard even from where Mace and Jade crouched, watching.

Now and again one of the entities would suddenly glow with a brilliant light that pierced the darkness, a light focused on a piece of debris, a demolished section of a building, or a patch of rubble.

Then the light would go out, and the shifting blue glow would be all that could be seen.

“They are searching” Jade said.

“Searching for life. For organic matter to consume. With us gone, there’s probably slim pickings left. A few rats, maybe, but they want it all. Those bastards!”

Jade raised her voice and half-stood from her crouch, anger and hatred growing in her voice.

Mason grasped her shoulder and pulled her back into cover.

“Jade! You have to focus! See the way they’re circling? That must be Elysium up there. Those… things… know there’s something in there, something important.

Is there another way in?”

“No… But there is a way we can get close…” Jade said, and danced off into another darkened side street, not even waiting for Mason to follow.

“Here” She said, having found what she was looking for: A round metal grate that she had excavated from beneath its covering of snow.

“The industrial district is below sea level. Or at least it used to be. So they built overflow tunnels to catch the water. If we drop down here, we will come out right next to Elysium”.

“Sounds like a plan. So, just reassure me, these are overflow tunnels, not sewers, right?”

Jade shrugged. “Everything is a sewer if you’re desperate enough. Get in”.

Mason climbed into the inky black void, and was hit with a stale, musty smell.

Jade appeared beside him, and within moments, the tunnel filled with a dull red glow.

“Tactical flashlight, carry one on my keychain. It’s not bright enough to attract attention, and the red colour doesn’t ruin your night vision”.

Mason was about to ask where she learned these things, but thought it would be better left for another time.

They walked in silence through the flooded tunnels.

They could hear the skittering of tiny feet in the darkness. Mason prayed they were only mice.

In parts of the narrow concrete passages they were up to their knees in fetid, stinking water, in others, up to their waists.

Mace almost retched at the rotten smell that assaulted his nostrils, but pushed on, knowing they must surely be close.

Finally, when he felt that his churning stomach could take no more abuse, Jade’s flashlight illuminated an old metal ladder, bolted into the face of the concrete.

“We should be right under Elysium. You first” Jade said, holding the light for him.

Mason gingerly tested the bottom step for strength, and it promptly disintegrated underfoot.

In the dark, he glanced at Jade, his concern highlighted by the red glow.

“Bottom rung was under the flood level” She said. “Others should be fine”

Mason put his weight on the second rung, and it held. Gradually, he began to climb, until, with a crash and a thunk, the bottom half of the ladder completely detached from the wall fell to the ground, Mason along with it.

Jade grabbed him as he fell, preventing his head from striking the concrete.

Both of them stayed there, stone still, waiting, listening.

The manhole cover at the top was sealed shut, hopefully absorbing the sound of the collapsing ladder.

After a few moments, the two stood.

Jade roughly tested the remaining steps.

“It looks like the rest of them are ok. I’ll give you a leg up, you open the cover at the top, then pull me up, yeah?”

“Got it”.

Mason, despite being sore from his fall, was desperate to get out of this stinking rat-infested place.

He stepped into Jade’s outstretched, intertwined, hands, and began climbing again.

This time, miraculously, he made it to the top, and began pushing with his shoulder against the manhole cover.

It was stuck shut with years, maybe decades, of grime, oil, and dirt, and Mason grunted with effort as he slowly heaved it out of the way.

Finally, it gave, and the metal screeched audibly, sliding open to reveal a grey patch of sky against the black tunnel.

Mason climbed back down to grab Jade’s hand and help her get onto the ladder, then climbed back up and out, worried that the rickety, rusty metal wouldn’t take the weight of both of them.

He recognised the courtyard of Elysium.

It was even more dilapidated than he remembered from his reality, but the foreboding concrete structure was still there.

Being an industrial building, it was built strong, built to last, and it had.

As Jade reached the top of the ladder the grey sky was pierced with the brightest white light she had ever seen.

“Mason! RUN!” She shouted.

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