Chapter 508: The Secret
Laz had to admit, the cult members were pretty helpful after Laz told them what he needed. He wasn’t sure if it was their eyes or something else about them, but they were able to spot clouds of the red energy in several places over the next few days. Unfortunately for Laz, due to his job and their confinement, by the time he made his way over there, the most he was able to capture was the tail end of the cloud basically vanishing or times when all he could feel was a trace lingering.
This time though, as Laz stood in front of the open bathroom, he could clearly see the dense cloud spilling out from the closed door.
’Fuck,’ Laz said to himself as he watched it expand like the smoke from a burning fire just barely being contained behind the door. If someone were to come along and open that door, they would be completely submerged within that mist. While Laz wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if someone got hit by such a big concentration of the stuff, he didn’t want to find out either.
As it was, he had only come over here at the ’insistence’ that one of the prisoners had heard some loud noses coming from behind the door, a cover that one of the cult members had used to allow him to be free to investigate. But now that he was standing before the door that was monitored by camera, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to go in.
Unfortunately, there was no way for him to refuse as the message had been delivered when he was with Vera and she was grabbing a security team even as he watched the door. In a case like this, they weren’t suppose to check it out by themselves since the nature of the prisoners was one where it was dangerous to walk into an unknown situation.
When the four heavily armed guards with helmets and riot shields finally showed up, Laz was handed a shield and a helmet for himself.
"Are you sure this isn’t some sort of prank?" The head of the team asked Vera, knowing that this kind of thing did happen.
"It was a report from one of the blind bitches while she was on cleaning duty. I hate to admit it, but they don’t lie. Part of the decree or something," Vera responded while fitting the helmet onto her head.
"Yeah. Only those weird freaks have any honor anymore. Alright, line formation. Let’s go in," the leader said and everyone took their stance. Laz was at the back due to his inexperience. While he had trained in some drills and did well, he hadn’t had the chance to perform so he would still be treated like the newb for a while.
The door was locked which was strange and set off a red flag for everyone. While the bathroom in question was a guards bathroom, a check had been done with all guards verifying themselves as being present.
Therefore, there was no guard behind that door.
As such, the leader nodded to one of her underlings who pushed a key into the hole and unlocked the door before stepping back.
The door was slammed open and everyone rushed into the small space, something Laz didn’t want to see happening but was powerless to stop.
The small bathroom was nothing more that a stall and a sink with barely enough room for the six people who went in.
"DAMN IT!" One of the guards said, finding the room empty.
"FUCKING PLAYED US!" Another one said as she kicked the toilet so hard, it broke away from the wall.
It was then that something crazy happened, at least in Laz’s vision. The red, mist like energy suddenly retreated backwards, sucked into the hole that was now in the wall as the busted pipes sprayed water everywhere.
The head of the guards, coming back to herself yelled,
"What the fuck Carol? Destroying public property?"
"I don’t know what came over me boss. I was just so angry for minute there and I couldn’t control it..."
"... Me too actually. I wanted to put my fist through the wall but now, for some reason, I feel fine..." The leader admitted as she took some deep breaths to steady her racing heart.
"Mam? I think masks are in order. There might be some sort of gas in the air from whatever the hell is down there?" Laz said, pointing at the large hole in the wall. The hole itself was only about half the size of a person, but that was because the wall itself was still in tact. Behind it lay a large open cavern that seemed to stretch back quite a ways.
"Good idea Nate. Everyone out for now. Carol, go work off some of the energy and get the gas masks from the armory," the leader said, ordering everyone to leave the bathroom for now and pulling the door closed behind them.
As they waited out there for Carol to return, Vera turned to Laz and said,
"What was that? You ever see something like that before?"
"What? A hole in the wall?" Laz asked, not sure what she meant. Laz was trying to focus his spiritual sense on the hole to scan it and try to get some idea about what was happening.
"No. Carol just losing her shit like that. I’ve known that girl for a few years now and I’m telling you, she is the most even tempered person I’ve ever fucking met. But five seconds in there and she suddenly lost her shit like a woman who found out her husbands been banging the babysitter."
"Uh... wait... what?"
"You know what I mean."
"Right. Anyway. I don’t know. Might be some gas that was coming out from the wall that affected our senses or something. Don’t know and won’t know more until we figure out what’s back there," Laz said with a small smile to reassure Vera.
"I just got off the line with HQ. We are ordered to do a summary investigation and report back. They will get some contractors in to fill in the hole as long as there are no utilities or anything else back there. If there are, then things become a bit harder and the bathroom will be off limits while they fix everything. Good, you’re back. Everyone put the masks on just like in training. We are treating this like a level five training exercise. Masks stay on for the duration of the mission. Got it?"
"Yes mam," Everyone responded.
This time, It was the leader heading in first. As Laz had finally bothered to read her name tag, he learned her name was Jane.
Jane took slow steps, ducking underneath the destroyed wall and turning on her flashlight to light the dark interior.
It was a cave almost ten feet high and six feet while, shaped like a circle. Once everyone was in and assembled, they proceeded one at a time as Jane lead the crew further down.
At one point, the solid floor turned into solid stairs that kept descending deeper and deeper.
Laz had no idea what kind of stone the walls were, but when he touched it with bare skin, he noticed that they seemed warm to the touch.
’What the hell?’
After almost twenty minutes of walking, they came to the end of the stairs and proceeded down another long hallway before finding a room that contained some illumination. As Laz was at the back of the line, he could only stop quickly after almost crashing into Vera.
"What is it?" Laz asked, seeing the girls all stopped in the archway.
"It’s... that..."
They followed forward until they entered the room and Laz finally saw what gave Vera pause.
Ahead of them was a massive cavern, much bigger than Laz had ever seen before. All around the outside of the cavern was a thick stone walkway that ran the perimeter of the room in one big circle.
Past the walkway was a drop that seemed like it went on forever, too dark to see past a pix foot point as though the darkness were a liquid filling the ground.
And in the center of this was a giant stone podium upon which was a massive white structure that almost seemed to glow white, as though illuminated by the moon.
Connecting the podium to the walkway were four bridges, one in each of the four cardinal directions.
Looking closer, Laz made out the structure and felt his back go cold as the realization of what he was looking at hit.
"It’s a massive mausoleum..."
They were lucky enough to be facing the front of the structure, upon which their gaze stopped on a large metal gate, each side bound to the other with dozens of massive, metal chains. Whatever was in there wasn’t something the people who built the place ever wanted to let free again.
Just as they started to come back to themselves, the ground started shaking, waking them up even faster.
Laz turned to face the white mausoleum and in doing so, he noticed one of the chains had come undone and landed on the floor, it’s metallic sheen having been turned into rust all of the sudden.
