Daniel moved through the darkness of the night without any problem. He didn't have any sort of night vision equipment nor there were any lights around the camp to guide him as they would only make their camp the perfect target for the long-range artillery of the enemy forces.
No.
The camp's main advantage, after all the extremely modern defenses, was in how small it was within the enormity of the earth's greatest desert. And even if the active defenses of the camp were more than likely sufficient to keep it safe from any sort of attacks, Daniel wasn't all that comfort-needy to compromise the defensiveness of the camp just for his own convenience…
Especially with how he had no problems whatsoever when it came to seeing in the dark.
Alice followed closely behind her boss. Her eyes were of the nearly same quality as Daniels, but she apparently felt more confident following after his back rather than moving by his side.
The two of them first reached the main excavation area. There was no physical possibility to determine the precise location of the vault due to all the tiny geological changes that when multiplied by all the time that passed since Daniel left it alone would change its position relative to the surface.
Due to this reason, even after locating the general area of the vault's location, Daniel's expedition had to establish a massive area of a circle of more than two hundred meters in radius. The size of the area they needed to scour for their search was also the reason why instead of employing the modern equipment that made use of Daniel's technology, they ended up hauling one of the world's biggest but also oldest excavators.
The two of them first had to reach the edge of the excavation area before carefully moving down its slope. The angle of descent was pretty tolerable at the beginning, but the closer to the center they got, the harder it was for them to remain upright on their feet.
"Sir, over here!" a soldier standing guard by the entrance of a tunnel that dug at an angle into the hard sandstone hidden behind all the sand called out, helping the duo to notice the exact location of the tunnel's entrance.
It was around two-thirds of the radius away from the center, near perfectly in a northeast direction from where the excavator was mounted.
"Thanks, man," Daniel called when the soldier reached out to help him descend the last few meters. Daniel then turned around, just in time to catch Alice in his arms and stop her from falling face-first to the bottom of the loosely paved entrance of the tunnel.
"Thanks…" Alice muttered in a slightly dissatisfied voice.
"I would tell you to watch your step…" Daniel replied in a whisper while the darkness of the light hid the smirk on his face, "but I guess it's already too late for that."
"Shut it," Alice barked, quickly freeing herself from Daniel's arms, unwilling to let him hold her while, at the same time, making fun of her lack of impeccable agility.
'For someone over three thousand years old, she really hates physical exercise,' Daniel thought.
It was something that one could never notice when looking at the shape of her body. Yet, rather than being the result of her efforts to stay in shape, Alice's nice curves and slim waist were courtesy of all the technology Daniel used when altering her physicality to turn her into one of the enhanced humans.
'It's really a waste…' Daniel used to think whenever the topic of Alice's athletic ability came up.
Yet, as more and more wars shook the lands he used to live in, as more and more civilizations fell into decadence only to implode from within while perfectly fit barbarians would devastate its frontier and occasionally capitals…
Daniel's approach to one's physical ability changed.
'As long as she wants to, she will be able to easily catch up to the world-class athletes,' was what Daniel started to think roughly around the eighteen century, when one's speed, reaction time, and nimbleness started to devalue in the face of the rapid development of guns.
After all, it didn't matter how fit one be when a single cannonball would tear their body apart regardless of how well built it was!
"Let's just get to the vault, okay?" Alice requested, in a great hurry to move over the topic of what happened.
'To think a day would come for her to use the vault as a mere excuse to hide her shame,' Daniel thought, holding back his smirk. Now that they entered the tunnel, the makeshift illumination installed by the engineers who built the tunnel made it harder for him to use darkness as a means to hide his emotions.
"Did you find an answer to my question from before?" Alice asked after a few moments of walking through the narrow space of the downward-sloped tunnel.
"Regarding…?" Daniel asked, not really sure what the girl had on her mind.
"What are you going to do about the war after you secure the world from nuclear annihilation," Alice quickly provided her boss with the topic.
"I would love to say yes," Daniel shook his head, "but I didn't really think about it. To be frank, I focused all of my brainpower on the mission to reach the device as soon as possible," the man admitted. "So, while I cannot say I'm likely to happy-go-luckily go around annihilating armies to prevent them from taking part in the world war, I can't say I won't try to do something about it either."
Rather than giving the girl a precise answer that would build up her expectations and thus burden on his own shoulder, Daniel came up with a reply that should satisfy his secretary, at least, for now.
"You are clearly avoiding an answer that I could hold you on to," Alice pointed out the very method Daniel used to shrink away from the potential responsibility.
"And it's because I don't want to announce anything too soon," Daniel replied, right as they finally reached a huge cave filled with engineers and all sorts of equipment they used to dig it all out.
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