Another Door and Questionable Safety

“What is this place…?” Lily asked while staring at the broken-down white corridor around them. “And why is it here?”

The collapse of the staircase opened the way to a new corridor, but it was very clear that this one didn't fit the factory from earlier. For one, it wasn't made of plain concrete, this corridor was of some white metallic material instead. More even, the connection between the two places was way too destroyed to be of th e same building. It even seemed as it both of them were smashed together.

“I believe one of the buildings crumbled over the other, which would explain the state of this corridor, but… How would it happen?” Henrique crouched by the rubble between the two buildings in search of some clue of the situation. He easily managed to find signs of impact and flattened layers of white metal beneath the pile, but it only made his second question more complex.

“Maybe this city had many floors like the current Miskaria. Then, if one of them collapsed…”

“I don’t think the other building would be in a decent state if that was the case,” Shiro added in response to the thinking ex-cop. “Even if each floor was a couple of meters high and with the materials we use now, wouldn’t the damage be much bigger? Try it out for us, Kuro.”

“Hmmm… If we say that factory was as high as the ceiling, then…” The more expressive sister started to contemplate as she ran some calculations in her head. “It could work with some luck and hyperdense materials, but these look like common concrete… I would need a bigger computer to simulate everything…”

“The numbers are like this?” Amy asked with her eyes glowing blue and math she didn’t really understand being sent to their original author. “I only copied your numbers, but it should be a decent simulation. Also, I believe we are thinking wrong here, you know?”

“Huh? What is…? What?! HOW?!!!”

“What do you mean, Amy?” Lily ignored the confused twin and tried to pry on her partner's line of thought.

“I mean, what if this place was above the ground before?” The pink girl spoke as if she had the most reasonable idea possible, which only furthered the confusion on everyone that couldn’t grasp how she reached this conclusion. A place that was inside a cave couldn’t be anything other than an underground city, or that was common sense, at least.

The entrance was just a coincidental find, but there was still a cave complex leading to this place and how stable the rock roof was another sign that this should be a cave. And that was without even considering the implications of how lucky it would be for a city to sink on the ground and somehow be in decent condition. The number of coincidences and the cause of something of this scale would be too absurd.

But still, it seemed as if Amy was very sure of her idea somehow.

“I don’t know about that, young miss… It seems unlikely in the least.” Henrique was the first to answer, going for a negative option after some thought on the matter. “We are quite in deep, so the power to sink a city this much would be way above destroying every single building in the process.”

“But what if the city did not sink much? What if, instead, we covered it?” She asked in an innocent tone while also moving her hands as if to form a dome. “If whatever took the city down below did not hit the city itself, but what surrounded it, would it not work? Something like the city being in a very high mountain basin and then all the mountains falling down, you know?”

“That’s a crazy theory, Amy…” Lily commented before anyone else could wrap their heads around the new idea. “Let’s focus on the more reasonable ones, okay?”

The other members of the groups stopped to think for a moment due to the, at first glance, logic behind the idol’s words, but they soon came to the same conclusion. Only Amy seemed to still find her own idea as reasonable as they came, and even she wasn’t that sure of the why.

There was some sense of the whole idea, but it was still way too weird to be true. For one, a landslide big enough to cover a whole city would need to be caused by something just as big, and anything just as big wouldn’t leave a city to be covered. The pink idol was sure this one wasn’t the only way though, she only had no way of arguing her point too much. Most of what she had to say simply wouldn’t make sense or would put her in a bad spot, so she had to find less direct ways to do things.

It wasn’t as if she was that sure of the fragmented memories she had too, so betting on them wasn’t exactly the smartest choice.

“I won’t say it is impossible, but it seems unlikely, missy…” Henrique added in a tone that was obviously trying his best to not say anything untactful before changing subjects. “We can think about it later either way. Now that we found this new path and considering that we can’t do much about exploring the factory, should we head inside the new path already?”

“A collapsing corridor like this doesn’t seem very safe to me,” Lily answered while glancing at the destroyed area around them. “We likely should…”

“The walls are a little bent, but I think it should be safe. This place’s structure seems like the kind of thing we use nowadays even…” Kuro interrupted since she was done with knocking on the walls and thinking about it. “I can’t be sure of how good it is right here, but I bet we’ll be fine.”

“You can say this much from knocking on the wall?”

“I’m just this good, you see? And built things’ are my specialty, so I got some skills in seeing what they’re made of... Shiro’s good at written things, as you likely noticed.”

“Is that so…?” Lily answered with a good degree of disbelief in her eyes and then turned to Amy. “What do you think?”

“I say black hair is right. These walls do seem to be very resistant and in good enough condition to not fall off like the ones on the factory above us… It is only hard to be sure if the path will stay for long.”

“Uff, she straight-up ignored you, Kuro.”

“She really did, Shiro… Why so mean?!”

“Who would trust some knocks on the wall, dammit?!”

“And why would you trust Amy then?!” Kuro continued in her fake crying voice, only to see a posing Amy getting ready to answer in her mightiest outlook.

“That is because I am awesome!”

“And what it has to do with anything?!“ The other three answered weirdly in tune. They then turned to each other and started to stare in confusion only to have the pink ball of haughtiness call them out again.

“Me being awesome is the reason for everything I can do, you know?” She went on while turning to the corridor and starting to march forward. “And I am happy to see how nice my straight-man training is going with you three…”

“How could…?”

“Don’t, Kuro. You’ll be playing on her game if you do.” The white-haired woman stopped her sister before seeing what she could swear was Amy flashing her tongue at them before turning her head again. “But damn, she’s good. Is influencing people’s minds some kind of idol skill?”

The twins then turned to the other idol in their group, but this one could only sigh and hurry them forward in this situation.

“That’s an ‘Amy thing’, not an ‘idol thing’. How or where she learned this kind of thing is beyond me though… Now move on before we’re too behind her.”

“Okay.”

“Got it!”

Both students gave their confirmations and went on after the pink idol slowly moved forward, leaving Lily to turn to the two remaining members of the group who were waiting in silence.

“Both of you too, please. I don’t want to go around losing people like some third-rate terror movie.”

The lawyer and the professor then nodded in silence and started to walk too, going back to the same formation they were using before. And as usual, the droids and cameras followed suit right as everyone started to move.

As they went forward, the condition of the corridor started to slowly increase, although they could barely notice it with the limited light going. The walls deeper on it wasn't even damaged. And just as it was getting weird how in good condition the whole thing was, a door entered the group’s sights.

A much safer-looking and more technological door than the emergency stairs one, but a door nonetheless.

This door was also filled with damaged signs and whatnot, and it also had a huge, and somehow lightly damaged, console attached to one of its sides. There was no power on it though, so it didn’t seem like the thing could be used to open the door. Be as it was, this place seemed like the path for a jackpot in their expedition while also looking like a huge hurdle to cross.

“So we found the entrance to some super-secret lab?” Kuro spoke right away as if to show off to the camera now that she was more used to it. “Should we just pry it open like at the entrance?”

“I would not advise such… I believe what is behind this door is pressurized. Either that or it is meant as a vacuum storage.”

“Why so?” It was now Shiro asking as she couldn’t seem to grasp where the pink girl’s theory was coming from. “I understand saying Kuro’s plan is dumb since we don’t even have a place to place the crowbars, but deciding something like this seems weird.”

“Hey! Stop jabbing at me for no reason, Shiro… But yes, I don’t see anything that would assure us this place is a pressure chamber. For one, we would need to be in the pressurization zone, and the vents I could see around here don’t seem to be of the kind…”

“Huh? But it is written here, you know?” Amy said while pointing to some of the half-erased signs and symbols on the door. “The state is not the best, but this could very well be the word for ‘pressure’, and this other one seems like ‘danger’, does it not?”

“Eh? What?! These are letters?!” The black-haired sister approached the door in a dash and started to move around it while staring to no avail at the words she couldn’t read. Her sister, on the other side, stopped on the closest writings in some decent condition and started to analyze them.

“No, she’s right… These are in bad condition and I’m not very sure of most here, but they look like one of the dead languages I studied.” She concluded after going through the information saved in her head. “This ‘pressure’ one I never saw before, so I don’t know where you learned it, but this other one looks like ‘danger’ for sure… How the hells can you read it though?!”

Amy gave shoulders at the question as if saying ‘I don’t know’, which only worsened the questions in the Shiro’s head, but the language-focused twin ended up losing the chance to say anything.

“If it’s dangerous, then we should go to another place, Amy. It’s not as if we had a way to open this door as is anyway.”

“True… What a bummer. This place looks like such a treasure trove.”

“I wonder what would avail a pressure chamber this safely hidden too…”

“Nothing we can do, you both. And no weird ideas too, Amy, we’re to keep this whole thing safe and…”

“Excuse me, missy,” Henrique called out before Lily could turn the expedition back. “I know it looks, and may also be, very dangerous, but this kind of place is exactly why we came on this expedition, to begin with. It may very well give us the reason as to why this city is underground, so if we could at least try to open the door…”

“I agree with the professor, Lily. Who knows what important item is hidden inside there.” Amy agreed with an energetic voice that, only for a moment, turned serious. “And what dangerous weapon is there too.”

“What did you say?” The burly professor asked in surprise over the hushed voice the idol used halfway through her phrase, but she only deflected the question.

“I said that I have an idea as to how to open this door, you know? I only need Lily to let me.”

Lily, on the other side, got the idea very well.

No matter what, their real job here was to dispose of anything dangerous like the brainwashing device from the other ruin. Keeping the expedition safe and making them succeed was good, it wasn’t really a necessity. Even for Amy’s goals, which were raising their clout online with this whole spectacle of an expedition, the results didn’t matter much. In fact, something dangerous but exciting was likely better for her.

“Hmmm… Let’s try your idea, Amy, but try to keep safety in mind, got it?”

“Leave it to me!” The pink idol answered in full spirits, which didn’t help much with her partner’s worries. She couldn’t do much about it other than accept the situation though.

“Remember, safety first. And what you’re going to do anyway? Pry the door a little and pray it won’t blow up?”

“Of course not!” A pretending to be angry Amy answered as she turned to the powered-down console at the door. “I will simply make this thing work as intended, you know? Kuro should be able to help me get some cables from whatever is around and connect them to the droids’ batteries…

“Me?! I’ll help with this?”

“But of course. You are good at building things, are you not? And it will be safe… It likely is… I think… It should not explode at least… probably…”

The designed helper then turned to the more sensible member of the idol duo and to her sister, but both of them were already moving away with the other two members of the group.

And before the black-haired woman in khaki could even think of fleeing, a small and weirdly heavy hand was already holding her shoulder.