[2-A]She crept up to the corner, slowly pushing her trinket past the wall as she listened for anything happening.

  As the ck of noise continued, she padded slowly past the corner she was at and looked down another empty tunnel. She had come to discover that the rger areas she was used to were rare and hard to find. Most pces she had been since then were smaller tunnels and little caves, some open and more seemingly closed up tight, all empty as the tunnels as far as she could tell. She didn’t know how long it had been since she had st seen her home, but her eyes kept trying to close on their own and she had trouble keeping a steady pace.

  At this point she was going to have to hide in the next empty cave she found and hope that the noises didn’t follow her this far. She had never been away from her home this long before, she hoped her trinket didn’t stop working anytime soon or else she would forever be lost to the darkness, easy prey for the noises.

  They had changed after she ran from the wall. Where before they had been distant clicks and low rumbles, now she could sometimes faintly make out a low guttural sound and thumping. It was quiet now, but there was no telling why. As she continued her desperate journey down the tunnel she finally stumbled across another open cave. This one had a little base for a nest like her home did and she found a bnket rumpled on top. Looking around at the fps on the walls, she tried to find a space to hide, not trusting the open cave to protect her like the wall blocking her home. One of the fps near the nest was barely rge enough if she curled up and didn’t completely close the fp, but it hid her from the tunnel and she couldn’t bear trying to find another cave.

  Curling up around her trinket, the cool walls of the hideaway made her shiver a bit, so she went and grabbed the bnket that had been on the nest spot. Dreading what might happen on her first night away from home she fell into a fitful sleep, even the slightest noise making her heart beat faster and bringing her fully back awake. Still, she kept quiet and tried to rest, not knowing how long it would take to find her home again.

  She had gotten used to sleeping in little hideaways now, a handful of sleeps away from her home.

  She had come across a stash of treats but didn’t recognize the area, not sure if it was a new stash she hadn’t made or if she had just come from a direction she didn’t recognize. She still moved around that area a bit trying to see if she could find her way back, but every time she thought something looked promising the noises returned and drove her in a direction she didn’t know. She had kept the scavenged bnket at least, wrapped around her body to keep the cool walls from stealing her warmth. With that and her trinket she felt she had hope to eventually find her way back home, her only worry was the size of the treat stash.

  She had also found another area with water. Though some of the area had seats like that one in her home where she could relieve herself without the smells staying around, the rest of the area had strange spouts that dripped water from above. It was difficult at first to get the spouts to give her water without getting all wet in the process, but she managed to figure it out and could drink her fill…

  So long as the noises stayed away.

  She had to be careful as the water area and where she stashed her treats seemed to be the area where the noises were heard the loudest. No longer a distant thing she could sneak away from, those areas the noises could be heard clearly. She had to learn to move very fast without making any noise herself so that she could run away without drawing attention.

  She was determined though, slowly she was learning the area so that she could run around the noises. She was sure that they were between her and her home. She only hoped that she could find another food pce, as she dreaded going back along the path that had led to her extended adventure. Perhaps when she made it home she could explore in the opposite direction to the noises. Now that she knew what to look for, she was confident that she could spend a sleep or two away and find things that were farther away than what she could find in a single time being awake. As she was imagining it in her head, the new Food pce filled with powder and treats, she froze.

  She could hear them, the noises, thumping up behind her. She panicked, she was at a corner that only turned one way and she didn’t think that she could make it back to the st corner she had passed. Worse still she hadn’t checked this new corner yet, anything could be waiting for her. Her panicked gaze swept back and forth between the corner she had passed and this new one, but the thumping was close now.

  Too close.

  She ran, dashing around the new corner as fast as she could, the thumping behind pushing her on. She flitted around the corner and kept going, her legs pushing her as fast as they could to find a hideaway as all the fuzz on her body stood on end.

  She had seen it.

  As she passed the corner, the very st thing her eyes had captured was the monster filling the tunnel with its bulk.

  [2-B]The answer was yes. Blue lines did lead to a bathroom.

  Whether that was intended design was still up for debate as the line kept going well past said bathroom and had several other lines alongside it. Possible coincidence aside, said bathroom seemed to be a communal one with a bank of showers on the other side of the room, so not much for privacy.

  Considering that the toilets were evil, that may or may not be a good thing.

  They weren’t just straight up evil either, they were deceptive. They looked all nice and comforting with their heated seats and bidets. The stalls were kind of cramped, but it was enough room to do your business and enjoy a rexing break, right up until you had to flush. It was like spawning a bck hole in the plumbing.

  They had Suction, capital S required.

  Worst part was that it was an automatic flush. He would give good odds that if they were anything like the sensor flushes he was used to, if he fell asleep on the toilet or took too long on a ‘break’ he would get his soul sucked out through his backside.

  At least the showers were ok. Clean with adjustable heads and a dispenser for ‘soap’

  …future ‘soap’?...

  Some kind of liquid product probably linked to showering at least.

  Guess he would find out next time he needed a shower. Which would be soon if he had to keep doing circles following those darn lines. Other than the rge corridor he had taken to calling the ‘industrial tunnel’, seeing as how it was much rger than any other tunnel he had found, most of the tunnels were the same shape and size and only varied in length. Easy to get lost and hard to orient yourself.

  He had found a lot of weight to put on the ‘still a growing boy’ theory as well, all the smaller tunnels no more than a foot or two above his head. If he was still six foot that meant they were really low for ‘mysterious bunker’ tunnels with pipes and such in the corners. Didn’t help that once he found a ‘crew section’ full of bunks, all the beds were super short. He had no idea what bed feng-shui dictated the size of a mattress for a given person’s height was, but unless future people liked to sleep curled up or preferred that beds matched their height exactly, they were either short, or he was super tall now.

  Still nothing conclusive for either argument but the tall side made him feel better, so he was going with that until proven otherwise. Who hadn’t dreamed of being a giant walking around a city as a kid? Of course giants had needs too and small beds weren’t gonna cut it, several years of his own feet hanging off the end of a mattress said so.

  Fortunately, the colored lines swooped in to help once more and he managed to find a rger bunk room. Other than the small beds and low ceilings all the bunk rooms were decent. They weren’t nice apartment size, but they had plenty of room for a living space found in a mysterious bunker. The rger bunk had to be some head honcho or boss monster room if entertainment media had taught him anything, but if they used regur beds and could live with cramped ceilings like these he wasn’t scared of them. Though it was a good thing he didn’t have custrophobia. Luckily the room had enough floor space he could tetris some mattresses around and get a comfortable floor bed.

  Finding enough sheets to make a nice thick yer, enough to not feel the points where said mattresses met was another matter entirely. He was not looking forward to undry day and he wasn’t even wearing anything. He could have wrapped some sheets around himself, toga style, but he didn’t see the point. Togas weren’t much use in his current predicament and he certainly didn’t have enough shame left to care if someone saw him naked. Hell, it was probably their fault he was naked in the first pce so they could suffer the eye damage.

  If psychic damage was his only weapon he would abuse the crap out of it.

  Nothing living had made its presence known though so it was a moot point anyways. Which also wasn’t great considering he had nothing to eat.

  Once again he turned to the lines, choosing the yellow this time, because he could. He would have to find some way to thank the almighty lines as well, as they once more deposited him somewhere that was clearly a canteen or mess hall of some description. Typical long tables and benches, even if they were shrunk considerably by his standards.

  Failing to find any screens to entice to dinner, he made his way back to a promising area that may be a kitchen, his early promise remaining unfulfilled. Fortunately for him, said area probably was a kitchen as it had metal parts that got hot. Unfortunately for him, said hot metal parts seemed to ck the necessary organic matter to make it a proper kitchen.

  After a thorough scouring, he concluded that said area was probably for prep, as it seemed to ck a fridge or cold box and most of the obvious storage seemed to be various bits of hardware and utensils. He did manage to uncover a bag of white powder with some text on it, though it could go any which way as to what it actually was.

  Turned out said mysterious bunker had a nguage he couldn’t read, fantastic.

  Bravely sniffing the powder turned up an offensively neutral scent that could be anything so he made like a drug dealer and stuck his pinky in it. Probably better ways to test if it was a cleaning agent but the ck of burning on his skin meant he had to move on to the not fun part. Taking the offending digit and touching it to his tongue revealed that the powder tasted like flour’s boring cousin.

  Hooray for context clues?

  A bit of utensil wrangling and experimentation ter he stood looking down at what could generously be called a fpjack. Taking a cautious bite proved that more generosity was needed for that description, as it tasted like a fpjack’s boring cousin. It was hard to celebrate his sleuthing with so little fvor.

  Putting down his creation, he left wheat’s extended family behind and decided to look farther afield for wherever the food was stored. If he felt fine after several hours he would return and start to ration the powder, but even a cursory gnce could tell the bag wasn’t going to st long.

  It was a good thing he hadn’t made a bet cause he would have lost.

  Turns out that the industrial tunnel wasn’t the only different tunnel the pce had. His new mysterious home seemed to have some kind of mirrored design. One rge tunnel going down the middle, a medium sized tunnel on either side at each end, making a sort of capital I shape or a squished H if you didn’t like your letters fancy, with quite a few smaller corridors linking the various stops in-between.

  Stops like the crew bunks and the bathrooms. There was a second mess hall as well, with its own store of bnd pancake mix and ck of cold storage, so he was clearly missing something. It didn’t help that he hadn’t touched a single door since he woke up a couple days ago.

  While he was all for finding better food, the powder stuff would tide him over and he wasn’t about to start recklessly opening things until he figured out why there wasn’t anyone here. He wouldn’t normally be afraid to fight whatever shorties might pop out but that changed real fast when your mysterious bunker was giving off horror movie vibes. Too much TV might be bad for you in normal life, but empty bunker that was possibly doing research was prime movie script territory. The st thing he wanted was to open a door and get swarmed by zombies.

  While he hadn’t managed to find any kind of science b yet, the presence of his cryo pod in an empty room was a great big red fg. There were other possibilities of course, but the ck of any organic matter besides himself was making it hard to come up with which ones were more likely.

  His meandering had turned up useful information though. He had managed to find text in the same color as the lines, clearly some kind of bel on the walls. Not being able to read could be kind of fixed if he could find something to write on, since he could follow said lines to the end and see what the bels correspond to. Not the best way to decipher an unknown nguage but he didn’t have much else to do while he was wandering and it would keep his mind busy. Better than contempting the soul crushing emptiness and inevitable demise by starvation.

  Seriously, why hadn’t he got stuck somewhere with some nature?

  Sure he would have been much less equipped to handle nature survival but at least he would have had a chance. Unless the lines decided to be generous and cough up a food replicator that didn’t require any inputs his days were numbered.

  At least he had hot showers. His end would be a nicely groomed one that didn’t wrinkle his nose like whatever had been here……

  ..Well, crap.