You feel the heavy security door shudder under your fingers as mechanisms inside slide open. There's a muffled CLACK that resonates from within the door as it opens up very slightly. Though it's clearly incredibly heavy, you find that it swings open easily enough when you pull on the handle.
However, before you can get the door open even halfway, the powerfully horrid stench of decay hits your nose. It's thick and rich, having stewed in the room beyond for who knows how long. Your stomach immediately turns from how sudden it all hits you. Worse, there's a slightly sweet scent embedded within that rot that completely undoes you.
You push the door back shut, then dash off to the other end of the cellar as fast as you can. You make it just in time to start dry heaving painfully, to the point where you clutch your chest and stomach as you sink down to your knees.
Nothing comes up, of course - you haven't had your dinner yet and your stomach is completely empty.
Well, you do feel a bit of bile rise up and very nearly touch your throat. Thankfully your nausea fades quickly, even though that sickening smell seems to still linger in your nostrils. Your body can't help but dry heave once or twice more before you finally have the ability to gather yourself together. Although your chest and stomach have sharp pains in them, you're able to get back up on both feet.
Though you desperately want to know what's behind that door, there's no way in hell you're going to last in there. Especially with your senses dialed to the maximum.
Glancing over at the piles of stuff scattered around the edges, you realize that something in there might help you. Maybe an overlooked gas mask - or at the very least lots of thick rags to cover your nose and mouth with.
You find yourself digging through everything in short order. Though you certainly find protective equipment such as gloves and goggles, you only find a handful of dust masks in a half-empty package. Wearing one of these would certainly be better than nothing, but you're certain that it won't hold back that smell.
You stow most of the dust masks in your messenger bag then slide one of them over your face. Then you go back upstairs to the top floor, specifically in one of the kids' rooms. There, you pick one of the scarves you had spotted earlier, dust it off as best you can, then wrap it around the lower half of your head.
Though you find it rather hard to breathe now, you've got plenty enough fabric between you and the rest of the world. Hopefully this is enough to hold back that terrible smell. As a final added measure, you turn down your sense of smell and taste a great degree, until you can just barely sense anything at all with them.
Then you bravely head back downstairs to the secure door.
When you open it up again, you can practically feel the stench hit you like a solid wall. And despite all of your preventative measures, you can still smell it. It's muted and dull, but it's there, and it's distinct. Thankfully, it's not powerful enough to make you retch again.
You go into the room, shutting the security door behind you. Though it doesn't latch itself shut, it still sits closed. After all, the last thing you want is for the smell to attract a bunch of predators. Or worse, corpse-eating scavengers.
The room itself is even darker than the rest of the cellar, which makes sense as there are zero light sources in here. Even with your eyesight tuned to its absolute maximum, you can barely see anything past your own arms.
Since that's as far as you can see, you decide to move to your right until you hit a wall. You follow it down with your hand touching it, just so you can keep your bearing. It's only a few steps before the wall vanishes, or rather turns away from you.
No doubt this is where the room actually begins. You were likely in just a short hallway entrance past the door.
So you keep following the edge of the room where you can touch it, with your heart pounding in your chest as you move. Simply put, exploring the dark like this, practically blind and knowing there's a corpse somewhere… well, it's nerve-wracking to say the least.
The only comfort you have is from your powers, at absolutely knowing if there's anything alive down here. Of course, there's none. But that knowledge does little to abate your fears.
It isn't long until you come to what looks like a simple metal closet and foot locker, both lined up against the wall. Just beyond them is a full size bed sitting perfectly in the corner. There's a nightstand next to it, also made of metal.
You continue following the edge of the room past the corner and find what seems to be a kitchen area. There's a metal pantry, whose contents are filled with empty cans and containers - some a bit moldy. Right next to the pantry is a metal table with all kinds of kitchen prep stuff on it. Cutting boards, knives, cooking utensils, cooking oils, spices, and so on. There's a shelf right above it, right around head high with plates, eating utensils, glasses, and so on.
Further beyond this prep area is a kind of cooktop stove, though instead of four burners it only has two. Both appear to have hard, flat metal surfaces, which makes you believe it's an induction stovetop. Tapping on the pots and pans reveal that they're all made of carbon steel or cast iron, which lends credence to your guess.
Directly to the stove's left is a deep metal sink with what looks like a small pile of dirty dishes in them. Just underneath the sink is a large open tub, presumably to catch whatever water is in the sink itself. Next to that are a number of 20 liter jugs, presumably filled with water.
When you test them, most seem to be empty or half empty, with only one being relatively full. You decide to slide it out so you can take a better look at it later, then continue along the wall.
Beyond the kitchenette is another bed nestled in this corner, though this one is queen sized. It also has two metal closets and foot lockers, which tells you that perhaps the parents slept here. And if one of the kids slept in the previous corner, then the second is very likely in the next corner you come across.
You keep going along the wall past the parents' bed and personal effects after turning the corner inwards a second time. As far as you can tell, this wall is opposite the entrance you came through. On this one, you find a couple of bookshelves filled with books, media discs, hobby materials, and random other electronics; tablets and personal media players and such.
Between the two shelves is a rather long L-shaped metal desk with what seems to be a couple of laptops on the surface. There's also a smattering of notepads, pens, and various sheets of paper on the desks. Of course, since it's practically pitch black you have no idea what's on those papers. Could be maps for all you know.
Just past the second shelf is what seems to be some kind of armory. There's a metal gun rack with three carbines hung up, along with a couple of pistols in cases below. There are stacks of ammunition piled up in the shelf beneath the rack itself, along with multiple spare magazines for the carbines and pistols.
Beneath all of that is what appears to be a stack of armored vests, though you can't tell if they're stabproof or bulletproof. You slide one out to remind yourself to look later.
Then you continue past the armory down the wall until you reach the third corner of the room. There, as predicted, is another full size bed along with its accompanying metal closet and foot locker.
Since you're just trying to get a sense of the room, you skip over the last sleeping area and continue along the wall past the corner. It only takes you a few steps to get to what seems to be an entertainment area - there's a television mounted to the concrete wall with a media stand beneath it sporting a multimedia player, gaming console, and some speakers.
There's a couch some distance from you looking towards the TV - you can just see it at the edges of your vision. And between the couch and television is a rug with some kind of pattern on it, which you can just barely discern in the darkness.
Next to the entertainment center appears to be a padded floor with racks of weight lifting gear in them. There are also various exercise equipment scattered here and there - skip ropes and boxing gloves and even a minimal treadmill.
The last thing you hit further along the wall isn't another bed in the corner. Rather, it seems to be an enclosed space that sits in the corner itself. You feel around for a bit until you find a door and its latch, then open it up.
Inside is a prefabricated bathroom, with what looks like working plumbing. There's some kind of manual water pump in the middle, which when you activate spits out a few splashes of water. Or at least, you would hope that's water.
This is likely how the family kept themselves hydrated.
You leave the bathroom and continue along the wall, at least until you come to the end, where it turns and leads back out to the security door.
From the distance you've walked around, you gather that it's perfectly square - or close to it. And it's moderately sized, perhaps equal to or slightly larger than the house's footprint above.
And judging by its size, you can more or less guess where the center of the room is. You trepidatiously let go of the wall and start walking towards your guess. Now without anything physical to anchor your sense of direction, you can't help but feel like you're flailing out into nothingness.
You suppose it's true in multiple ways, not just down here, but in every aspect of your current life. Not that you dwell on that idea for long.
It only takes a dozen steps before you come to the center, where you see a quartet of corpses huddled together on some couches. Most of their bodies have long since liquefied and their organic matter has soaked into the couch itself, which has been halfway eaten through by bacteria. You certainly don't want to get any closer than you have to, and just seeing what you do sickens you deeply.
Well, you're certainly glad that you can't see any details or any colors - you have no doubt that seeing these in normal light would only bring down some kind of curse on you.
Still, despite the revulsion you feel, you can't help but empathize with these people. You can practically feel their fear as they died, which was probably slow and agonizing.
You guess that because the pantry is empty, they must have died of hunger, right? But if that's the case, why didn't they just leave? Were they stuck in here? Did they accidentally entomb themselves in an attempt to escape from the end of the world?
Then you notice a couple of rifles at their feet - though you don't get close, you're sure that they have been used. Probably not on themselves, but certainly on something. The upturned and armored tables just outside, perhaps?
A deep need to know fills you suddenly - it's a curiosity that's beyond a mere itch. It seems more like it's calling to you, and you find yourself transfixed on the spot, unable to think or move otherwise.
But no answers come to you, which only frustrates you deep inside.
An idea strikes you out of the blue and you open up your Third Eye to take a look around you. Here, the flows and currents are nearly still, likely owing to how few living things are out here. And of course, since the family has long since passed, their Threads are nowhere to be found.
Not that you expected to see them - instead, you decide to pour energy into your Third Eye. After all, every time you've activated it thus far, it has always been passive. You've never once focused your energies through it like the rest of your powers.
If they can be boosted, so could your Third Eye, right?
Your senses widen as you pour in more energy into it. It swells outward so you can see more of the world around you, beyond the farmstead. Out there you can sense the numerous smaller Threads that every critter has, which weaves beautifully out into the currents.
The flow of psionic energy is still slow and weak out there, or perhaps it would be better to think of them as calm.
You realize that since your ESP is also cranked up to the maximum, your vision in your Third Eye is also clearer. In fact, you're able to pinpoint each and every single critter out there, where in the past you'd only see clusters of psyches.
On realizing this, you decide to pour energies into your Foresight as well, and truly push all of the powers of your Cognition to their limits.
But instead of shards of the future assailing you from every direction, you instead see human Threads flicker and fade into existence. Your three powers blend into each other, as though seeking a new way to be channeled. The sensation is wild - your own psionic energies seem to have a life of their own as this happens. You only partially feel in control of them.
It frightens you at first and you're tempted to pull back all the way and stop channeling altogether. But in the end you decide to keep going, to see what's happening. After all, you're already in an exploratory move.
You sense the world around you shift and become deeper and richer as you the psionic energies of your Discipline of Cognition shape themselves into something new - a fourth primary power. You feel like a fish who has finally realized that there's an entire reality that exists beyond your bowl - and that the bowl is a barrier that you can cross.
The lights flicker on in the secure bunker, even as your fourth power manifests. With the lights come living moments that the family in front of you have experienced. Mother and father and son and daughter, living and breathing and eating and laughing.
These moments flash in and out of reality, back-to-back right after one another, showing the family singing as they cook, talking as they dream, shouting as they argue. They pace nervously and exercise furiously and do their very best to make their lives tolerable in this small space.
You get a sense that many months pass as the visions flutter in and out - their hair gets longer, and the children get taller as time goes on.
Then comes a frightful moment where they're huddled together on the couch, similar to how they're laid out now as corpses. Their faces are filled with fear. And it's because of the furious banging and drilling and sawing and grinding that's coming from the other side of the security door.
Though whatever's happening outside is incredibly dulled inside, it hardly stops the family's fear from flowing out of them.
You can feel it overwhelm you, even as the vision itself ends. All of your powers of Cognition also fade significantly as you let go of your channeled energies. Simply, you physically can't hold it up any longer - the very act of finding and activating the new power has greatly drained you.
Letting it continue would have only wiped you out, and you'd rather not pass out near a bunch of corpses. Lest you join them, or somesuch.
And although knowing the family's ultimate fate has made you incredibly sad, you can't help but feel somewhat elated at the same time. You've discovered the fourth power in Cognition, one that allows you to reach into the past and experience it for yourself.
So you decide to name it Astral Memory.
After your soulful journey with that long-dead family and learning the power of Astral Memory, you take a decent sleep upstairs before continuing on your journey the next night. You spend the next few days afterwards hopping from farmstead to farmstead along endless grassy plains and bountiful lands.
As you continue on your lonely journey, you realize that it's becoming significantly hotter the more you travel. And it isn't just because there's less shade - you're certain that the temperature here in the plains is much higher than the temperature back in the city.
There, you could at least walk in the sunlight for a few minutes at a time without getting burned. Here, you find you can do no such thing. You could perhaps last a dozen seconds before your skin begins to burn. You thank the stars that there are more than enough shelters along the way to keep you cool and safe during the oppressive daytime.
Though there have certainly been a few extremely close calls thus far - you only just found your most recent shelter just as dawn rose. Having that close a call has certainly put a spring in your step as you travel tonight, not wanting to be caught out in the heat any longer than needs be.
Of course, you've scavenged and looted your heart out all along the way as well. How could you not? All these juicy farms and ranches in your path are too tempting to resist. Sure, most of their treasures have long since been taken or rotten away, but you're still able to find quite a great deal to stuff into your inventory.
Perhaps the most abundant thing out here has been water, to your absolute surprise. Just about every farmstead and ranch has had water wells of various kinds with plenty of groundwater in their reserves. Beyond that, many also typically have multiple drums filled with reserve water, already filtered and sanitized for potability.
So you have pretty much drowned yourself in water thus far, and have filled your bottles and water bladder to the brim at every stop. No sense wasting a single opportunity.
One of the more helpful things you've found is a regular tarp. Well, perhaps not quite regular - it's not just any old cloth. This one is relatively large and also completely waterproof. It's certainly a bit more rugged, and could handle quite a bit of environmental abuse. Any rains that fall will be hard-pressed to reach you underneath its cover.
Plus it frees up your poncho and allows it to be used as a blanket instead.
You're able to roll the tarp up neatly alongside your sleeping bag, allowing you to stow both of them easily via your backpack's bottom straps.
You've also picked up a bundle of paracord, which your bushcraft book highly recommends. Although you've been practicing making rope out of the copious amounts of grass out here, having a professionally-woven rope is akin to having a bar of silver.
It's roughly 10 meters in length which allows you to make plenty of your survival tasks much easier. Lashing your shelters together, for one thing. Of course, you haven't exactly needed it thus far considering you've been staying in buildings.
But you're certain that you'll need it at some point and so stuff it in the center of your tarp/sleeping bag roll.
One other thing you're ever so glad to find is a simple flashlight. Well maybe this one isn't quite so simple. It isn't battery powered like most others, or rather, not with disposable batteries. The vast majority of disposable batteries lost their charge during the apocalypse, and even some rechargeable ones couldn't be recovered.
A few kinds of batteries have lasted through the apocalypse, however. Mostly ones whose build quality is far above average. Though charging them takes longer, their maximum output has permanently been degenerated and so they can't store as much as they originally could.
The flashlight you've found works rather well despite all those downsides. This one appears to have a hand crank that you can flip out on one side. Spinning it up charges the flashlight with electricity, allowing it to operate for about half an hour.
Plenty enough for you to rest your Temperance and ESP. You've certainly been getting much better with both of them, and have refined them so they use far less energy than before. But they're still taxing to use no matter what, and so you'd like an option to allow you to give them a reprieve if needed.
Plus, you might be in a position later where you can't or won't use your psionic energies. So this flashlight is a good placebo for those times.
You stuff it into one of the many pockets on your cargo pants, somewhere in easy reach.
And speaking of useful tools, you've also picked up a camping hatchet. Though it certainly can't replace your Telekinetic axe, it serves very well as a simple placebo. Like with the flashlight, there will be times when you just don't want to use your powers, so having this is going to come in handy when you need to source some wood the old fashioned way.
The hatchet comes with a little leather sheath which you can hang on your belt for easy access. You slide it up close to your knife, so they're both on the left side of your waist. This allows you to draw either one of them with ease at any given time, with either hand.
And perhaps among the most valuable things you've found along the way are all kinds of informative and knowledgeable books. Though you don't keep most of them with you permanently, you make sure to read them as much as you can.
You spend perhaps an extra hour or two reading the books you find, usually before you go to sleep, or just after you wake. And once you're done with them, you leave them at whatever shelter you finish them at.
The handful you've read (or are about to read) are about land navigation, wilderness survival, gear maintenance, negotiation tactics, and local fauna identification.
It's the last one that you're most interested in, as you want to better understand the critters and animals that live in these plains. The more you know about them, their habits, their diets, their predilections, the easier it is for you to predate or avoid them.
Or simply watch them if you feel so inclined. You've never really found animals very fascinating in the past, perhaps because you're from the city. Now that you're mired in all kinds of wildlife, you find yourself utterly amazed by them.
Of course, the book doesn't tell you anything about the alien animals that also roam the planet now. But it can glean some clues through similarities in their behavior. And if anything, this book has prompted you to catalog the alien animals yourself.
Perhaps by practicing with regular earth animals, you could start to observe alien ones.
You've already found yourself a journal and pen, with which you've begun to sketch and note down all the alien wildlife you've already come across. Such as the Stampeders that you saw back in the city - those massive ones with the metal hooves. And of course the Grazers, which you found mostly around the city outskirts - they're the long-necked kind that eats all kinds of vegetation.
Among your notes are the two Crags you've come across as well - the bone and the stone kind. Since those are the most you know about, their pages contain the most notes thus far. There are also more sketches of them, which is natural considering you've been up close and personal with a number of them.
The last things you've picked up are spare clothes - shirts, pants, socks, underwear, and so on. Simply, without soap the clothes you wear become more and more worn as the days go on. And also dirty and crusty and at times, gross.
Though you've been rather liberal with washing them out at the farmsteads with the copious amounts of water you've had access to, the dirt still gathers up over time.
Having fresh, clean clothing is certainly a great luxury, and so you've found that having a few extra pieces in your backpack for use or for trade is ideal. They're worth their weight in gold, at least in your opinion.
All that pretty much sums up the items you've picked up just in these past few days. These farmlands have been incredibly rich and bountiful, and you're sure you're going to miss them the moment you pass the last one.
In fact, they've been so bountiful that you've had to leave behind quite a lot of loot. Many had all kinds of shotguns and rifles and their respective ammunition. One even has its own armory, where its previous owner had clearly assembled and maintained their many firearms.
Each also has a variety of protective equipment, from heavy gloves to robust helmets, and even ballistic vests in one case. The ranch with the armory and ballistic vests appeared to have been owned by someone who had served in the military, as there was also a ghillie suit in one of the closets.
Another farmstead had stacks of cash stowed away inside of a thick safe, in multiple national currencies. Next to them were a handful of passports from different nations, a rugged cellular phone, and a razor-sharp karambit knife.
Despite the sheer array of useful and valuable items, you decided you didn't need any of them and left them where they were. You could certainly barter with any of those weapons for a great profit, but the plain downside is that you'd have to carry them around in the first place.
You've already got plenty stuffed in your bags and pockets already, and picking up more weight would only slow you down further. In fact, you feel as though you should lighten up a bit and potentially ditch some of the things you don't really need.
As you had told Frank weeks ago, you would much rather stay relatively light during your travels. Of course, you're not really sure how feasible this is, considering how much equipment you've picked up thus far.
Logic tells you that the further you go west, the more equipment you'll need.
Perhaps you should have accepted Frank's offer for an upgraded backpack - you might need more space after all. But you wave that thought off quickly - that's a problem for another day.
You spend much time ruminating on your journey as you travel under the quiet, starry sky. Most nights are serene, with the air being relatively crisp and light, even if a little warm. The smell of grass and rich soil swims around you, giving you a sense of peace and calm to help tidy your mind and heart.
A thin and sharp scent invades your nose out of nowhere, snapping you out of your reverie. The smell is familiar - that of burning fabric. When you glance down away from the stars and back down towards the ground, you find numerous patches of glowing orange lines scattered in the distant plains ahead of you.
You don't have to use any psionics to realize that there has been a great fire out there, and portions of the grass are smoldering quietly. Like coals in a dying campfire.
Anxiety bubbles up within you, and ascends slowly and steadily as you travel towards the burnt landscape. It only takes a couple of hours before you arrive at its edge, with the heat rising with every step.
You eventually reach a point where the charred grass crunches under your feet, and the acrid smoke of burning foliage is thicker in the air. It's enough to make you cough and choke, so you find no other choice but to don one of your dust masks. Though it certainly helps keep your lungs from burning, that scent still invades your nose.
And the heat has become less bearable now; you can almost feel it washing over you in waves even despite the lack of visible flames anywhere close to you. They'd be easy enough to spot in the darkness, even beyond a couple dozen kilometers, perhaps.
But there are none in sight, only the glowing embers of dead flames.
A wide Scan reveals precious few animals around you - understandably so. There's nothing left to eat here, save for the burnt corpses of the critters that couldn't run far or fast. The only animal thoughts out here are those of scavengers and carrion feeders, whose minds are filled with thoughts of overcooked meat.
But you and Noir trudge ever onwards despite the dead and dying landscape before you.
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