The following day, Sigmarus, Duke, Shad, and Torin sat on the roof of an automated street sweeper vehicle that they had hacked and reprogrammed to drive to District 7 where the coliseum was apparently located. Each of them wore comfortable clothing and carried old duffel bags full of necessities for the trip, including multiple makeshift melee weapons, knives, and even a single kinetic firearm that somehow still functioned. For the most part, they rode along without speaking since the sweeper generated a lot of noise due to lack of maintenance over the years.

Riding atop a street sweeper through mostly uninhabited streets of other districts stimulated Sigmarus’ long-forgotten sense of adventure that he had only gotten from reading fiction over the years, considering he had never left District 42 of the underground since his banishment. Some areas were dirtier and had higher geiger counts, while others looked relatively nicer. To his surprise, he even saw a somewhat functioning town in the distance when they passed through District 25. Duke explained that it was the only district aside from District 1 not dominated by the underground’s numerous gangs upon seeing Sigmarus’ curiosity. Instead, a vicious militia ruled over the entire district with an iron fist and even set up a partially functioning skeleton of a government.

At one point, Shad spoke up over the rattling of the sweeper’s rotating brushes and gyrating machinery after a while since he didn’t get a chance to speak earlier on.

“Sigmarus, can you trust that guy you mentioned this morning to actually follow through?”

Barely hearing the question even though Shad was right next to him, Sigmarus shrugged. Then he grinned, raised his voice, and answered, “Dunno. That’s why we got a back-up in case he fails.”

“Back-up?”

Sigmarus glanced over at Duke, who looked back with an amused and knowing smirk, and said, “Nothing much. I know a bit about the foundations, so I got a guy on top of them near the devils’ base to spy down on them.”

“Oh, that’s good. Two sets of eyes is better than one.”

Sigmarus nodded at Shad’s muffled comment.

From there, the four of them remained silent until the sweeper started driving down a ramp into an underground tunnel connecting District 17 and District 7. As they went down, Duke gestured for all them to be on guard.

Is this where he mentioned the mutant rats live? Sigmarus wondered. Before long, a rat larger than most dogs skittered into the headlights of the sweeper before disappearing again, answering his inner question. Although he had seen mildly mutated rats back in district 42, most of them were only as big as his feet and had minor mutations like excess or lack of limbs, bones, eyes, or other body parts. In contrast, the one he just saw out of the corner of his eye brought a frown to his face due not only to its size, but also due to its horrid appearance complete with splotches of greenish bald skin, bone growths that looked like elephant tusks and an external ribcage, and warped claws. Those things alone sent a shiver down his spine, and they were all things he noticed from only a brief glimpse of the creature.

Small sounds of shuffling feet from four-legged creatures echoed around the tunnel from every direction. Feeling uneasy, he shivered and looked backward toward the rear of the sweeper. Countless pairs of red eyes stared back at him from the darkness. For several moments, he froze, but then he subconsciously rubbed the roof of the street sweeper to raise his confidence since the creatures were obviously avoiding it.

After a few minutes of feeling numerous starving gazes on their backs, the group could finally breathe easy as they finally ascended the ramp at the other end into District 7. A torn-down metal fence caused the sweeper to jostle as it drove over the boundary line which was mostly blocked off by a wall made up of foundation struts. Cement barricades lined both sides of the road they were on, giving them only one path to follow. Further up, a makeshift gate constructed from all sorts of scrap, metal plates, and cement appeared in their headlights. A handful of guards stood on a nearby watchtower peering over sturdy metal railing at them. To Sigmarus’ surprise, the four guards all carried ion rifles on their backs. Having never expected to see such weapons in the underground, he glanced toward Duke with wary eyes.

“All of this is for the rats,” Duke explained, assuaging some of his worries. However, Duke worried him in a different way by adding, “Just don’t get on the guard’s bad side, and they won’t bother you, either.”

Instantly, Sigmarus envisioned his body being vaporized by the laser-like currents those weapons generated every time they fired. He had only witnessed the inner-city police upstairs fire those things once, and the image remained as seared in his brain as the victim’s body was to the nearby wall.

While doing his best to shake away such dreadful thoughts, he distracted himself by watching the guards open the gate for them, which lifted up on wires like some sort of upside-down drawbridge. On the other side, he saw a few buildings nearby occupied by other people wearing similar outfits to the guards at the tower, though these people were only armed with batons or other blunt weapons.

Some of the people were smoking while sitting and talking on benches. Some laid around doing nothing. Some stood at attention with their weapons to make sure Sigmarus’ group didn’t do anything stupid. One guy even sat off in a corner sharpening an extra bone protruding out of his right arm. He wore only a tank top and slacks, displaying his muscular but heavily scarred arms and face. The man only spared Sigmarus’ group a single glance before refocusing on sharpening the bone.

That has to hurt a lot, right? Sigmarus wondered with pursed lips.

“The other guards ain’t even worth your left arm, but don’t mess with that guy,” Shad told him upon noticing his gaze.

“Yeah, I got the feeling I shouldn’t,” Sigmarus replied barely loud enough for his cohorts to hear.

Before long, the guard area became a distant sight, and they arrived at an area the size of a small city bustling with activity beyond anything Sigmarus had seen back on Red Street. Although the buildings themselves looked as shabby as the ones back home in District 42, the number of people crowding the street and hawking goods outnumbered that of Red Street by several times. From their view a few blocks away, it looked quite similar to a mob of rats crawling through the gutters.

Rather than head that direction however, their sweeper followed its designated path around the busy area of District 7 and toward a large cylindrical-shaped black building that towered straight up into the foundations above their heads and beyond. The building was an eyesore of a landmark that could be seen for miles around, even with other old nearby buildings almost reaching the underside of the foundations as well.

That’s a lot bigger than I expected, Sigmarus thought, his eyes widening at the spectacle.

“Big, isn’t it?” Torin said, chuckling to himself.

“Yeah,” Sigmarus replied with a nod while still staring at the building, “It even looks like it could do the job of the foundations, too.”

“Well, it technically does. There are similar buildings in all the districts surrounding District 1, though I have no idea what the other ones are for,” Torin replied.

Intrigued by the new information, Sigmarus rubbed his chin. His old coworkers and managers at the foundation melding company had never mentioned such things. That kind of knowledge would likely be suppressed upstairs, too, not that he would have any luck hearing about such a thing while living in the Middle Sectors of District 28 back then. As a result, he couldn’t help but find it interesting.

Perhaps becoming a muskrat wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to me.

For some reason, he felt his origin energy lurch through his meridians at that moment. His legs itched. He felt like running around with his newfound powers that he never would have discovered if not for being banished in the past. For now, he suppressed the desire to run wild and continued staring at the large building within which he could begin spreading his wings over the next few days. A grin spread across his face. He couldn’t wait to beat some Green Devil ass and more thanks to his once in a lifetime encounter of discovering that old laptop.