Chapter 4 - The Black Elevator

The room was covered in a thick dust, soot seemed to line the walls as if a fire had engulfed it and then suddenly decided to stop. Cans of various foods lined the walls and hung on the edge of cabinets along with food on the floor and chairs broken and in pieces. The entire bunker definitely looked as if there had been some kind of fight in it and had an intoxicating scent that made convinced your brain that something was not quite right. Plum and Geoffrey immediately went to cover their nose to try and get the scent out of their brains. Just whiffing it in was as if a spider climbed inside your nose. Speaking of spiders, Timothy found a spiders web along with plenty of eggs and tiny yet noticeable spider droppings that most definitely added to the smell. Yet no spiders. None of the Botanist’s Club. Absolutely nothing living in the room.

“The Botanist’s Club was made up of… people wasn’t it,” Geoffrey commented feeling unsettled by the room. Timothy turned to go back but the elevator had already closed and gone back up. Looking into Geoffrey and Plum’s plastered eyes he stepped into the room as if it was a delicate room of silk. Looking closely where they were stepping as to avoid the spider droppings he noticed something off about the room. There weren’t any plants. There were clearly flower pots with dirt scattered around the room but their contents didn’t include anything resembling plants.

“It sure was,” Plum told the group skeptically now feeling uncertain even to herself if there really were people.

“Well, what happened, it’s not like they could’ve just left…” Geoffrey responded as baffled as she was.

“On all my travels, through islands and caves I have never anywhere so neglected. It’s as if they knew there was a time when they could leave and simply didn’t care about the place until then,” Tim commented judging the place with all his sass they could muster.

By this time they had all entered the room but there were absolutely no signs of life, or much of anything that matched Plum’s original description. The strange part for Plum was that it kind of comforted her. Reminded her of her messy home and how lazy their dad could be about the whole place. Even though some of those moments were painful; taking a step back she felt comforted by it in a familiarity sense. It made her miss dad. But, one mystery at a time first they had to figure out where the Botanist’s club had gone. It seemed that something was keen to stop them though. A loud screech sounded throughout the room and the entire cavern for that matter. All of a sudden the giant worm monster reappeared.

“Oh no, not again!” Timothy angrily hollered at the beast. The worm ate through the walls of the structure making a hole through the bunker as if it were a tasty sandwich. The group stood, baffled by the fact that this creature had once been a human. From the black elevator a few meters away it burst through and catapulted itself at the group. Geoffrey use his powers to magnetically attract the elevator to himself, then he took Plum and Tim to the side of the room before deactivating the magnetic attraction. Once deactivated the worm went flying into the room with the elevator eventually crushing it inside. From the shock Timothy fell down. The capsule that the botanist’s club once called home had been destroyed and in its place was a shining black elevator and a worm carcace.

Pulling Timothy up, Geoffrey offered his hand to their quaking bones. Luckily, the whole bunker hadn’t been destroyed by the elevator as there was still a diary left lying around. As Plum grabbed it, they realized something that Geoffrey had overlooked. Not all of the worm had been crushed by the elevator. With that realization, as if it had triggered the event. One half of the worm began slithering away; chewing into another wall. “Everybody, get back to the elevator!” Plum urged, grabbing Tim’s hand and charging back. But, they had overlooked the fact that there was no more elevator after what Geoffrey did. But, the worm didn’t care about that.

“Chomp,”

“The Botanist’s club private diary.

“I am one of the lucky few to be chosen for this experiment, but I don’t think I should feel special or obliged. I am but a lab rat, this isn’t some kind of mission to space and I’m not some kind of astronaut. I’m going to be stuck in a bunker with a group of scientists and researchers who care about the optimal temperature for cacti more than any basic human interaction.”

Plum closed the book remembering that it wasn’t the time to be reading and realized that they hadn’t been eaten. But, their current predicament of getting stuck inside a giant worm mutant didn’t sound all that much better to her.

Chapter 5 - Out For Dinner

Martin and Marissa were starting to get hungry but in the aftermath of the destruction not many shops were open for business. There had clearly been riots, fights and stealing going on in this area but luckily with these new monsterized bodies it seemed nobody had got too injured. Now the supermarket seemed barren with the lights dimmed and an eerie lack of cheesie music, all the group could hear was their own heartbeats and the fluorescent lights getting powered. Some of the labels for the different aisles were just hanging from a thread to the dilapidated roof of the store.

“Well there’s no cashier so what should we grab?” Martin asked Marissa gesturing to the multitude of aisles.

“It’s still stealing, I don’t feel right about this,” Marissa replied feeling evidently uncomfortable about the whole situation. She stepped back onto a can of refried beans, getting some on her shoe. Thinking that it was some kind of animal dropping she decided not to mention it.

“It’s not like we can just go back home and take the food from our fridge people probably already used their powers to steal from our places a few hours ago,”

“Can we at least put the money in the cash register,” Marissa bargained, only for Martin to roll his eyes and reluctantly do it. “Was that really so hard?”

Martin and Marissa had grabbed some ingredients for a meal they both knew and needed as little prep as possible. A big Pokèbowl for them to share, that way it was raw and finding a bowl for it was pretty easy too. The only problem was looking for a knife to cut the fish and vegetables. They couldn’t find a single one in the whole supermarket. But from what Martin knew about knife prices they couldn’t purchase one with Marissa’s attitude. The grey tentacle creature came in the store from earlier. Marissa and Martin both shared a look of fear but passed by without them noticing.

It seemed like after the initial rush of it all, people had began to settle with their powers and became less aggressive.

Chapter 6 - Even Deeper

Plum closed the book remembering that it wasn’t the time to be reading and realized that they hadn’t been eaten. Plum hadn’t been eaten, but the worm had managed to break the bridge below it bringing them all down with it. In theory, that would be good news because the worm creature falls deep down and will stop chasing them. That would be the case if the worm hadn’t gotten so far down the bridge and managed to hold them in their mouth too. A loud clang sound began as the giant worm hit the ground.

“We’re alive!” Geoffrey shouted, as loud as the could after just having the wind knocked out of them. The dirt had a flaky texture that gave your back the illusion that it had been saved from the fall that it had just endured, sadly that was all a mirage. In front of the group was a town. No, a city; a city of once humans who had all gained new powers and transformations after the recent events who all gathered here at the last subway stop possible. Currently, it wasn’t much. Certainly nothing amazing. But, compared to the piles of debris and destruction aboveground; it looked like a utopia!

“Where are we?” Plum asked nobody in particular. She wasn’t looking for a literal answer but more of an explanation for what this cityscape was and how it had been built here. The answer in fact, was right in front of Plum on an oak signpost with numerous directions to get around. People were talking, worm creatures were having races to see who could excavate tunnels faster. Timothy even noticed the creature who had previously tried to eat them joining in on a race and communicated with the rest of the town with two bony tusks at the front of its mouth to make sounds. An entirely new society formed in mere days when the time came for it.

“You are in the town square. I am the gatekeeper to this city which we call The Botanist’s Club. Did you buy any land here before hand?” A lady with 2 tall black wings and green skin called out to them. Timothy looked over at her with a drunken stare you could’ve sworn he just got transported to another planet. That’s how the whole group felt; completely out of their element.

“Buy land?” Geoffrey repeated. He heard exactly what the lady said the first time but saying it again was what he did to confirm those words were real. Or at least that’s how he explained it to the group defensively later that same day.

“Yes, we have a website to buy some of this cavern for those who weren’t signed up for the initial government sanctioned testing. Or did you think that those in the botanist’s club actually stayed in that clunky safe?” The gatekeeper continued jokingly. Her 3 eyes seemed to have blinking patterns slightly off from one another which annoyed onlookers to no end.

“So this place was here since the start of the whole botanist’s club experiment? I’m confused,” Plum asked feeling unsure how exactly to feel about this. She explained her emotion as predominantly confused but a more accurate interpretation would be absolutely mind boggled. Although with Plum’s upbringing a term like that would never stand.

“No, this here is a city that was created much more recently when the transformation toxin was released much further above ground. The original botanist’s club had a small piece of this land and was given the toxin first as a preliminary method to see how it affected humans,” The gatekeeper elaborated.

The group tried to stand up but as soon as they did their legs get shaky again and they crumbled back down into the ground. Geoffrey tried to use his powers to magnetically attract himself upwards and that worked well enough. After a bit of looking around town they all decided to go to the mayor’s office maybe they could put their money together and pay for some land here that way. But, as they entered the mayor’s office a sound echoed through on the speakers throughout town. The sound was hard to make out at first but sounded the beginning of a terror the whole city had never experienced before. A monster had broken into the government building monitoring this whole program and taken control.