The first thing that really stood out to Dixon as they approached the mines to the east was how desolate it was. True, the badlands tended to be stark and barren at the best of times: the desert was a harsh land of extremes, after all. But there were still pockets of life to be found—ripperbeasts, jittermice, carrion birds and direwolves.

But not here. As hard as he listened, he couldn’t make out anything other than the whistling of the wind and the crunching of their own footsteps. And, after a few moments, he had to ask about it. “Is it just me, or is it… too quiet?”

Centauri and Gray Hawk made assorted, uneasy sounds of agreement, but Needles merely said, “That’s a side-effect of the purification process.”

“The what?” Gray Hawk asked.

“Purification process. When a congregation settles someplace permanently, the local purifier performs a series of rites to protect the sanctuary from any who might do them harm; chiefly the Tyrants, but wild animals and heretics are also supposedly repelled by the purification rites.” After a moment, he let out a sigh. “I suppose we’ll see if that’s true shortly.”

“Well, we did manage to slip inside that wind farm facility,” Dixon pointed out. “Wasn’t it purified?” In fact, now that he was thinking about it, there hadn’t been any animal activity around the wind farm, either, but he’d been too distracted by trying to find a way into the facility to really think about it at the time.

Needles let out a hum, but didn’t verbally answer. At least, not right away. A few more minutes of tense silence passed before he murmured, “When we reach the mines, let me do the talking. Keep your heads down, and don’t speak unless spoken to. And try and act normal. We’re just scouts returning from a completely uneventful patrol.”

“But we’re missing one person,” Centauri pointed out.

Needles exhaled sharply. “We’ll just have to hope they aren’t counting. Or, if they are, our companion got dragged off by a ripperbeast when we traveled a little too far from the sanctuary.”

Having a story at all helped put Dixon a little more at ease. That is, just a little. The whole plan felt insane, but it wasn’t like they had a lot of options.

The mines looming ahead of them seemed to grow larger a lot quicker than Dixon expected, and before he knew it, they were standing in front of one of several dark mineshafts, the entrance a gaping mouth ready to swallow them, the jagged rocks around the outside a row of teeth waiting to chew them up.

Needles slowed to a stop right in front of the maw, and the rest of the group followed suit. Into the darkness, he called, “What they hath wrought,”

A moment passed, then a voice echoed out towards them from somewhere inside the tunnel. “They bring upon themselves.”

Needles continued, “What they hath sought,”

“They shall lament.”

“What they bring upon the earth,”

“We shall overcome.”

“What they condemn,”

“We shall revere.”

“In our brothers and our sisters,”

“We trust, and we nurture.”

“So the day may come when we liberate ourselves.”

Needles and the mystery person inside spoke the last line in unison. Overall, the poem sounded more like scripture, though not out of any holy book Dixon had ever heard of.

Footsteps sounded as the figure in the tunnel came closer, and finally stepped into view. He was shorter than Dixon had been expecting, his lips pulled down in a thin frown. “Any trouble?” he asked.

“No,” Needles said, “though we noticed a bit of activity coming from the Nation.”

The guard waved a dismissive hand. “Probably still reeling from the purifier’s raid last night. You know how jumpy the Navajo folk are.”

“Raid?” Needles asked, cocking his head like he didn’t know what the guard was talking about.

The guard’s lips parted slightly. “You haven’t heard?”

Needles shook his head, and the rest of their group copied the motion.

The guard let out a breath. “Well, then. Be watchful when next you walk near the border. One of their leaders broke her pact with the purifier, and sent allies to take the technologist back. They destroyed the wind farm facility!”

Gray Hawk stiffened beside Dixon, not that Dixon could blame him. Assuming the guard wasn’t lying… Well, that’d be something.

“Really?” Needles asked. If the news surprised him, he was good at hiding it. Eerily good. “Well, what were we expecting, really?”

The guard snorted in amusement. “I know, but don’t repeat that where the inner circle can hear you. The purifier’s been in a hellish mood ever since. Not even his newest arrival’s been enough to completely soothe him.” A slow grin crossed his lips. “Have you seen it yet? It’s magnificent!”

It was Needles’ turn to stiffen ever so slightly, and for a moment, Dixon worried that this was gonna turn into a fight after all. The guard had just hit Needles’ button, it seemed like. But, Dixon was once again impressed by Needles’ self-control, as the healer forced himself to relax and said, “No, I haven’t had the chance, yet.”

“Last I heard, the purifier was taking it down to the basilica. You might get the chance when they come back up.” The guard stepped to the side and nodded deeper into the tunnels. “Sorry to keep you waiting. You’re probably exhausted.”

“And hungry,” Needles agreed. “Thanks for the chat.”

The guard nodded as they strolled by, casual as you please.

Dixon still couldn’t believe they’d slipped by so easily, even as they trekked deeper into the mine shafts. Beside him, Centauri let out a soft breath, and they turned to see that the guard was safely out of view. Maybe not earshot, but they could at least look at each other now.

Dixon pulled his hood back just far enough to look at the rest of them, mouthing, “You good?” as he scanned over his companions. His friends.

Centauri and Wilkes nodded easily enough, but Gray Hawk wore a deep frown that aged him by several decades, and Needles’ earlier confidence seemed to have evaporated and he was left gazing off into space.

Dixon clapped him on the shoulder, making the healer jump. Oops. But, maybe it was for the best, since the momentary distraction seemed to have knocked him out of his funk.

“Now what?” Dixon whispered.

Needles shook his head. “I don’t know. None of the sanctuaries I grew up in were like this.”

Centauri sighed. “Great… So we don’t even know—” He paused mid-step suddenly, frowning.

“What?” Gray Hawk asked, stopping as well. “What is it?”

Centauri stomped a couple times. Dixon winced and turned back in the direction they came from in panic… but no, the guard hadn’t heard. Still, he turned back to Centauri with a reprimand on his tongue when the kid said, “I thought I hear something…”

Before Dixon could say anything, Needles let out a gasp and scrambled towards Centauri, making the kid jump. He shooed Centauri away, then knelt down where the kid had just been standing and started shoveling at the layer of dirt that covered the ground.

Dixon’s brows furrowed, and he took a step forward. “Needles, what—”

“Shut up and help me!” he snapped.

Dixon, Gray Hawk, and Centauri shared a bewildered look, before Dixon shrugged and knelt down beside the ex-cannibal, helping to shovel the dirt. He figured Needles knew what he was doing. Mostly.

A few seconds later, their efforts revealed something dull and metallic a few inches beneath the ground. Gray Hawk muttered something under his breath that Dixon couldn’t catch, and knelt down across from them to help out. A few seconds later, they had unearthed a large, metal circle in the ground, a couple feet across. A thin gap less than an inch wide encircled the entire thing, like a deep engraved border. In the center of the circle was a smaller, chipped blue circle of paint, with some kind of blurry shape in the middle of it, and printed words along the perimeter. Unfortunately, those words were upside-down from Dixon and Needles’ perspective.

But not from Gray Hawk’s, as he immediately craned his neck around and began reading. “Central… intelligence… agency.” He peered up at them with a frown. “What’s that?”

“I’ve heard of that!” Centauri exclaimed. “Part of the old world government. They did spy things, especially during the war.”

“Just what we need,” Dixon grumbled. “Spies.”

“The other facility, beneath the wind farm, had the same insignia inside,” Needles murmured, nodding to the chipped blue circle. “This… is the top of an elevator shaft.”

“Great. How do we activate it?” Dixon asked.

Needles shook his head. “I don’t know. It just started shaking. I thought it was an earthquake at first. But I—”

Suddenly, the circle started shaking. No, vibrating, right through Dixon’s gloves, making the bones in his wrists tingle. He, Needles, and Gray Hawk jumped.

Needles immediately grabbed his shoulder. “Back! Get back!” They staggered away, scrambling back, watching in silent awe as the narrow gap around the perimeter of the metal circle opened up, and a transparent tube glided up into place, its top almost-but-not-quite scraping the cave roof.

With a soft hiss, the apparent front of the elevator slid open, like a pneumatic tube in an old world bank.

It’d been years since Dixon had seen a cylindrical elevator. They’d been fairly rare, even in Reza City, typically reserved for trips up to the top of the tower. Since Dixon never had any reason to go that high, he’d never actually been inside one. This one appeared to be larger than most, though, and he wondered what this one had been designed to carry, back before the war.

Centauri’s mouth was hanging open when Dixon glanced over, the kid looking like a strong breeze might knock him over. Dixon reached over to nudge the kid’s shoulder. “Hey. You okay?”

“It’s… incredible,” Centauri breathed, and Dixon realized abruptly the kid had likely never seen anything like it before. Dixon and Gray Hawk had experience in Reza, and Needles had been at the wind farm, and Wilkes… who knew with Wilkes, honestly.

Dixon supposed that, given the circumstances, the kid was taking it as well as could be expected.

“We should move,” Needles said suddenly, snapping Dixon out of his introspection. “We have no way of knowing how deep this facility is, or how long this elevator ride will be.” He stepped into the elevator first and turned to face them, backing away until he was pressed against the wall.

Dixon sighed and stepped in next, followed by Gray Hawk, Centauri, and Wilkes. Surprisingly, there was room for all of them, though it was a bit of a snug fit.

The door slid closed with a soft hiss, and Centauri yelped as it began its descent into the depths.

Much to his relief, the elevator stopped accelerating fairly quickly, evening out into a swift descent that still made his guts twist around themselves. Still, it was better than speeding up.

Desperate for something else to focus on, Dixon reached for his rifle. “Weapons check,” he said, popping the cartridge out and giving it a thorough look over. He could hear the clicking of the others doing the same around him, but was too focused on his gun to look, trying not to think about what was waiting for them. Not that he really knew what that was, but he could guess. And for once, he was worried that maybe even his worst fears wouldn’t quite cover it.

A steady lake of dread had been pooling in the pit of his stomach ever since they’d climbed into the elevator, and he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that they were heading to their doom.

But that was probably just his paranoia talking again.

The previously pitch-black space just outside the elevator suddenly opened up into a sleek black and white administrator’s office, and Dixon heard a gasp coming from Centauri.

The door slid open, and they all piled out one at a time. Centauri gazed around them with his mouth agape, admiring the space that was probably cleaner and higher-tech than anywhere else he’d ever been in his life.

It was all so similar to Reza, it made Dixon’s skin crawl. Strange as it was, that was one thing the old world seemed to have in common with the citadels—they both tended to be spotless, like they didn’t even know the meaning of the word ‘dust’.

It wasn’t natural. Life in the wasteland wasn’t supposed to be clean.

He was almost relieved when Centauri’s soft, awed voice gave him something else to focus on. “This is…” He gasped, unable to finish his sentence. For once, he actually looked like a kid.

Dixon tried to suppress a grin, but didn’t quite manage it. “Close yer mouth, kid. Don’ want any old world bugs flyin’ in there, do we?”

Centauri’s mouth slammed shut with an audible click, before he turned to Dixon with an annoyed furrow between his brows. “You’re just messing with me, aren’t you?”

Dixon half-shrugged. “A bit, yeah.”

“Jerk.” Centauri elbowed him in the side, but the look of awe returned to his face soon enough.”If we lived down here, we’d never have to worry about raider attacks again!”

“Hey.” Gray Hawk nudged Centauri gently. “Worry about the mutants first. Then we can decide what to do with the facility.”

“Assuming we can handle them all,” Needles added darkly.

The elevator hissed shut behind them, and they turned to watch as it rose back up from where they’d come from, leaving behind an empty tube. If the elevator was headed back to the surface to pick up more muties… Well, they needed to get moving now.

“C’mon,” Dixon breathed, nudging his companions in the only direction they could go, towards what looked like a long waiting area. Or at least, what had clearly once been a waiting area. The chairs had all been stacked in the far corner, and weird drawings had been scribbled on the walls in something dark and drippy.

Dixon eyed the drawings dubiously. “Really hope that’s not blood.”

Gray Hawk snorted. “Knowing cultists, it probably is.”

“It is,” Needles confirmed tonelessly. “Purification sigils are traditionally drawn in human blood.”

“Whose blood?” Centauri asked nervously.

“Take a guess,” Needles said grimly.

Gray Hawk glanced over at yet another arrangement of sigils on the opposite wall, and asked, “What, exactly, are purification sigils?”

“They’re part of a purification ritual performed on newly-discovered sanctuaries, or other places the congregation is likely to gather. The rites are fairly long and tedious, so they’re typically only performed on permanent or near-permanent sanctuaries.” Needles nodded towards one particularly large bunching of geometric shapes, interspersed with weird runes or icons Dixon had never seen before. “That one is a particularly powerful protection rune. The purifier clearly thought there was something valuable here. Something worthy of being protected.”

Dixon’s frown deepened. He sure as hell didn’t believe in the cultists’ weird, twisted religion, but if they believed there was something there worth being protected… well, that complicated matters.

No, no it didn’t. Dixon shook his head once, regaining perspective. They were there for two things and two things only: finding the missing townsfolk, and finding Glory. The cultists could continue with their weird little charade if they wanted; they just needed to get in, get their people, and get out.

Unfortunately, the sheer number of missing people would likely make that more complicated.

Dixon inhaled sharply and cleared his throat, drawing the others’ attention. Just to be on the safer side, he lowered his voice until only they could hear him. “All right, we’re gonna be outnumbered and outgunned, so keep your hoods up and act as natural as possible. We belong here. Speak only if spoken to. Stick together, but keep an eye out for any possible escape routes, and look for prisoners, slaves, anyone clearly not here willingly.”

Centauri asked, “How will we free them all?”

Dixon huffed out a breath. “Still working on that. For now, we’re just looking around.”

And hoping they didn’t get found out, but that sort of went unsaid. “Keep an eye out for Glory; maybe she can help us out here. Otherwise, just… be cool, everyone. Be calm.” The words were mostly for his own benefit, but Centauri took a few fortifying breaths before relaxing his shoulders, and Gray Hawk nodded once.

Needles, despite being the only one with any real insider knowledge, looked by far the most uncomfortable. Not that Dixon could really blame him.

As a group, they turned and trekked deeper into the facility.