Ultimus chapter 7: Prime

Andrew started cleaning each of the rooms in the house, but their was dust covering everything in a thick layer of it. He went into a closet and found cleaning supplies. Gloves, goggles, masks, brooms, and most importantly a vacuum. He decided to start from the entrance and work his way through the house. Time passed as he cleaned. Yet the time outside seemed to never change. Andrew assumed that he wasn’t taking as much time as he thought.

Andrew got through most of the house and stared down the hallway and to the rooms he had to do next. He looked at the left side of the hall, where his parents bedroom was. He slowly walked over, opened the door and looked in the room. It seemed like it didn’t change at all. Tears began to pour down his cheeks and he felt hopelessly sick to know they were gone. He took a step in and stopped, and with no hesitation grabbed the door handle and locked the door and closed it as he walked away from the door. He wanted to leave it like that. Nothing touched, nothing disturbed inside. He took off his safety goggles for a moment and wiped all the tears away. He put them back on and continued to clean down the hall.

When Andrew finally came to his room and completed the main room. He looked over to his closet and opened the door. He found his school equipment and VR helmet. An idea immediately came to him, his droid ran on element and was only able to be activated by his headset. He could look for others in Arat Prime!! All he had to do was activate his droid at the school!!

He dusted off the headset and hand controllers. He put on the headset and flipped a switch and watched the screen as the screen flickered and saw a blurry picture. Andrew immediately started raising and lowering his hands and saw that the droid was under some sort of clear plastic. He started ripping off the plastic and found he was in a storage area in what looked like the school he attended. Andrew started pressing a few buttons on one of the controller and he began hearing the treads of his droid but couldn’t see the droid moving. He really couldn’t see anything. He quickly took off his headset and looked for a specific button. He found it, pressed it and put the headset back on. A light came on from the droid. He immediately noticed that the camera and droid was smushed up against a wall of the room. He maneuvered the droid around to see where the door was and noticed that he was right next to it. He opened the door and saw debris all over the floor and lockers knocked over all around the hall. Luckily the treads on the droid were built for stuff like this.

He maneuvered the droid through the debris of the halls. Everything was still black. No lights, not even sunlight. All he had was the light of his droid. And that didn’t help much except to see ten or fifteen feet ahead of him. But he began to hear a hissing and clattering sounds coming from the hall ahead. Andrew stopped the droid and turned on his microphone.

“Hello? Is anyone in here?” He said, the noise died down. Andrew decided to continue forward. As he did the noise started up again and began getting louder. And decided to keep moving forward and try in a few seconds again to make contact.

Almost a minute later something shot out of the dark and hit the droid’s camera. Andrew lost all visual, but he heard the droid fall over so he knew he had audio and controls over the droid still. Andrew continued pressing buttons to see if he could catch traction on something. But all in vein. Andrew started raising his hands in the air to attempt to tip the droid up. But again in vein. He must’ve landed on his back and the droid didn’t have articulation for this problem. Andrew suddenly began hearing the weird sound he had heard before and what sounded like footsteps. He then heard static, he lost audio and wasn’t sure if he still had controls. He took of the headset and controllers. From what he saw, Arat Prime was abandoned. That was one of their busiest schools and it was in ruins.

Andrew suddenly felt alone, completely alone and isolated. He didn’t know what happened at Prime or if there was anyone left. He needed to find a way to Sanctuary, as soon he can. As he sat there, he felt completely drained from all that had happened today. He quickly got up and crawled into his now clean bed. There was still light outside, but he couldn’t stay awake any longer. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.