Small update first: I’ve filmed a video introducing the world and the characters of The Underneath. You can watch it here, and then please send it to friends and/or family who you think would be interested in this story.
I really, really, really wanted to have chapter four posted by today. This is a chapter I want to get 100% right -- this is the first real turning point of the story. The end of the first act of the first act, so to speak. Things can never go back to the way they were. You’ll see what I’m talking about when you read it.
Even though I’ve missed my self-imposed deadline, I thought I’d still give you guys a little teaser:
Chris hadn’t been happy -- of course he hadn’t -- but Freya knew how best to get him to go along with her: don’t give him a choice. She hated pulling the tactic, but also hated that he felt he should have any concern or control over the investigations she chose to pursue on her own time.
The pair of contact lenses she was wearing connected to his console back in the East City, as did the device nestled within her ear canal. Chris could see and hear everything that she could, and she would be sure to remind him how lucky he was not to be breathing in the oxygen-rich atmosphere permeating the Sapien reservation she was now entering.
She’d rarely seen so much green. Plants formed mountainous structures and entwined themselves with the buildings the Sapiens had built from the ruins of their prior civilization. In some cases, the vines and trees themselves formed the walls of the buildings, with natural entrances created by the rising trunks and branches.
To get to this point, Freya had taken the Commonwealth National Transit as far north as it would go. She’d enlisted her new friend Galen Briggs to provide transport the rest of the way.
Oh, she was much better at making friends with civilians than enemies, a trait that had done her well as an officer. She just wasn’t sure how it would carry over with the Sapiens.
It was easy enough to tell where the central hub of the establishment was. A large white dome escalated over the green of the horizon and at the top, a large cross attached on the back of a statue showing man gasping for air in his final moments of life -- a symbol of the old Sapien religion. It lacked, like the rest of the landscape, the color red.
Two guards stood at each side of the entrance awning. They carried machine guns across their body -- a weapon so deadly efficient it had survived the apocalypse to the time of the Superiorii.
It was clear they regarded her with suspicion. The grips they held on their guns tightened and their trigger finger pulled back, ready to be called into action at any moment. She raised her hands and walked through the metal and weapons detector without alarm. The guards barely loosened their grips as she entered the building.
