The rush of water murmured behind Hope, traveling down the tracks where he assumed it to be going down the abysmal fog from where he came.
Hope remained at the mercy of his body's collapse on the ground, laying in the same spot in the same position as if any effort to move would waste any energy he was saving. His cargo pants, black sleeve shirt, boots, and chest rig were all damply stuck on like a heavy suit of armor.
There were times when he doubted his eyes were even open.
Hope was sure they were.
But the world remained the same in darkness, eyes opened or closed.
Was this another tunnel perhaps he was in? A very big one if it had to fit a damn train. But the thought that Hope was underground in dark confined walls brought an uneasiness. Different compared to when he was in the labyrinth den of the behemoth. It stirred a distant feeling, but not from feeling another threatening presence.
Strange.
Even his heart was throbbing in his ears like an alert drum.
Hope frowned. He was certain traces of the behemoth's effects had sapped away so why was he reacting like this?
"Ah what the hell..." Hope muttered.
Maybe he was paranoid.
Or maybe his body didn't let go yet of the close death experience.
Hope paused as he listened to the thoughts in his head. He felt his rational mind intact. The annoying voices there as well. So, not the behemoth.
But whatever the manner of fact it was, Hope took deep breaths till his chest loosened. It seemed his body was acting on its own again, in contrast to his calm mind. He hated when it did that.
'I'll just wait a little longer...'
But as the minutes passed, eventually hours, a light gray fog started to appear on his far right.
Hope turned to look as the mist started to brush away when day dawned, lifting vapor by vapor with an eventual clearing view to the other side.
And there, down the tunnel from where he'd come, was a wide, broken tunnel mouth. Stone protruded around as if it had been broken off like a pipe. Light reflections from the rushing water could be seen as it poured off into a disappearing waterfall, and beneath those rushing waters, Hope saw what he presumed was right: train tracks.
As more time crawled on by, as more of the fog cleared and the distant sun lit the ruined world, Hope saw a huge dirt wall on the other side and another broken tunnel mouth. Though it was dry and barren from water in contrast to his side, with torn train tracks leading to a sudden descent.
The only thing that seemed to connect between his side and the other was the thick webbed vines, though green and darkish blue they were.
Hope grimaced as he stood.
His muscles spasmed again, and the wounds on his hand and wrist stung, reminding him of the terrible night with the teamed Nightmare Creatures.
Hope leaned against the wall as he started to walk towards the silver light, passing by the boy who laid nearby with a faint but noticeable rise and fall on his chest.
The boy was still alive.
Although, his body had seen better days, the boy's skin looked deathly pale, and his wet brown hair stuck over his eyelids, thin scratches clawed his neck and ear, but nothing too deep.
Hope reached the edge of the broken tunnel and looked up at the cursed labyrinth den of a building perched on top of the surface. The tall, stacked stories did not appear as threatening as when he explored inside them. But the broken wall where the behemoth broke through, the aggressive marks decorating the stones were all there.
Hope looked away, and his eyes scanned all the other neighboring buildings perched on top of the wall as well.
They stood a lot taller.
Well, of course they did. That was because he was on a different level.
A lot lower level.
What Hope was staring at now was a gaping chasm. One of the many rumored chasms around Quadrant I.
The gap between him and the other side was vast. When he looked to the sides, the chasm only stretched a little more than half a block. Although a threateningly deep scratch that gouged into the earth, it was a distance away from the main road in which Hope would have never known or come across it himself.
'And I thought I might've been closer...'
Just how many hidden sites would Hope have to discover?
The strange sight of buildings, streets, and cars suspended high above like a floating city made him dizzy.
He had heard of worse chasms up North where a whole city uprooted and dipped into a crevice while its other end tipped to the sky. Others stretched for miles on end as far as the eye could see.
They weren't just splits in the ground; some managed to sink land.
'...now, there are several chams left in Quadrant I you will need to know. The first one is the Western Rift.'
Hope didn't fight this time. He leaned on his shoulder as he listened to one of his captain's lectures.
'...Largest structural failure on the continent. Runs from the broken Cascades, through old Oregon, down past the lip of Los Angeles— No, Lip. Not you. Here. Average depth, a mile and a half. Widest point is eight miles. After the nukes hit it, the entire plate slipped like a broken jaw.
'You have the Heartland Rift as well. Just snaking from North Dakota through old Nebraska. Depth varies from a hundred feet to half a mile. But the Central Collapse takes over Kansas, Missouri—middle of the breadbasket. Now it's a bowl of sinkholes and crater-chains. Some settlements cling to the rim because the outer ash fields grow fast crops..
'Last but not least, the Atlantic Sink. Not a rift by tectonics, but water carved this one. Sea-levels rose and swallowed the coast, then kept eating inland.'
Much of those stories told said it all began from a distant time, before Hope was even born. Although maybe not so distant to those who survived from that age:
The Dark Times.
A darker age even before the Nightmare Spell when humanity had been consumed by an endless series of wars.
Cataclysmic natural disasters overturned cities and mountains, swallowed valleys, and stormed lands as if the world were nothing more than a playground for toys to be wrecked and played with such sinister glee.
A time when the earth felt inclined to join and wreak havoc with the frenzy of man's self-destruction.
And leave its mighty wrath upon the world.