Sound of The Underground

While the Northern Quarter was clearly dilapidated and forgotten by the majority of the community, that didn't mean that it was completely abandoned.

This was still a place that people lived. A homeless man, sitting on a step with a spliff hanging from his lips and a beard so long it pooled at his feet was something I had expected to see.

A woman, however, dressed in coveralls with two kids grabbed onto each hand was a little less expected. But then, in the current day and age, you just sort of had to make do. If she felt like she could provide for her children better by living out here, then that was her choice. The kids seemed happy enough.

We also passed a group of graffiti artists, slopping paint onto walls with big brushes. In the past that sort of thing would have been done with spray cans and stencils, but that sort of thing had been long since lost to the old world. A girl waved at Lauren with a smile on her face, Lauren waved back with an equally big grin on hers.

While Hypogean were seemingly hated by other Powered, the normals seemed to get along with them just fine.

We finally came to a stop at the ruins of an old tube station.

Surprisingly, the building was still mostly standing.

The top may have been blown apart into rubble, but the bottom was all there, admittedly with the windows smashed in. There was a faded blue sign across the front of the building, with dirty white letters that read "Holborn Station".

Their secret base was hidden in the depths of London's old Underground system.

All things considered, that was actually a pretty smart place to hide your base, it was a ratrun down under the city, and even if the heroes searched down there all day every day there would be no way that they'd be able to uncover every nook and cranny of the system.

We entered through the front entrance and were immediately met with a group of old plastic gates that were closed fast, fortunately, it was simple enough to clamber over the dividers to enter the rest of the station.

The trio led me down a long since broken escalator down further and further into the depths of the old underground station, and then down through a series of tunnels that led out onto the platform proper.

It was dark and dingy, with the only light coming from the torches that each of the members of the villain group had pulled out of their pockets.

"Come on, tracks haven't been live in decades," Crashcourse said, hopping down onto the tracks themselves, before beginning to wander in the direction of the tunnels.

"You're not serious, are you?" I yelled after her.

"Absolutely serious!" She cackled in the gloom.

As the three moved further away the darkness started to come back, and while I was not at all scared of the dark, there was something a little spooky about being in an underground railway station that hadn't been used for decades in the dark.

I hopped down onto the tracks and scampered after them.

We didn't walk through the tunnel for long. Out of nowhere, Lauren and the boys took a hard left, revealing a corridor that was cut directly into the wall of the tunnel.

As we walked down that corridor, I noticed a light shining around a corner. As we rounded it, the corridor opened up into what I imagined the villains used as a living room, though the room was about as big as four of my living rooms jammed together.

The space was big enough to contain three sofas, all positioned together in an n or a u depending on how you were looking at it, with a nice wooden coffee table in the center of them.

Dominating one side of the room was a massive screen, the sort of plasma television that were plentiful in the old world and were now worth their weight in gold because of how rare they were.

Below that television set were a series of strange boxes, with wires connecting them to the TV. They reminded me a little bit of computers, but considering there was one of those in the corner I couldn't imagine what their function was.

To each side of the television was a speaker that was about the size of my fridge in the kitchen back home.

To the right of the sofa setup there were a few tables, one had a map of the city taped down to it with various little figures taking position on various locations. Beside those were a bunch of shelves, lined with items ranging from books to clothing to god knew what else.

To the left of the sofa setup was an open plan kitchen, a kitchen that was once again way bigger than the kitchen that we had back at my house.

The main room was connected to another corridor, down which was a series of doors, all but one of which were closed.

So, this was the base of Hypogean? I had to admit, for a dingy lair deep beneath the surface of the Earth, they'd actually managed to make it look pretty homey. I almost kinda liked it. It'd probably be perfect if not for the mess all over the place.

"I gotta admit, I'm actually kind of jealous," I said out loud.

"Dumbass, what have you got to be jealous about," Allen snorted, vaulting himself over the back of one of the sofas to land directly on the seat.

"Well, I mean, this place is actually pretty cool," I clarified, making sure I hadn't offended anyone.

"That's not why he called you a dumbass, Tristan," Greave stated. "He said that because this is your place too, now. Your part of the team after all, and all of this belongs to all of us.

"Oh... right," I said dumbly, allowing those words to sink in.

I was part of a team.