Chapter 20: Property Hunt

A short drive through the concrete and metal jungle that is the undercity we reached our destination. Upon our arrival, our group unloaded out of the car with Alice and I climbing out of the back seats last, and walked through the parking lot in the direction of a large concrete and metal structure located a short distance away.

When the bunch of us entered the real estate building, the front desk immediately greeted us and directed us to sit down and wait for the agent that my family preferred to do business with due to previous dealings, Mr. Birch.

We sat there waiting for around a minute or so before an older gentleman showed up from the nearby elevator dressed in a dark blue suit. Following a short greeting and a bit of small talk, he brought us away first to the elevator and then to his office once the elevator reached the fifth floor.

Directly after entering Mr. Birch's office, he inquired as to the reason for our visit. "So what brings you all here to today?"

Grandpa Henry placed his hand on my left shoulder and answered. "My grandson over here wants a large industrial building that he can use for research and manufacturing, preferably in between the manufacturing and mining districts."

The second he learned of what we want, he set into motion and began rapidly pulling up and showing us the numerous properties available with his desktop. That should meet my requirements.

I looked through a number of them and ended up selecting three of them that fit my needs in terms of space as well as location. With my choices made we headed back to the lobby with Mr. Birch now accompanying us and since my dad's car didn't have enough space for all of us Mr. Birch got the company to send a large passenger van to take us to go look at the properties I was interested in seeing.

Our group waited until the van showed up, and so with our transportation here, we collectively boarded the vehicle and began our trip to nearly the other side of the undercity. On our long-ish drive to the other side and with not much to do on the ride there, I passed the time by looking out the window at the many things taking place and going on in the city with Alice once again attached to my side.

As the van continued traveling to the first property, I watched the many cars that reminded me of the different models from my previous world mashed together with an assortment of futuristic elements and styling pass us by, going wherever their destinations lied.

Besides watching the many cars passing by, the numerous undercity residents going about their lives in the distance kept me entertained enough for the next several minutes before my mind started wandering and a thought occurred to me.

It's honestly impressive how much this place has grown since nuclear annihilation fucked everything up two centuries ago…

While the car continued on its way, I kept myself occupied with the going ons of the city as well as my thoughts. After spending my time like that for however many minutes, we finally arrived at our first destination.

"We've reached the nearest property your grandson was interested in seeing and from what I can tell, it should fit your requirements rather well." Mr. Birch said moments after the car came to a stop.

"Let's go check it out and see if it fits what you're looking for, grandson." My grandpa Henry said before we started exiting the vehicle.

Once the bunch of us left the vehicle excluding the driver who would remain with the van, we began walking in the direction of a large nondescript industrial building that appeared to be around 30 feet or so tall and covered at least several thousand square feet in area. When we reached the main door of the building, Mr. Birch walked up to a keypad located next to the door and keyed in a code, unlocking the door.

With the door open, we headed inside, followed by Mr. Birch, who held the door open for us. And right as he rejoined us, he began listing the notable features of this property, such as it being the closest one to my home. Which would cut down on travel time for me, although not significantly. Adding to the reduced travel time, the building had plenty of space to house the various things I would be needing it for.

The last big benefit of this property was that the original owner used to run a weapon manufacturing company out of here and had yet to move and sell off the many pieces of heavy machinery here. So I could pay a bit extra on top of the purchase price of the property to get them included. 

It wouldn't be too bad of an idea, since it would reduce the amount of machinery I would need to buy after whatever place I decide to go with. That said, I have plans of building more versatile manufacturing equipment so many of the pieces here will be useless to me so it may not be that worthwhile to acquire them… There is also the option of modifying and reconfiguring, and if I don't go with that I could just dissemble them for parts and whatnot.

…

Exploring the factory in its entirety, Mr. Birch said. "I believe that's it for this property. Does anyone have questions regarding the property?"

Waiting for a few seconds to see if any of my family had any inquiries, they didn't, thus I did. "Doesn't look like it."

"Alright, let's continue on to the next one." Mr. Birch responded while leading the way back to the vehicle.

As soon as we loaded back up into the van, the driver drove off deeper in between the manufacturing and mining areas of the undercity. Following a short ride, we arrived at the next location, this one being a somewhat larger warehouse-looking structure.

Upon reaching our destination, we swiftly left the van behind and went through a similar sequence of events. After going through our look through the property, I discovered this one was pretty lacking in the benefits department. The only real one it provided was its completely blank slate that I could do just about anything I wanted with to make it my own.

So with this one being kind of a dud with little to nothing to make it stand out from its competition than it being a blank canvas. We went on our way to the third and last property that was on the edge of the two zones, backing up to the rough bedrock walls of the undercity that had yet to be excavated for further expansion.

A few minutes of travel later, the last of the three properties came into view and not long after that, we began exiting the van once again into a parking lot of a very wide five-story concrete building that lay a bit of distance away.

As we were making our way to the double doors of the structure, Mr. Birch started speaking on the way there. "I'm almost certain you'll love this one, Dom, because it's the largest out of the three and has plenty of equipment, with it originally being a foundry that processed metal the original owner extracted from the attached mine."

"An attached mine, you say. Now why would someone want to get rid of a property?" I replied, skeptical about why someone would want to get rid of such a valuable property.

"That's quite odd. I would also like to hear the reasoning behind why they wish to sell it off." My grandfather, Henry added.

"Well, I'm not exactly sure of all the details, but apparently it has something to do with the attached mine. Unfortunately, that's all I know." Mr. Birch answered with what he knew.

"Ohh, and because of that, the owner is anxious to get rid of the property. So the property is discounted quite a bit compared to what one would normally pay for a property such as this." Mr. Birch added further.

If that's the only problem with the property I don't really have much of an issue with that since I don't necessarily need the attached mine with there being public ones, although I'll have to pay tax for what I mine from those and deal with the many procedures that need to be followed over there. With all that said, whatever issue the mine has, I'm sure I can resolve it so I can freely mine my own resources.

"That's fine. I mainly need the space so I can experiment, research, and manufacture different things." I responded, keeping a good portion of what I was going to be up to hidden as our group began entering the facility.

After entering the place, we walked through what I would call a reception area before we passed by a male and female bathroom as we went through another set of double doors onto the main work floor. What stood before us was a pretty barren space that only had two large arc furnaces for processing whatever ore they extracted and some other miscellaneous equipment that was required for the rest of the processes.

Guess they didn't have time to fully stock this place before they ran into issues, not that's a problem for me. I can actually see that as a positive in my case since if I end up going with this place, I won't have to remove a bunch of unnecessary equipment and manufacturing machines.

From there, we explored and inspected the rest of the ground floor before moving to the basement that housed half a dozen small fusion power plants. Following the generator room, we checked out the storage area in the basement, which was basically a miniature warehouse that was connected to the floor above with a cargo elevator.

That covered the basement entirely, thus we walked back upstairs to the second floor, which would be the fourth floor for most normal buildings. However, because this one is a foundry, the first floor is 30 feet tall to house large industrial equipment. What we saw on that floor was basically just an entirely empty floor with a couple of offices built, likely for management or the owner.

I would probably use this floor for research and for producing the various drugs and medicines I'll be needing, can't really have it on the main floor with the amount of manufacturing that will be going on down there.

Now that that floor was covered, my group and I headed for the next lead by Mr. Birch. The situation on that floor was the same story as the floor we had just come from and the floor after as well, thus we quickly continued on to the last and final of the upper levels. Coming upon that floor, we saw it was entirely composed of ventilation equipment and other hardware. So with that floor also seen, we proceeded to the very last location, the attached mine.

When we made it to the mine's entrance, our group found a longish-lit tunnel about 150 feet in length that had been artificially collapsed at the end. As everyone was looking around and chatting with each other, I walked closer to the collapsed section to see if I could discover what exactly was so wrong with the mine that it would make the owner so eager to offload this gem.

I haven't seen or found any issues with this mine thus far and I've seen more than a hefty amount of iron and other ores embedded all over the tunnel's walls, so it's not like it doesn't have any resources to extract.

As I began contemplating about what the fuck was wrong with this place, I neared closer and closer to the collapsed rock. At a certain point, I detected something rather odd and out of place within my perception field, that being several human skeletons stripped of absolutely all of their flesh. My interest peaked by my find, I continued inching closer and closer. As soon as I was just a few feet away from the rubble, I sensed something, a creature or creatures, in this case.

… Oh, that could be the reason why the owner is so gung ho about getting rid of the property. Let's see exactly what kind of creatures I'm dealing with here.

With the likely reason in sight, I crept a bit closer, further extending the range of my perception field over the creatures.