Burning Plains, Pt 3

You feel the heavy security door shudder under your fingers as mechanisms inside slide open. There's a muffled CLACK that resonates from within the door as it opens up very slightly. Though it's clearly incredibly heavy, you find that it swings open easily enough when you pull on the handle.

However, before you can get the door open even halfway, the powerfully horrid stench of decay hits your nose. It's thick and rich, having stewed in the room beyond for who knows how long. Your stomach immediately turns from how sudden it all hits you. Worse, there's a slightly sweet scent embedded within that rot that completely undoes you.

You push the door back shut, then dash off to the other end of the cellar as fast as you can. You make it just in time to start dry heaving painfully, to the point where you clutch your chest and stomach as you sink down to your knees.

Nothing comes up, of course - you haven't had your dinner yet and your stomach is completely empty.

Well, you do feel a bit of bile rise up and very nearly touch your throat. Thankfully your nausea fades quickly, even though that sickening smell seems to still linger in your nostrils. Your body can't help but dry heave once or twice more before you finally have the ability to gather yourself together. Although your chest and stomach have sharp pains in them, you're able to get back up on both feet.

Though you desperately want to know what's behind that door, there's no way in hell you're going to last in there. Especially with your senses dialed to the maximum. 

Glancing over at the piles of stuff scattered around the edges, you realize that something in there might help you. Maybe an overlooked gas mask - or at the very least lots of thick rags to cover your nose and mouth with.

You find yourself digging through everything in short order. Though you certainly find protective equipment such as gloves and goggles, you only find a handful of dust masks in a half-empty package. Wearing one of these would certainly be better than nothing, but you're certain that it won't hold back that smell. 

You stow most of the dust masks in your messenger bag then slide one of them over your face. Then you go back upstairs to the top floor, specifically in one of the kids' rooms. There, you pick one of the scarves you had spotted earlier, dust it off as best you can, then wrap it around the lower half of your head. 

Though you find it rather hard to breathe now, you've got plenty enough fabric between you and the rest of the world. Hopefully this is enough to hold back that terrible smell. As a final added measure, you turn down your sense of smell and taste a great degree, until you can just barely sense anything at all with them.

Then you bravely head back downstairs to the secure door. 

When you open it up again, you can practically feel the stench hit you like a solid wall. And despite all of your preventative measures, you can still smell it. It's muted and dull, but it's there, and it's distinct. Thankfully, it's not powerful enough to make you retch again.

You go into the room, shutting the security door behind you. Though it doesn't latch itself shut, it still sits closed. After all, the last thing you want is for the smell to attract a bunch of predators. Or worse, corpse-eating scavengers.

The room itself is even darker than the rest of the cellar, which makes sense as there are zero light sources in here. Even with your eyesight tuned to its absolute maximum, you can barely see anything past your own arms.

Since that's as far as you can see, you decide to move to your right until you hit a wall. You follow it down with your hand touching it, just so you can keep your bearing. It's only a few steps before the wall vanishes, or rather turns away from you. 

No doubt this is where the room actually begins. You were likely in just a short hallway entrance past the door.

So you keep following the edge of the room where you can touch it, with your heart pounding in your chest as you move. Simply put, exploring the dark like this, practically blind and knowing there's a corpse somewhere… well, it's nerve-wracking to say the least.

The only comfort you have is from your powers, at absolutely knowing if there's anything alive down here. Of course, there's none. But that knowledge does little to abate your fears.

It isn't long until you come to what looks like a simple metal closet and foot locker, both lined up against the wall. Just beyond them is a full size bed sitting perfectly in the corner. There's a nightstand next to it, also made of metal.

You continue following the edge of the room past the corner and find what seems to be a kitchen area. There's a metal pantry, whose contents are filled with empty cans and containers - some a bit moldy. Right next to the pantry is a metal table with all kinds of kitchen prep stuff on it. Cutting boards, knives, cooking utensils, cooking oils, spices, and so on. There's a shelf right above it, right around head high with plates, eating utensils, glasses, and so on.

Further beyond this prep area is a kind of cooktop stove, though instead of four burners it only has two. Both appear to have hard, flat metal surfaces, which makes you believe it's an induction stovetop. Tapping on the pots and pans reveal that they're all made of carbon steel or cast iron, which lends credence to your guess.

Directly to the stove's left is a deep metal sink with what looks like a small pile of dirty dishes in them. Just underneath the sink is a large open tub, presumably to catch whatever water is in the sink itself. Next to that are a number of 20 liter jugs, presumably filled with water.

When you test them, most seem to be empty or half empty, with only one being relatively full. You decide to slide it out so you can take a better look at it later, then continue along the wall.

Beyond the kitchenette is another bed nestled in this corner, though this one is queen sized. It also has two metal closets and foot lockers, which tells you that perhaps the parents slept here. And if one of the kids slept in the previous corner, then the second is very likely in the next corner you come across.

You keep going along the wall past the parents' bed and personal effects after turning the corner inwards a second time. As far as you can tell, this wall is opposite the entrance you came through. On this one, you find a couple of bookshelves filled with books, media discs, hobby materials, and random other electronics; tablets and personal media players and such.

Between the two shelves is a rather long L-shaped metal desk with what seems to be a couple of laptops on the surface. There's also a smattering of notepads, pens, and various sheets of paper on the desks. Of course, since it's practically pitch black you have no idea what's on those papers. Could be maps for all you know.

Just past the second shelf is what seems to be some kind of armory. There's a metal gun rack with three carbines hung up, along with a couple of pistols in cases below. There are stacks of ammunition piled up in the shelf beneath the rack itself, along with multiple spare magazines for the carbines and pistols.

Beneath all of that is what appears to be a stack of armored vests, though you can't tell if they're stabproof or bulletproof. You slide one out to remind yourself to look later.

Then you continue past the armory down the wall until you reach the third corner of the room. There, as predicted, is another full size bed along with its accompanying metal closet and foot locker. 

Since you're just trying to get a sense of the room, you skip over the last sleeping area and continue along the wall past the corner. It only takes you a few steps to get to what seems to be an entertainment area - there's a television mounted to the concrete wall with a media stand beneath it sporting a multimedia player, gaming console, and some speakers.

There's a couch some distance from you looking towards the TV - you can just see it at the edges of your vision. And between the couch and television is a rug with some kind of pattern on it, which you can just barely discern in the darkness.

Next to the entertainment center appears to be a padded floor with racks of weight lifting gear in them. There are also various exercise equipment scattered here and there - skip ropes and boxing gloves and even a minimal treadmill.

The last thing you hit further along the wall isn't another bed in the corner. Rather, it seems to be an enclosed space that sits in the corner itself. You feel around for a bit until you find a door and its latch, then open it up. 

Inside is a prefabricated bathroom, with what looks like working plumbing. There's some kind of manual water pump in the middle, which when you activate spits out a few splashes of water. Or at least, you would hope that's water. 

This is likely how the family kept themselves hydrated.

You leave the bathroom and continue along the wall, at least until you come to the end, where it turns and leads back out to the security door.

From the distance you've walked around, you gather that it's perfectly square - or close to it. And it's moderately sized, perhaps equal to or slightly larger than the house's footprint above.

And judging by its size, you can more or less guess where the center of the room is. You trepidatiously let go of the wall and start walking towards your guess. Now without anything physical to anchor your sense of direction, you can't help but feel like you're flailing out into nothingness.

You suppose it's true in multiple ways, not just down here, but in every aspect of your current life. Not that you dwell on that idea for long.

It only takes a dozen steps before you come to the center, where you see a quartet of corpses huddled together on some couches. Most of their bodies have long since liquefied and their organic matter has soaked into the couch itself, which has been halfway eaten through by bacteria. You certainly don't want to get any closer than you have to, and just seeing what you do sickens you deeply.

Well, you're certainly glad that you can't see any details or any colors - you have no doubt that seeing these in normal light would only bring down some kind of curse on you. 

Still, despite the revulsion you feel, you can't help but empathize with these people. You can practically feel their fear as they died, which was probably slow and agonizing. 

You guess that because the pantry is empty, they must have died of hunger, right? But if that's the case, why didn't they just leave? Were they stuck in here? Did they accidentally entomb themselves in an attempt to escape from the end of the world?

Then you notice a couple of rifles at their feet - though you don't get close, you're sure that they have been used. Probably not on themselves, but certainly on something. The upturned and armored tables just outside, perhaps?

A deep need to know fills you suddenly - it's a curiosity that's beyond a mere itch. It seems more like it's calling to you, and you find yourself transfixed on the spot, unable to think or move otherwise.

But no answers come to you, which only frustrates you deep inside. 

An idea strikes you out of the blue and you open up your Third Eye to take a look around you. Here, the flows and currents are nearly still, likely owing to how few living things are out here. And of course, since the family has long since passed, their Threads are nowhere to be found.

Not that you expected to see them - instead, you decide to pour energy into your Third Eye. After all, every time you've activated it thus far, it has always been passive. You've never once focused your energies through it like the rest of your powers.

If they can be boosted, so could your Third Eye, right?

Your senses widen as you pour in more energy into it. It swells outward so you can see more of the world around you, beyond the farmstead. Out there you can sense the numerous smaller Threads that every critter has, which weaves beautifully out into the currents.

The flow of psionic energy is still slow and weak out there, or perhaps it would be better to think of them as calm. 

You realize that since your ESP is also cranked up to the maximum, your vision in your Third Eye is also clearer. In fact, you're able to pinpoint each and every single critter out there, where in the past you'd only see clusters of psyches.

On realizing this, you decide to pour energies into your Foresight as well, and truly push all of the powers of your Cognition to their limits.

But instead of shards of the future assailing you from every direction, you instead see human Threads flicker and fade into existence. Your three powers blend into each other, as though seeking a new way to be channeled. The sensation is wild - your own psionic energies seem to have a life of their own as this happens. You only partially feel in control of them.

It frightens you at first and you're tempted to pull back all the way and stop channeling altogether. But in the end you decide to keep going, to see what's happening. After all, you're already in an exploratory move.

You sense the world around you shift and become deeper and richer as you the psionic energies of your Discipline of Cognition shape themselves into something new - a fourth primary power. You feel like a fish who has finally realized that there's an entire reality that exists beyond your bowl - and that the bowl is a barrier that you can cross.

The lights flicker on in the secure bunker, even as your fourth power manifests. With the lights come living moments that the family in front of you have experienced. Mother and father and son and daughter, living and breathing and eating and laughing.

These moments flash in and out of reality, back-to-back right after one another, showing the family singing as they cook, talking as they dream, shouting as they argue. They pace nervously and exercise furiously and do their very best to make their lives tolerable in this small space.

You get a sense that many months pass as the visions flutter in and out - their hair gets longer, and the children get taller as time goes on.

Then comes a frightful moment where they're huddled together on the couch, similar to how they're laid out now as corpses. Their faces are filled with fear. And it's because of the furious banging and drilling and sawing and grinding that's coming from the other side of the security door.

Though whatever's happening outside is incredibly dulled inside, it hardly stops the family's fear from flowing out of them.

You can feel it overwhelm you, even as the vision itself ends. All of your powers of Cognition also fade significantly as you let go of your channeled energies. Simply, you physically can't hold it up any longer - the very act of finding and activating the new power has greatly drained you.

Letting it continue would have only wiped you out, and you'd rather not pass out near a bunch of corpses. Lest you join them, or somesuch.

And although knowing the family's ultimate fate has made you incredibly sad, you can't help but feel somewhat elated at the same time. You've discovered the fourth power in Cognition, one that allows you to reach into the past and experience it for yourself. 

So you decide to name it Astral Memory.