The two left the room and walked over to the next door, which refused to open. Arthur saw a keycard scanner on the lock and tried scanning Wakefield’s idea, which worked, the door sliding open with a hiss before getting jammed halfway. Paladin grabbed onto the side and yanked it open fully, revealing a sheer wall of clockwork.

  “Shit,” Arthur muttered. He scanned the card again and the door slid closed. “Well, that was a waste of time.”

  “Perhaps this facility was made to stop the Clockwork Rot?” Paladin asked. “Or they found some way of limiting its spread?”

  They continued to walk around the circular balcony, finding most of the rooms in the same state. Occasionally bits of lab equipment poked through all the bronze.

  “I have never met anyone who was infected by the rot and somehow still alive.” Arthur continued. “Well, other than the dragons, obviously. If they did find a way, why wasn’t it given to the Federation?”

  “Maybe this place was destroyed before then.”

  “And no one came to check on it? It doesn’t look like anyone’s been through here before us.”

  It wasn’t long before their loop around the third floor ended with no success.

  “I say we split,” Arthur said. “I’ll take floor four, you take floor two. You can go get another keycard from the corpses down there. Just don’t wake another one up.”

  Paladin nodded and went down the stairs as Arthur went up. Walking out onto the fourth floor, now looking down on the dragon, he could see Paladin investigating the corpses to find a usable keycard. Arthur turned back to the doors, scanning Wakefield’s ID, only to get a red light and an annoyed beep. He tried another door, which unlocked fine.

  “I’ll get back to you,” Arthur growled at the previous door. He walked into this new room, untainted by rot.

  The room was a break room. A pool table stood in the middle, near a basic kitchen and a fridge. Arthur checked the fridge for food, and quickly realised what a catastrophically bad idea that was. Shutting the fridge, he checked the cupboards, finding a couple of cans.

  There was a photo on the floor; presumably it was taped to the workspace once. It showed the researchers, including Wakefield and McCray, all standing on the bottom of the facility, smiling. They genuinely looked excited about their work. Why wouldn’t they be? They were breaking ground that no human ever had. They had no idea they would end up like this. No one did.

  Arthur left the room and went to the next one, which seemed to be a sleeping area with a set of bunk beds. The whole floor seemed to be living quarters of various kinds…which made him more curious about the locked door. He could see Paladin on the second floor opposite him, clearly not being able to get into many doors, before resorting to stabbing them. Following his cue, Arthur went up to the locked door, loaded his rifle, and fired into the lock. The hot plasma melted through enough of the door that he could find a purchase and yank it open.

  It was another bedroom, although while the others were clearly designed on the cheap to house multiple people, this was only meant for one person, and had some furniture like a side table, an armchair and a small bookshelf. Books littered the floor, and the bed linen was torn to shreds.

  Lying on the armchair was another corpse, his chest pierced by something resembling massive teeth, but completely devoid of any Clockwork Rot. Arthur recognised the corpse as Professor McCray. Whatever he saw at the end, he was horrified by it.

  Arthur walked out of the room and down the stairs to meet up with Paladin. The knight was standing in front of the entrance to a room he’d forced open. It was a small cell, with a simple uncomfortable looking bed, a wooden chair, a frozen toilet and sink, and another diary entry pinned to the back wall.

  “There’s a lot of cells,” Paladin explained. “No one was in them.”

  “Why does a science facility need so many cells?” Arthur asked. He walked into the room, grabbed the diary and started to read.

  Date: October 9th

  Days since departure: 224

  Interactions: Mostly assholes, one decent guy.

  Expenditures: none.

  More questions. More shit food. The diary is the only way I’ve been able to keep track of time recently. I still have no idea why they want me so badly or what they’re looking for, but it’s getting tiring. I could probably be at the Clocktower by now.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  There was one nice guy, though. I think he was one of the scientists. He said he needed me to hide something. Obviously I said yes, because I want to get back at the assholes here. He got me to hide some data disks in the back wall, no idea why. I wish I could watch them. It’d be a nice change. He gave me a chocolate bar too! Didn’t realise how badly I’d miss those.

  “In the back wall?” Arthur repeated. “Is there a secret panel?”

  Paladin started tapping the panels, checking if they were hollow. None of them were.

  “Maybe it’s in another one of the walls?” Arthur suggested. “What if she wrote this down to throw off anyone who might have been looking for the disks?”

  “Smart idea, squire.”

  Paladin began to check every single panel on all the walls, until he finally found a hollow panel on the left wall just above the bed. He jammed his sword in and levered it open. A few cockroaches clambered out of the dark, concrete opening, which contained several disks in plastic sleeves.

  “I think we’ve got quite a lot to watch tonight,” Paladin said.

  “I hope they’re not too long,” Arthur said. “I don’t want to be in this place any longer than we have to.”

  Out of interest, Arthur scanned Wakefield’s card against the card reader, even if the door was open. It beeped successfully. He would have had access to the cell.

  “You think it was him?” Paladin asked as he walked out of the cell, shutting the door behind him even though he’d broken the lock.

  “I have no idea,” Arthur said. “I don’t know how many people had access to the cells, and I’m sure as hell not gonna check. It’s just…the way he was talking about her, it implied to me that she did something he hated, and if we’re going by the diary, everyone here was pretty ambivalent to her. What if it was this? What if this led to his death or something?”

  Paladin held up the plastic wrapped disks. “Only one way to find out, Squire.”

  “When are you going to stop calling me that?”

  The two began walking up the stairs towards the projector rooms on the third floor.

  “Well, there’s a long and complex process to prove yourself as a true knight,” Paladin replied. “Usually it would involve a lot of training and embedding magical stones into your body. Considering exceptional circumstances, I can make you a knight whenever I feel like you’re ready. You must prove exceptional bravery and combat prowess, as well as an honourable and chivalrous personality. The last bit is where you’re lacking.”

  “I do what I need to survive. Can’t exactly be honourable when there’s no one left to honour. No reason to be chivalrous when there’s no one to see it.”

  “Now that is where you’re wrong. A true knight is honourable even when no one is around to see it.”

  Arthur raised an eyebrow. “Do you think breaking into houses and stealing food is honourable? Because you’ve been doing this as much as I have.”

  “Practicality and pragmatism are necessary elements of a true knight as well. We are human, we need to survive. People like me are also leaders. I need to make effective decisions.”

  Arthur nodded. “Alright, fine. Look, I don’t really want to subscribe to the whole knight thing, but…I’d just like you to call me Arthur.”

  “Certainly.”

  Arthur glared at Paladin. The mask made it extremely hard to tell if the knight was joking or not. The two walked out onto the third floor again, the dragon glaring at them. Arthur stopped, leaning over the railing.

  “You’ve never told me about your history,” Arthur said.

  Paladin turned back. “What is there to tell?”

  “You are a medieval knight from a different universe that knows how to fly spaceships, which implies to me that that universe is just as advanced as ours. How does that happen? Why are you still fighting like…this? Why don’t you use guns and shit?”

  Paladin turned to look at the dragon.

  “I am the 47th Paladin of the Storm Guard. We were founded by members of the Knights of Camelot, in the Kingdom of Britain, on the planet Earth.”

  Arthur looked confused. “Planet Earth? Why would you call your planet Planet Ground?”

  “It was the only habitable world we knew of, for thousands of years. Regardless, the Kingdom of Camelot collapsed due to the loss of its king and the splintering of his blade, Excalibur. The various knights who served the kingdom took the magical stone that was mined beneath it and founded various Knightly Orders, mine included. They fell to infighting, either over magic items, resources, or the desire to be the one true king of Camelot. Once, we were numbered in the hundreds. In my time, a thousand years later, we number in the dozens.”

  “You kept fighting for that long? What for?”

  “Magic turned from fact into legend, and from legend into myth. We existed in part to preserve its existence, and so the evil in humanity wouldn’t exploit it. The magic that was drilled into us in training, metaphorically and literally, was partially designed so it would be harder to use more…esoteric magics.”

  Arthur looked surprised. “Considering the shit I’ve seen you do, I’m shocked there’s worse in your universe. So anyway…spaceships?”

  “Yes. Not humanity’s, but from the stars. Great intergalactic civilisations found my world, seeking to invade. I and many other modern knights joined with sympathetic star travellers to help defend Earth. It was a long road of strife, and many were lost to make sure Earth preserved itself as an independent world. Magic became widely known again as a result. My Earth is now a weird mesh of magic, alien technology, and what it once was. It is an…uncertain time.”

  Arthur nodded, thinking about what he’d just heard. It took a moment before he spoke again.

  “You know, in all of that, you’ve told me nothing about yourself.”

  Paladin paused, staring at the ground below, before he turned and walked away. “Let us see these videos. I want to be here as much as you do.”