Chapter 547 - Vaulted Memories

Afton, Veronica, and Christine all enter the elevator, the latter of which seemed to tense due to how claustrophobic it was with everyone inside. The elevator travels downwards for a minute or so until it finally reaches the bottom... The doors slide open and the group are presented with the most heavily fortified area they'd seen in the Casino thus far...

Everything was plated in Saturnite alloy, Auto-Turrets were set up absolutely everywhere, from the floor, ceiling, and even the walls... The doors were covered in blue force fields that obviously originated from Big Mt... Last but not least, there were at least twenty Holograms slowly walking around the place, walking through the force fields while patrolling the area.​​

One immediately turns their head towards the group and starts turning red and beginning to charge up a laser. Afton immediately points Elijah's remote control towards it and presses a random button, causing all the Holograms in the room to freeze in place...

"Huh..." he mutters, feeling as if he got lucky, there were many other buttons and he just so happened to press the right one. Next, he needed to find the button for the turrets...

"Seems like Elijah already had everything planned out..." Veronica says from the side.

Afton nods, "If he wasn't a crazy bastard, I might have been impressed." he says while pressing another random button.

*Bzzzwwuuuu*

The forcefield all peter out as he presses the button, giving the turrets a clean line of fire at the group. The turrets quickly turn and start firing at them, Afton and Veronica having to step in the way to protect Christine with their armoured bodies.

*Click, Click, Click*

Afton presses a couple more buttons, accidentally causing music to start playing in the room as well as causing the frozen holograms to start dancing on the spot... The last button he presses activates the sprinklers with immediately start soaking the room. "God damn it!" he exclaims.

"Just let me do it!" Veronica states as she snatches the control out of his hand and confidently presses a button.

*Clack!*

*SHOOOO!*

Barrels of some sort of weapon pop out of the walls and immediately start firing streams of fire randomly into the room, water from the sprinklers sizzle and start steaming up the room, slowly but surely obscuring their sight.

"WHY IS THAT EVEN A FEATURE OF THE ROOM!?" Veronica shouts in shock as she presses a couple more buttons to fix it. The flame throwers turn off and the sprinklers shut off too. Another couple clicks and the Auto-Turrets stop firing, but still follow the group as if keeping an eye on them.

Afton takes the control back with a sigh, walking further into the room to check for any more traps... Fortunately, the current security seems to be everything. He looks to the side at some more heavy, saturnite plated doors, it was obviously the vault that contained the treasures that Sinclaire supposedly left here.

He walks over to it and examines it for a moment, allowing Nyx to try and gain access to it to check for any more traps... Strangely, Nyx is completely unable to even find the subsystems inside, let alone actually check them.

"You guys ready to find some treasure?" he asks over his shoulder, Veronica nods with a grin hidden under her helmet while Christine simply follows them with a neutral look.

Afton tries to push it open but finds that it's locked, similarly to the elevator, without any indication of how to actually open it... This isn't a problem though as Afton quickly recalls the scribbled messages that Vera wrote in her room... Let go, which was used earlier, and Begin again.

He relays this information to Christine who just says and speaks loudly towards the door, "Begin again."

*Click!*

*Griiiind*

Mechanisms inside the door begin quietly working, eventually allowing the heavy door to slowly swing open towards them, giving them access to the room. Afton is the first to step inside, and is intrigued to find a hatch leading deeper underground in the corner of the room, as well as a simple terminal waiting in the middle of the room.

Afton accesses it and is immediately greeted with a number of entries, Sinclaire's personal entries, messages to Vera Keyes, and other less interesting entries. Afton first decides to look at Sinclaires message to Vera Keyes, as he was curious to know what he thought about her betrayal.

The subsequent message was a long, heartfelt apology to Vera for the way Sinclaire had acted, as well as allowing his dark thoughts to turn what was once a safe haven against the apocalypse, into a trap for Dean...

Apparently, Sinclaire had rigged the terminal to shut the vault and disallow any attempts to escape if his personal accounts were accessed. The vault door with permanently close, and the elevator would go back to the upper floors before permanently restricting access to the vault.

Despite it all though, Afton was still curious over what Sinclaire had to say to Dean... "Nyx, can you isolate the terminal and prevent it from affecting anything outside?"

"I can certainly try, sir."

Afton nods, allowing her to do so. He wasn't afraid of being trapped, as he could simply cut his way out of the vault. The only real issue would be the elevator, but he could just climb his way out and lower a rope for Veronica and Christine to use to get out as well.

While Nyx was isolating the terminal, Afton walks over to the underground hatch that Veronica and Christine were struggling to open... It was apparently too heavy for them to lift, meaning there was a mechanism nearby for it... But, why would Afton refuse a time to show off?