Chapter 43 - Digging The Hole

The monotone job of swinging his pickaxe and crushing the stone in front of him into small bits was calming Tom's mind down.

He escaped from the Bike shop as soon as he was capable of doing this without drawing additional attention to himself. Sadly, the time where he could travel around the place freely was already over. Right now, Tom had no other choice but to accept the company of several 'uncles' of his in order to get home safely.

After all, no one knew who could try his luck if Tom were to travel on his own.

Despite all of that, despite how the family insisted on leaving several people at Tom's place, he still used all his wits and craftiness to get alone before plunging into the tunnel.

With the loop of potential surveillance over him quickly tightening, Tom didn't dare to waste even a single second of the little time he still had.

Thump.

Finally, the stone gave out a different sound than it would usually do. At first, Tom simply stopped working, trying to figure out what this sound could mean. But after a while, he returned to work as before.

After all, even if this strange sound meant that he was close, the rest of the tunnel wouldn't dig itself out on its own.

Roughly ten minutes more of swinging his pickaxe later, Tom finally reached the empty space that echoed his digging for a while already.

He didn't reach the inside of the Dome. Looking through the small scar that he made on the natural wall that separated him from the emptiness, Tom was pretty sure about it.

From how the empty space only contained a small pipe and nothing else, it could be some kind of service tunnel, or maybe the severs.

'I will need some kind of drone to scan it or something,' Tom thought while looking at the pipe before turning around and going back to a primitive station he made for himself.

When compared to the early stages of the tunnel, the part that Tom dug out was of way worse quality. Putting the difference in the sheer skill aside, Tom didn't waste his time on creating comfortable resting zones, something that the part of the tunnel dug by his father was notorious about.

"If that's the canalization system, then I should dig here," Tom muttered to himself while trying to figure out the paths for his further tunnels. Right now, he only needed a small drone to penetrate the dome and scout its insides. But if he wanted to really enter the portal hidden inside the building, his tunnel wouldn't be enough.

Not yet, that is.

From that point on, Tom started to work even harder than before. Once he pinpointed several locations and calculated the amount of work approaching each of them would take, he didn't bother wasting his time.

A single circle around the entire tunnel allowed Tom to mark every single place of potential interest. Then, he picked the most promising one and got back to the mundane work.

Hit after hit, small parts of stone were chipping away from the wall ahead of Tom. With each swing, his muscles would burn as if they were on fire, proving just how tired he was.

'Still, don't I have a little bit more stamina than I should?' Tom suddenly noticed before inspecting his internal state. 'Did I grow my muscles so much in such a short amount of time, or is it something else?' Tom asked himself, puzzled yet unable to find the answer to this question.

Obviously, he could assume that it was the influence of the avatars. That for some reason, a part of the strenght of the avatars he was using would project on him. Or maybe it was something related to his newly discovered method of using the 'data stone'? While there was no clues that would allow Tom to either confirm or deny this conjunction, it just felt like it would fit the picture pretty well.

'No, that's another trap,' Tom warned himself as he continued to swing his pickaxe and think at the same time. 'If I force various stuff in line just because I want them to align, it won't mean the idea is right,' he noticed before shaking his head in disappointment.

Thump.

Once again, a weird sound stopped Tom's line of thought. He looked behind to eyeball the distance he already unearthed before moving his eyes back ahead.

"Seems like this might be it," Tom muttered, using his gloved hand to shove the loose stones away.

And sure enough, right underneath the deepest point he dug, a concrete wall stood. Or rather, what Tom discovered after several more swings of his tool, it was a concrete beam. Soon, Tom started to discover more and more of those. As soon as he reached the first of the pylons, his job suddenly turned a lot faster.

It was as if the ground between each of the underground pillars never had the chance to turn hard.

PING.

Finally, Tom heard a metallic sound. It appeared that the tip of his pickaxe finally struck against the kind of material that Tom hoped to unearth.

"Yes!" Tom whizzed through his mouth, not daring to use a loud voice. If his belief was correct, the metal sheet that he discovered would be the last barrier that would separate him from the insides of the Dome.

From the place where the portal should be. From the place where his father diapered all those years ago.

Ring!

Tom's phone suddenly rang in his pocket. Even though he was deep underground and shielded from the rest of the world by the presence of the Dome right above his head, his phone still picked up the signal.

"Yes?" Tom picked up the phone without even looking at the recipient.

"Tom, I need you to go to Online Hub. Peter is demanding a report of your progress," Cleo announced, clearly trying to pick on the duties Marvin had no ability to attend to.

"Sure thing..." Tom replied with a voice as monotone as was his digging before an idea struck him. "Hey, Cleo, listen, I will need you to get me one thing..."