Everett and I slid under the fence our crime concealed in the high grass. Before us, the house's vacant windows caught the fading light of day. Without inhabitants, it was little more than a wooden skeleton. One that filled me with terror at that. 

"I guess it's time to see what's so big and scary." He muttered, mirroring my leap from front step to doorway. The evidence of my fall way played out in the dust and broken floorboards. My flashlight marking the end, surprisingly unscathed albeit a little dusty.

"Is this the tapestry you were talking about?" He called from the dining room, "If it is, it's really creepy."

"Isn't it?" I followed close behind. He threw back the curtain and much to my dismay, there was nothing but paneled wall. "I swear there was something back here." I knelt down feeling for any gaps between the wall and the floor, my fingers leaving a map in the dust. 

Everett's creaking footsteps led him back to the living room where my fall left a hole in the floor.

"Ellowyn, there's defiantly a basement to this house. I'm going to let myself down and see if I can't find my way back up." My attempts to protest were cut short by the sound of floorboards breaking. I ducked back into the living room just in time to watch Everett sink beneath floor level. "Everett!" I called shining my flashlight into the cavity.

"This is not the level of quality of construction I would want in a home that's for sure." He shielded his eyes from the beam of my flashlight. "Worst case scenario I stand on some boxes and climb back out. If you were the one down here you wouldn't be tall enough to climb out if you wanted to." He tapped his finger to his temple and walked out of my field of vision.

I let out a sigh of frustration and laid out on the floor occasionally cranking my flashlight as it grew dim. The occasional sound of Everett shuffling in the basement was a welcome comfort. It did well to keep away the fear that I would encounter that creature again. Or worse, someone would call and the pair of us would be charged with trespassing."Did you find anything of interest?"

"Yes actually, tons of pro-war propaganda and advertisements. Nine out of ten soldiers prefer Mighty Man canned goods, good for our troops, good for your family." He read aloud, I followed the sound of his voice to below the first-floor office. Though calling it that was generous considering the room's inhabitants were a chairless desk and a pile of destroyed books.  "Or, this one: with lady liberty on our side, we cannot fail. Beat back the old man, enlist today."

Everett continued spouting off slogans as I responded the sound of shuffling in the kitchen. My heart beating faster at the thought of encountering the creature from my last visit. I allowed my flashlight to dim to a similar level of illumination to the street lights outside. Scraping its way across the floor was a shape not dissimilar to a spider. "It's mechanical" I mumbled, taking note of its rhythmic motion and metal body.

"Ellowyn? Are you still there? I found the stairs and I'm coming up." Everett sounded from somewhere beneath me.

I started to crank my flashlight again, knowing now that the creature was not a creature at all. "I found what scared me last night. It's like a spider."

"If you're going to tell me all that terror was caused by a spider I'm going to have to ask how big it is."

"House Cat," I responded with a smirk. Part of me hoped that would frighten him just a little, a small act of revenge for all the teasing. The wind-up spider let out a high pitch whirr and attached itself to what looked like an electrical outlet. 

"I'm going to tell myself you're kidding and ask if there is a way to open this door from your end." A bit of panic sounded in his voice, we were even.  I pulled back the tapestry away and watched as the wood panels slid into the floor. Everett in shock on the other side.

"It's a mechanical spider." I cast a beam of light on it as it scraped its way back into the kitchen, "I'm certain we're in the right place."

"I would agree. The master of all invention certainly lives up to his name." He motioned for me to join him in the basement.  

The state of the lower level made the rest of the house look staged. The cinderblock walls were free of decoration save from the posters. I would've expected there to be storage down here, holiday decorations, a pantry, something. But there were no signs that the house had been lived in other than the partially furnished living room and office. I wondered if the people in the photographs upstairs were even real people.  I shook my head, whether or not the house was real was hardly important. We needed to find the doctor, he was our reason for being here.

"So I'm thinking," I started, "That the spiders are running on a timer. This is about the same time I was here last night when it brushed past me."

"Why would a house need timers or spiders for that matter to open things?"

"That's just it. Look at the war posters, maybe this wasn't a house. Fairburg is the first thing an invasion from The Old World would see. Maybe this was a safe house or even a factory." I searched his face for a sign he was following my logic but found his expression unchanged. 

"It sure as hell explains why no one has torn it down yet. It is the number one eyesore on Main Street." Everett took a long pause to scan the room once more hands on his hips. His jump to the basement had left him looking dirty and disheveled, "Alright Holmes, what's your next theory?"

"Well Dear Watson," I began, repeating my process from upstairs feeling along the floors for a hint of a hidden room, "There has to be a way up or down."

While I searched the high-pitched whirring began again. Everett and I exchanged a worried glance before he rushed up the stairs, His heavy footsteps sending a shower of dust my way. 

He swore under his breath and pounded the wall, "We're trapped." 

"It's fine." I kept my voice as calm as I could.

"It isn't, I have a shop to run. What happens if I'm not there tomorrow? What then Ellowyn?"

"We'll figure it out. Worst case I help you climb out the hole in the floor." It wasn't an entirely feasible plan, Everett was much too tall for me to hoist him to the upper level. 

The whirring began again and Everett frantically searched the walls, "I'm not getting trapped down here."

This time the sound was accompanied by the unpleasant scraping of stone on stone. "As above so below." I mused, watching the wall beneath the staircase sink out of view. The whirring stopped but the clicking of wound limbs did not. 

"I present to you a way out, Ellowyn." Everett placed a wind-up key in my hand and shook a mechanical spider in the other. 

"Good thinking." It's motionless metal for brought with it a sense of relief. I hadn't noticed how tense I felt with my escape placed in the hands of timed doorways and mechanical constructs. 

The hole in the wall led down and down and down The darkness thick and consuming, reducing the effectiveness of my flashlight beam. "Dr. Von Heikenroter?" I called out into the dark passage. The sound was so dead that my voice seemed to leave my mouth and drip down my face. 

"Nowhere to go but down." Everett shrugged regaining his positive demeanor now that we had a spider-key of our own. 

In the cramped passage, Everett walked close behind occasionally bumping into me on the uneven stairs. Just how far under the city are we? I wondered as we walked deeper and deeper into the earth with little sign of reaching an end.

"Ellowyn I've got it!" 

I stopped, Everett crashing into me, "What?"

"A race of mole people that have brilliant eyesight even in the dark built this staircase to connect our city with theirs."

"That's absurd," In our current location, Everett's humor was lost on me. I panned left to right with my flashlight and noticed that the beam did not land on any surface. We reached a large open room at the bottom of the stairs. The walls of the room were dimly lit by strings of emergency lights. The floor lined by tables and all decorated with scattered tools and scraps of metal. The posters Everett found in the first basement hung from every wall.

"I guess I was wrong. Just pre-war factory dwellers."

The two of us shuffled between the rows of tables sorting through objects long undisturbed. I tried to imagine factory workers hopping on a streetcar in the dead of night to go inside a house with mechanical spiders to build things for the war effort. This was the Fairburg our parents lived in. The Fairburg Dr. Von Heikenroter lived in. If things were always this secretive during the war I could understand why he was so quiet when it came to his past service. 

His secrecy left much of his past unknown to me. I knew he was a decorated soldier, it's how he lost his arm and leg, the rest of was a mystery to me. I also knew his parents were pretty big lawyers back on the mainland. They weren't happy when he went to medical school or that he enlisted shortly after. From what I could gather they haven't been on speaking terms since.

"How fast do you think the police will find us if I throw out the power grid?"

"Why would you— " Just as I spoke, what overhead lights remained flickered on above us.

"And that is why you brought me along." He posed with his hands on his hips, proud and bold. His arm shining and silver.

"You kept the spare arm?"

"If the doctor can have an adventuring arm I don't see why I can't." He smiled gently, his eyes crinkling with it. 

"Everett, look at this," I rushed to the last table and fanned out a set of eight metal legs, "We weren't the only ones that thought to grab a spider."

"The doctor beat us to a good idea then."

"At least it means he's down here somewhere. We came to the right place." I scanned the room once more. Not that he made it any easier. 

Everett and I searched every room and corner we could for more signs of the doctor but the bodiless spider was the only sign so far. "The other doors were opened by fake outlets. There has to be another. How do you feel about splitting up?"

"We'll be able to cover more ground that way. If you hear screaming it means I'm in trouble."

"Sounds like a plan. I'll do the same."

I was enjoying our banter. Since making, it out of the stairwell both of us could relax. We had a key to get out, a reliable light source, and evidence the doctor was nearby. 

With that, I explored the narrow corridor to the right while Everett remained in the main workshop. The cramped space was an unwelcome change from the vaulted ceiling of the main room. It wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for all the debris. Rusted cabinets once painted a sickening shade of hospital green laid toppled over in doorways, rendering rooms unusable. I found myself crawling over and under unrecognizable scrap just to make it further in.

Medical supplies. Syringes, IV stands, and stuff of the like littered the floor. Maybe this was an infirmary, I thought, though something told me it wasn't. This network of narrow hallways was excessive even by the standards of a pre-labor laws factory. It was more of a clinic than an infirmary.

At the far end of the hall, the door torn off its hinges was an office, the walls lined with filing cabinets; I shuttered to think of their contents, especially considering the smell. The lower level must have flooded at some point letting the papers mildew and the cabinets rust. If I were The Master of all Invention where would I hide my notes? I wondered decided the long-abandoned desk would be a good starting place.

The desk chair creaked under my weight and each metal desk drawer cried out to be oiled with metal on metal grinding. Inside I found only documents with names I didn't know and mildewing spots that covered any relevant information.

In the top drawer, I found a binder, well taken care of in comparison to the rest of the room, the binding marked S.E.B. My heart leapt with excitement. I could see why the Doctor was so obsessed with this man, the feeling of discovery, was intoxicating. Had he even venture down this way climbing and crawling over debris? I considered taking it with me, showing it to him when we found him, a sort of peace offering for trespassing and following him. Then again I wasn't even sure I wanted him to find more. I just wanted him home.

The inside echoed the initials on the binding followed by the year 1914, the year we joined the war.  The pages were filled with hand-drawn diagrams of the human body and notes in handwriting so haphazard that I couldn't decipher it. Past the notes was a grid filled from top to bottom with names and dates. Most were during the war, which made sense considering this factory clearly wasn't in use anymore. However, after a few blank pages, there were new entries.

All dated on The Great Collapse.