After realizing we were trying to solve the wrong puzzle at the palace gate, we made a new decision. We became thieves, and we began the journey of scouring this dead city in search of our "key."

  We headed toward the residential area, or what was left of it. The streets were silent ruins. In the first house we entered, the dining table was still set, the food on it petrified and turned to black dust. In another house, I found a small, broken wooden doll amidst a pile of bones, as if a child had been clutching it in their final moments. Every place screamed a story of a violent and sudden end.

  "Useless," I muttered after we emerged from the fifth house, frustration creeping into my voice. "There's nothing here but ghosts."

  I was about to give up and suggest returning to the lake, but 404 suddenly stopped in front of a building that looked like a library or a hall of records. It was more intact than the others.

  "What?" I asked him.

  "A faint energy signature," he said in his quiet voice. "Under this rubble." He pointed to a huge pile of shattered wood and stone.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  I felt hope ignite within me. "Energy? Could it be the key?"

  I began digging frantically with my hands and feet, while 404 moved the massive rock fragments with ease. Under a collapsed bookshelf, I found it. It wasn't a key, but a rectangular device made of a dark metal, surprisingly intact.

  "A sound recording device," 404 said before I could ask.

  I pressed one of the buttons out of curiosity. A faint crackle emanated from the device, and then I heard the clear voice of a man, shouting with urgency and desperation, the sound of explosions and battle raging in the background.

  "Go! Go to the lab now! Through the door in the lake, it's the only safe way!"

  There was a moment of silence in the recording, then I heard a violent crash.

  "Damn it! They're everywhere! I'll try to stop them... these fools won't kill me! Just go! Go now!"

  Then the recording cut off abruptly, and silence once again fell upon the room.

  I stood frozen, the words ringing in my ears. War... chaos... and a man who thought he could stop "them." But who were "they"? The machines? Or something else?

  But most important of all were two things: "the lab," and "the door in the lake."

  I turned quickly to 404, my eyes wide with a new realization. "The door... the stone door we saw at the bottom of the lake. It wasn't a tomb. It was an entrance."

  We had found it.

  We hadn't found a key to the palace, but we had found an alternative path. A path that leads to a "lab" that might hold all the answers... or new horrors.

  I looked out of a broken window toward the dark lake in the heart of the cavern.

  "Let's go," I said, my voice a mixture of determination and fear. "It seems we're going for another swim."