Tinhil City, Arunaya Province, Neo Quywe Federation
May 28th, 2056
No such thing as a peaceful sleep, Eztli thought as the commotion around him stirred him awake. "All block 7-J residents, report to the meeting room immediately." the intercom called out again and again; 7-J was mostly able bodied young men and women, probably looking for volunteers to go to the surface again, Eztli assumed. He quickly fixed his thick black hair to the side and splashed his face with cold water. He quickly disengaged himself from the hanging hand mirror and joined the stream of people.
While the gathering of people from 7-J was almost a weekly occurrence, Eztli locked eyes with a few obvious foreigners while passing through the dark concrete halls. Recent additions to 7-J, the first in a long time. Probably crawled into Sector 7 from the almost entirely abandoned Tenzai tunnel that once linked Tinhil City to Himeyama's capital. Though Himeyan they obviously weren't.
The meeting room was always occupied with engineers and scientists. They used data and images displayed on the countless consoles to help brief whoever was unfortunate or ballsy enough to go up to the surface when something went wrong. If Sector 7's military trained expedition teams got into trouble, even with scavenged military equipment, someone had to go pick up after them, and the ones that did were considered disposable. "Listen up, 7-J. Expedition teams Shinzan and Tecolotl were sent out 72 hours ago to look for a shipment of computer parts spotted about a week ago, Shinzan returned an hour ago with casualties and Tecolotl was last heard from 12 hours ago about 45 blocks away from Maruba station." The emotionless director of sector 7, a short and slender Vesian woman in a lab coat carefully explained the details of the situation.
"We will be forming a provisional expedition team to search for Tecolotl, survivors or their remains and equipment. I need at least 6 volunteers or I will pick you out myself." The Director glared into the crowd of people who gathered. Eztli sighed and stepped forward through the crowd, muttering among themselves. As a reservist trained for recon missions in the NQF armed forces before the Fall, he figured if someone had to go, he'd rather take the place of someone less adept. The Director gave a simple grunt to acknowledge his existence and turned her attention back to everyone else.
Mere seconds later a second pair of feet stepped up onto the elevated metal platform. Eztli looked back, and to his surprise, the introverted Maeka Ashikaga was now standing behind him, eyeing the director up and down. Maeka volunteering took Eztli by surprise, the daughter of a famous UTCT officer by the name of Yua, rarely even left her tent except to eat and exercise with a communal weight set. She was quiet. But Eztli had saw her fight before, fast, aggressive, efficient, if a bit spiteful; Eztli figured to avoid her, in case the stress of being on the surface caused her to snap on someone.