The Adventures of Kid Combat Volume One: A Secret Lost by Christopher Helwink

He made his way into the cluster
fairly easily. He needed to duck only once before he came to the
center and stopped. In front of him stood the largest tree. In the
center of that tree, about four feet up, there was a patch of small
holes. Kid placed his right hand it one of the empty knots, and a
quiet buzzing sound could be heard as he hit a tiny button in the
secret compartment. At that instant, the ground underneath Kid’s
feet began to shake. And with a final jolt, he began to
descend.
    Kid was entering his new base. From here, he
hoped to grow the alliance and help the children of the
neighborhood. But for now, he needed to help his friend. He needed
to find out what happened to Samantha.
    The small disc-shaped platform descended. The
hydraulics and the small engine used to lower the platform made a
small buzzing noise that was muffled by the small elevator moving
up and down via a series of pulleys. It was silent aboveground as
the opening in the ground closed to conceal the secret entrance.
Kid slowly made his descent and stopped in front of a silver door
labeled, “Sub Level 3.” With a push of a button to the right of the
door, it opened.
    Kid stepped off the elevator and into a
bright, shiny hallway. Fluorescent lights attached to the six-foot
ceiling lit up the passageway, giving it an off-green glow. The
walls were silver and had no markings, disguising what was at the
end. The hallway itself was short, about ten feet long, and seemed
to lead nowhere.
     
     

     
     
    As Kid headed down the hall, his footsteps
echoed. The end wall he approached had no knobs, no cracks, no
edges, and no control panels- to the untrained eye it would appear
that the hallway led nowhere. Kid knew otherwise. He touched an
area on the wall to his right and gave it a slight press.
    Nothing happened for a few moments. Then,
with a dinging of a bell, the back wall opened up. Sliding to Kid’s
left, the wall came apart and revealed another room.
    This room was built in a semicircle and,
again, there were no markings on the walls. The lights and walls
matched the hallway, and in the middle of the room was a pole made
of clear plastic. On top was a silver keypad with the digits 0
through 9. It was the last line of defense between the outside
world and the secret base.
     
     

     
     
    Kid walked up to the keypad and entered his
code. As he typed, the keys made a very faint beeping sound.
6–5–7–3–1. Kid put his hands in his pockets and waited for the
secret door on the back wall to open.
    It didn’t.
    Kid rolled his eyes in frustration and tried
again. 6–5–7–3–1. Again, there was no result.
    “Huh,” Kid said out loud to no one. He stood
there for a few seconds and finally gave the unit a quick whack.
For a third time, he entered the code. Finally, to his delight, the
wall directly behind the key pad and directly in front of him
started to open.
    He made a mental note to talk to Gears about
fixing the keypad.
    Scrolling from left to right, the wall opened
up into a massive room. He could hardly see, as there were no
lights on, but he made his way through the main room with no
problem. He made his way over to the wall and flipped the lights
on.
    The room came to life as the lights started
to flicker on. The bright white lights illuminated the heart of the
SOCKs organization. Deemed room “RD1” by Samantha, this room would
mostly be used by future recruits to research and develop
assignments. The new recruits would have workbenches and
workstations all over the place. Computer stations would be used to
research projects online. There would also be stations where Gears
and Samantha would try out their new gadgets designed to help Kid
with his assignments. RD1 would be the main base of operations
within The Playground.
    It was an open and airy room, like a small
gymnasium. The ceilings were much higher in this room, about ten
feet tall, and boasted the majority of the lights. This time,
though, there was no green