"What brings you back here?" One of the guards said almost as soon as Adam popped out of the hatch to talk. Guess they did recognize him.
"I was just coming to check to see how you guys are rebuilding. I was curious after the big battle with the cult if everything was set up again for you guys or not." Adam said back, being purely honest. In truth this was mostly a curiosity visit. Well, then again, going to both the Raft and The Tower was a curiosity visit too, so perhaps it wasn't too much of an oddity.
The guard looked at the other and then sighed.
"Well you are welcome to come in if you want. Not much to see, but the place is fixed up from the fight." He said with a casual shrug.
"Excellent." Adam smiled. "Where should I park the APC?"
"I don't really care, just somewhere out of the way."
"Understood." Adam said as he hopped back in and then drove about a hundred feet away and parked the APC near the wall, leaving Sgt. Fyre at the APC to protect it from any would-be thieves.
"Nice uniforms." Adam remarked as he walked back towards the gate and the guards.
"Its the standard uniform for the Dukedom." The one on the left remarked.
"And you guys whipped those up in a week?" Adam asked.
"No. What, are you stupid? How the hell would we have done that?" The one on the right said with venom for reasons Adam didn't know. However it seemed the one on the left was just as annoyed with him as Adam should be.
"Why are you being an ass?" The Left Guard said to him sharply, then sighed and turned to Adam again. "These have always been the standard garb of the royal guard in the Dukedom. From before the cult's takeover." He explained. "I was a guard back then too, though I was spared from the massacre by pure chance. We found the spare uniforms stowed away in one of the storage rooms. Can't imagine why the cult decided to keep them around, maybe they were hoarders."
Adam wanted to ask how many from back then survived, but right now it felt like it would be a bit callous to do that. Especially since he used the word 'massacre'. This man alone must have lost more family and friends than Adam was ready to think about. Best to leave it alone.
"Have you guys been doing okay on weapons and ammo? I know a lot of the weapons were scavenged so…" Adam then paused, chuckled a bit and then continued. "Then again, I was one of those people who took stuff after the fight, so maybe I shouldn't be saying that."
"Nah, we are good." The guard on the left continued. "Truthfully there were more than enough guns and ammo to go around. If the cult had one thing, that's guns." He chuckled.
"And fuckin' slaves." The guard on the right added, with a bitter tone.
"Yeah… that too." The guard on the left said back.
"Alright, well thank you for your time guys, I'm gonna head inside." Adam said as he began to walk inside only to stop as he heard the left guard speak up again.
"The Duke is probably on his throne. If you got time, go see him. He doesn't uh…." The guard then paused, seemingly thinking better of what he was going to say. "Well anyway, I don't think he'd say no to a visit from ya."
"I may just do that then." Adam said with a nod to him as he then led his group inside.
It was strange, they were here not too long ago. Back then it was a life or death fight. Bullets and explosions all around. Torusk coming here to hunt him. Which was still an unsolved mystery. He still had no idea how or why he ended up here, during the cult fight, to hunt Adam. There were too many questions about that man he never got an answer for. But he was dead. So it did not really matter.
Walking through the halls Adam noted that things were very organized, much more put together than it was after his fight here. But of course that is to be expected, people live here. No one likes to live in filth if they can avoid it. However he noticed that a lot of effort had been taken to scrub any cult iconography off the walls, doorways, windows, and the like. Though the regal symbology that Adam had noticed when he was infiltrating was still present. In fact it was more apparent now than before. Clearly this symbology was due to the Duke's influence.
The doorway to the basement was sealed off with yellow caution tape and a radioactive sign. Not that he intended to go down there again. But likely the horrors down there were either not yet fully dealt with or it was simply not yet safe for people to enter. Either way it was clear they had no intention of using the space for the time being.
However other than removing the trace of the cult the building looked very similar to how he last saw it when it was operating. Bedrooms were the same, the market place still existed out back, common rooms and offices were still here. It was very much the same settlement, just lived in by new people. Or, perhaps, the original residents. In either case the only real difference between when the cult was here and now was the lack of people. When the cult was here it was full to the brim. It had nothing on the numbers of Midway, of course, but it was quite a sizable population. However now the hallways felt sparse and barren, many rooms left to gather dust. It seemed that the people who migrated here were too few in number to make full use of the space.
Finally Adam entered the Gym, the place where he had watched The Gunners inhale a hallucinogenic gas and where he watched as Mira impaled the Cult Leader with the chinese officer's sword she found. Which still bothered his old American sensibilities, by the way. It didn't help that she had decided to keep the Chinese officer's sword as her main melee weapon for self defense. Regardless the space had been touched up, no longer was it set up like a church, instead it was set up like a regal audience hall. The throne that Adam had seen, left unused, last he was here was now in use as a familiar face sat in the throne. The Duke.