Chapter Text
“Looks pretty… Crumbly to me”
Sam muttered to the empty crumbling building in front of her.
Deterioration can be seen even from a distance. The crumbling walls with its faded paint, overgrown weeds scattered at the grounds of the establishment, Ivy crawling up the walls and broken windows with its pieces dispersed on the floor nearby.
The C&A building is far from its glory days after it closed down in the early 2000s due to the bankruptcy that happened. However, the public didn't know that there's a deeper reason why the company went bankrupt.
Sam happened to know the reason. Her dad and mom were former employees of the C&A after all. She didn't understand the coding reasons, but Sam understood that C&A closed because an AI decided to go haywire. And that haywire caused a big damage in the company's assets and finance.
That AI had a name.
And Sam forgot the name of that AI.
After getting a last look at the building's exterior, Sam decided to take her first step towards the entrance of the building.
Like what she expects whenever she goes urbexing, her surroundings are quiet aside from the sound of nature and the vehicles from the road that you can barely hear. It's creepy in a way that will make some people hesitate to even set foot inside of the building. When you look around, you can't help but also feel eerie.
Those are the reasons why urbexing became a hobby for Sam.
When she first explored an abandoned building, she wasn't alone at that time. She was with her friends who decided to randomly explore an abandoned building near their school to post for their social media. And Sam enjoyed her time there, so much so that she decided to visit that abandoned building again alone and with her trusty camera that her parents gave her for her fifteenth birthday.
Sam finds urbexing relaxing in a way. She finds peace in the creepiness and the eeriness that abandoned places give. She likes to imagine what those abandoned places look like in their prime. This made her appreciate how cruel time can be and that everything eventually fades.
The moment Sam fully entered the building, she immediately took her camera out from its bag and started taking pictures of the areas that aren't too dark.
As she continues to venture inside, she eventually opens her head torch since she doesn't want to trip from the junk and rocks on the floor.
The interior of the building has a white paint with mold and grime in it. The furnitures are scattered everywhere, Sam decided to touch one with her finger and immediately saw the dust build up that stuck in her finger, she quickly cleaned her finger in her jeans before continuing walking.
Some walls are already falling apart along with the roof and the floor. That's why Sam is careful with her steps to not cause some destruction.
As she went deeper in the building, she never stopped taking pictures and maybe stopping for a bit to admire some things that got left behind. Like some pictures with people she doesn't know, those pictures most likely belong to the former employees of the company.
Sam wishes to find one with her dad and mom in it so she could show them. Although she doubts her parents will leave pictures behind that has the two of them.
Sam continued to explore the old C&A building until she eventually found an office with an old computer that seems to have electricity despite how decaying the building is. The screen might be dead, but she can see a small glowing green light below the screen, indicating that it has power.
The odd thing is, that specific computer is the only one that has power in the building. Everything in the building has long been disconnected from electricity.
“How the hell does this specific computer have power?”
Sam stepped closer to the old bulky computer that has dust building up in it. Beside the computer, resides a VR headset.
She settles her camera beside the VR headset on the table. Before she carefully grabs the VR headset and starts observing it.
“Pretty neat. I wonder what they use this for.”
Sam puts the headset in her eyes just to see what will happen.
She immediately pulled away when she saw a light quickly flashing in her eyes.
“Woah! What was that?” She quickly puts down the VR headset and grabs her camera back from the table.
“Weird…”
Sam mutters as she looks at the computer and the VR headset.
Her curiosity died down when nothing odd happened to the computer and the headset. She turned around and continued her exploration without looking back at the old computer and VR headset.