Vending Machine Lunch by Roadbloc

car
illuminated a large hall, all underground. Drab, dirty and cracked
mosaic tiles decorated the place, climbing their way up pillars
that obviously held the ground above from caving in.
    Squinting
through the dust, the headlights revealed that this space was
mostly empty, a long hall of some sort with pillars dotted around
and what looked to be a long thin hole running the length of it. He
looked up to the other side of the long narrow creek of sorts to
the wall of the other side of the hall. A large sign caught his
eye.
     
    High Green.
     
    Jink had no
idea what it meant. Nor did he care. There were several other signs
dotted about, one advertising a place called ‘The Drinking Well’
another advertising ‘Anchor Insurance’. He crept forward, through
decades of air dust, towards the long hole thing. He got to the
edge and looked down. Not much was to be seen, the long hole didn’t
go down very far, and appeared to have rusted strips of metal and
rotten bits of wood at the bottom. A rusting metal sign was just
visible, obviously it had fallen from somewhere. The words on it
were unreadable to Jink.
    “Welcome my
son.”
    The voice from
behind him made Jink jump. He spun around, to be faced by a tall
man. His face covered by a shadow created by the bright lights of
the headlights, shining in Jink’s eye. It wasn’t Jad, so who could
it be?
    “Welcome, to
the System.”
    Jink approached
the mysterious figure who appeared to be addressing him with
caution. He had quite a high pitched voice, it sounded strained and
somewhat harmonious.
    “Who are you?”
asked the tall figure as Jink approached.
    There was a
pause as Jink squinted, trying to recognise the figure. He was just
about to tell the figure his name was Jink and ask who he was, when
there was a soft buzzing noise. The man removed a small mechanical
device from a large furry coat. It had a glowing orange light,
lighting up his face. Jink saw the face of a weathered ageing man.
And this was hurricane weathered, not a light shower on a Sunday
morning countryside stroll. The small machine spat out a scrap of
paper which the figure tore out and inspected whist returning the
machine back into a sea of fur.
    “It’s okay, we
know who you are,” said the old man.
    Jink was lost
for words and somewhere at the back of his mind, he was
contemplating that he might be dead and he was experiencing an
afterlife of sorts. The scrap of paper was screwed up and tossed
onto the dusty mosaic floor.
    “You’re known
as Jink although that isn’t your birth name. What is known to be a
post-Deimosgate survivor. You live with your acquaintance, Jad the
third.”
    Jink was just
about to query on how this mysterious man knew so much when another
question was fired at him.
    “How have you
been?”
    Another slight
pause on behalf of Jink. He was only just beginning to start the
though process of answering the question when the soft buzzing
noise struck again, and the small machine with the orange glowing
diode was revealed again, ejecting another bit of paper for the man
to read.
    “It’s all
right, we know where you’ve been!” he said triumphantly, “You’ve
been out hunting for the Requiem. Driving the car whilst your
acquaintance fills the weapon full of shells. Egotistic fuelled
minds cause the crash. And now you’re stood right in front of
me.”
    “Where am I?”
Jink spat out the words as though they were toxic on his
tongue.
    “You’re inside
the old subway,” the second bit of paper joined the first.
    “The what?”
    “The subway. It
is a fast method of transport over long distances. Essentially a
long car that ran on a guided track. It used to be the connection
between all the cities, before relations crumbled. A war broke out
between the three major cities, Union, Elision and some-other one
that slips my mind now. I think it began with J. No, H. Defiantly
H. Not that will matter to you at all, no, no, the war broke out
and the subway was closed, much of