It wasn't long after Amie left when Nora, Justin and Boxcar showed up with the girl, who was riding on Boxcar's back.  Justin chuckled to himself as he pulled the key out of his pocket and unlocked the front door.  "Oops, I didn't realize everyone was gonna show up at once, so I went ahead and locked up the place just as you got here.  Here we go...might as well bring along all your luggage inside while we're at it."

They brought the raven-haired girl inside the front door and set her down onto one of the couches of the living room, and there relieved her of her shock gloves.  Nora examined her for injuries while Justin supervised bringing in all the luggage inside, and she pulled out a hypo from her labcoat and loaded it with a dose of a pain relief and healing stimulant that she injected into the girl, after the hypo's built-in sensors indicated it would be safe to do so.  Even if the girl had suffered a concussion earlier, this should help her to recover more quickly and without permanent ill effect.

The living room was a large, spacious room that served as the major intersection of the entire rest of the lodge.  There was a fireplace on the left wall made of red brick that extended up through the vaulted ceiling, and next to that was a door that Justin opened that led into the garage.  He disappeared briefly to get an extra shirt for himself from his Ostrich legged cycle, and when he returned, he gestured to the honey-hued wooden floor, walls and ceiling; the variety of couches, bean-bag chairs, and recliners that sat on a single large rug in the middle of the floor; to the mezzanine above where an upper level featured many more doors along its length as it straddled the north and east sides of the second floor of the lodge, where a wooden rail bordered the mezzanine from the floor below it; to the wooden stairs with red carpeting that led up to that second floor.

"Okay, so this is the living room," started Justin as he put his fists onto his hips after he finished slipping into the extra T-shirt with a gaming logo emblazoned across it.  "You can see the TV mounted on the wall over there between the fireplace and the door to the garage, an old style that looks weird if you're used to full trivid projectors, but it works just fine, except...apparently the satellite dish on top of the lodge doesn't connect the TV to Segaso City's network, so you're stuck watching the videos until we can figure out a new antenna for it."

Justin then led the way past the northern wide open doorway (to the right of the door to the garage, to the left of the stairs leading up to the second floor) and gestured at a long, low room with a set of weights and benches to the left side of the room, and a workbench and desk with a mixed variety of tools to the right.  "Here's what I'd call the rec room," Justin announced.  "It's right under the bedrooms, and there was all of this stuff left here from whoever had this place before, so I guess it's yours now.  Soundproof, too, so you can't hear what's going on down here if you're in one of the bedrooms, or vice versa.  The doors slide out of the edges of the doorway electrically or manually, so you can minimize the noise between this room and the living room."

A door near the workbench area led downstairs into a dark, cement-laden box of a basement, lit only by a single overhead light bulb.  Partitioned off by bare gray walls were two large cylinders, one connected by pipes, the other connected by wires to the rest of the building.  A fuse box sat on the wall next to the wired cylinder.  "Water heater also works as a primary pump to bring water in from an underground aquifer that is also connected to the lake.  Geothermal power is used for part of the house power, but most of it comes from this shielded power plant...micro-fusion, surprisingly modern for what was supposed to be an abandoned lodge out in the middle of nowhere..." He shrugged.  "Not unusual in many apartment buildings in Segaso, but I'd be hard-pressed to figure out what this place needed this much power for.  Good news is, you'd have to drop a nuclear bomb to crack the case on this power source.  And your sewage goes down a tunnel that actually meets up with Segaso City's sewer system, so...that's handy, I guess."

At this stage of the tour, Boxcar sniffed at a corner that seemed oddly empty, but he mentioned nothing as the group returned back upstairs to the living room.

Justin then led them into the kitchen, which was through another wide open doorway on the right side as a person entered the lodge from the front door.  Smooth granite countertops edged the kitchen, with cupboards mounted above and below, as well as a sink, a fridge, a microwave, stove, and a table with chairs and barstools.  "All the appliances work," reported Justin before he opened a door to a pantry area to the left of the back door leading outside.  "There's some food and supplies here already, so you shouldn't have to go shopping right away, unless any of you have particularly special dietary requirements."

Then he led them up the carpeted stairs from the living room to the corner of the mezzanine, where the same red carpet extended both ways along the floor and in front of the different doorways on eight side.  "Doors to the left of this corner are all bedrooms," Justin announced with a flourish to his left.  "So that's eight rooms total."  He opened the first bedroom door and showed them in to see a fairly boxy area with a single openable window, uncovered mattress with a wooden bedframe, sheets and blankets and pillows piled up inside a closet, and a small personal bathroom.  "There's a closet at the end of the bedroom wing that has extra towels, pillows, and other stuff like that.  The bedroom bathrooms are not very big, but they have a sink, shower stall, and toilet each, so you'll all have whatever privacy you require."

"And here to the right of the corner, starting with the closest door, is a bigger bathroom with a tub, a laundry room, and...a really big changing/locker/shower room with a hot tub set into the floor between the men's and women's sides.  The laundry room is equipped with washer, dryer, and even a clothes materializer - the styles might not be up to date until you can connect the satellite dish to Segaso City, but it's enough to replace anything damaged or missing, and it'll size you automatically."

The clothes materializer sat just inside the doorway of the laundry room, an open-sided cylinder that a person could stand inside and pull a curtain over the opening for privacy and scan accuracy.  A touchscreen on the inside of the cylinder allowed for operation of the device, which gave options for color, fit, and style, as well as a supply reading on how much synthread was available to create the clothing, and a preview of the desired clothing.  The top and bottom of the inside of the cylinder projected a light field for full-spectrum body scanning, and when the unit had power, these circles always had a low-level glow to their translucent white surfaces.  A series of thread injectors were designed to shoot synthread from above and below a person while a low-level electro-magnetic field combined with air jets to weave the thread into place.  A little tingly, but a lot faster than going to town for a proper tailor.

The hot tub room/changing room area was much different than the rest of the lodge.  The carpet immediately ended at the doorway, and was replaced with floor, ceiling and walls composed of light bluish-white polished stone, like marble.  Light was piped in from skylights set into the ceiling as well as a series of waterproof half-spheres that dotted the walls and ceiling around the room.  The hot tub was large and circular in an octagonal setting in the floor, with metal railings leading into the water via a set of built-in stairs that incorporated themselves into the circular seating.  On either side of the hot tub was a self-standing wall that divided the room into approximate thirds, with the middle third being where the hot tub was, and each of the left and right thirds having markings indicating men's and women's sides respectively.  The standing walls could be walked around on either side of them to enter the tub area, and each changing room had lockers, areas to hang clothes, changing stalls, and open-walled showers.  A small wood-lined sauna room sat enclosed against the far wall behind the hot tub, the outer shell masked in more tiles.

"Just saying this now, but this is still a really weird thing to have in a lodge like this," Justin pointed out.  "I mean, you already have showers and a tub in the bathrooms, this seems completely unnecessary.  But hey, I didn't build this place, I just made sure it was all working."

"And that's the tour!" finished Justin as he led the group back to the living room, and handed the keys over to Nora.  "Here you go - this is the only set of keys, but hopefully you won't run into any situations where you'd need more than one.  If you run into any problems, my number is on a note on the fridge.  I can get here pretty fast in an emergency, but it's still a long drive, so just be prepared for that."

After explaining any answers to questions about operating on-site appliances and functions, Justin waved goodbye and rode off on his Ostrich walker bike, and left Nora, Boxcar, and the rest of the lodgers to their new home.[hr]
It did not take long for everyone to get their luggage put away inside the lodge.  Nora felt the weight of responsibility settle onto her shoulders as she moved her suitcase into the first bedroom, closest to the corner, where she would be easy to find if anyone needed her for anything.  Boxcar was supposed to be downstairs guarding the girl - for her own protection, thought Nora, as much as everyone else's - but when she came out of her room, she found to her dismay that the girl was on the couch unattended.

"Boxcar?" she called out from the top of the mezzanine stairs.  "Has anyone seen him?"

Boxcar, meantime, had gone downstairs to investigate that suspicious empty area in the basement.  The door had been left partially open to the basement, and he managed the light switch with some awkward pawing, and now he sniffed at the corner where he thought he smelled...it was an odd combination of misty sulfur and the tang of ozone, so he wasn't entirely sure if the source was magical or technological or both, but it was definitely coming from down here.

The wolf scrabbled around the corner for a few minutes until he finally hit a hidden button in the otherwise solid granite wall, and a secret doorway slid open to reveal a short corridor to another set of downward-angled stairs.  A series of lights built into the ceiling, small as dots but powerful enough to light whole sections of walkway, turned on sequentially as they detected his motion.  He knew he couldn't go too far from Nora, but there was something about this lodge that didn't add up, and now he had discovered a secret entrance to...another part of the lodge.  Underground, deep underground.