The Underground

Chapter 1: The Underground

I live in a world of cities. You may say that you do, too, but not like me. My cities are artificial. They keep us locked up, in these underground dungeons. One way into each city, one way out. No one is allowed to leave without a permit from the Alpha Regime, which are incredibly hard to get.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. All this talk of dungeons and regimes must be confusing for you. Allow me to explain:

Everyone on this planet was forced to move underground roughly 329 years ago due to hyperactive solar flares. The higher-ups say that these flares are still occurring, but I'm kind of iffy on that. They haven't exactly given us any proof, not that anyone here seems to care. Underground property became an instant commodity once word of the solar flares got out, and the rich went and bought up most of it, and started paying for new excavations on top of that. Anybody that actually owns land now is considered very wealthy.

With the land came power: power to control the subterranean crops, power to control water, power to control everything that happens in the underground. Those that owned land came together and formed the Alpha Regime, an all-powerful system of government that favors the rich and ignores the poor, who we call the Omega Regime. In between lies the Deltas, those who do "valuable work" for the Alphas.

Eventually one excavation met with another, over and over until they formed huge city-sized caverns. The Alphas decided that they didn't want to live with any lower-regime scum, so they segregated us. Each regime got its own series of cities, each overseen by the Alphas and their military police, the Beta Regime.

I just so happen to be an Omega, and I live in the worst of the Omega slums, infamously known as Half-Life City. Here the Alphas dump radioactive isotopes left over from experiments performed by their scientists, the Gammas. We also get our name from the state of our citizens: starved, sick, dying... hardly what you would call alive.

However, I'm different. Radioactivity doesn't seem to affect me. I'm one of the healthiest people in Half-Life, hell, in the whole underground. There are others like me, too: all Omegas, all born where the Alphas dump their poison.

And we know that there's something that the Alphas are hiding about the surface, something that they deem too precious to share with anybody else. We think the answer may be here, in Half-Life. Why? Because they keep us in the dark. Literally. Only our city. Our only light comes from a glowing, chemical-filled lake and whatever we think we can burn without killing ourselves from the fumes. I'm amazed some of us haven't started to glow yet to become human lanterns for the rest o--

"Jack!" Ow. That hurt, right in my ear.

"What?!" I reply, turning. It's Lin, standing right behind me in her ever present denim jacket, hands on her hips with that sarcastic look that says 'really?'.

"You're narrating again... You do realize you're not a part of some fictional story, right?"

"Um, yeah... Yeah, I know that. Of course," I say, following up with an uneasy laugh.

"Suuuurreeee. Come on, it's time for our meeting with the others." Lin turns and walks away, not even glancing behind to see if I'm following.

I glance down at my watch. 7:37. I'm late for our daybreak meeting. Well, I say daybreak... By now day has broken everywhere. But here, it is still night. No, more than night.

"I heard that! Stop trying to be all dramatic!" ...I forgot that she has incredible hearing. Sighing, I take one last look at the radioactive glow coming off the lake, and turn to follow her. I'm excited, today is the day. Today is the day we go to the surface.