Author's Note

Chapter 4 - The Underground

The entrance to their city wasn't far from where the zip line dropped off, which was apparently why they had chosen to use such a ridiculous mode of transport in the first place, and why it dropped one off so far away from the hideout. They also chose it because Thomas liked zip lines.

Our walk there hadn't been awkwardly silent as most of our time had been spent. We didn't have any deep, dramatic, important conversations. Just small talk. But it was nice, it was fun, it was refreshing. I had been right after all: we were all slowly growing more comfortable. Even if I wasn't liked by all of them.

Our walk had led us to an odd square of concrete, smooth, without any cracks. It was relatively large, around ten mitres in length and width. And in the middle of this stone was the entrance we had been looking for.

Even the door was exactly how I had written for it to be; not really a door, but a trapdoor, buried on the surface of the rock. On the other side, though I couldn't see through the rusted, corroding metal, I knew there lurked a stone set of steps, leading to an elevator which would, in turn, take us on our trip into the beyond. No handle. The door was circular, small - it had to be. Nothing could find it, nothing could fit through and find its way into the safe zone that the people of this foreign, bizarre universe had spent so long building. Nothing.

Thomas, who had been leading the way, had walked over to the entrance, and rapped on the surface: three times in quick succession, then two, slowly, and three, quickly once more. The metal panel immediately began moving, almost before he'd even delivered the last knock. It slid slowly into the stone, creating a soft grinding sound as it did, and revealed a dark stairwell made of the same stone as above. A couple of seconds afterwards, pure white light erupted down the stairs, presumably from the ceiling. It wasn't blinding, but soft, flooding down the staircase and illuminating the path and the landing below which led to the elevator.

The stairs weren't steep, and there wasn't many of them. We all kneeled around the circle, the floor cold against my bare legs, waiting for someone to make the first move, waiting for someone to go first. I don't know why we waited. We all knew what was down there, it wasn't scary, it wasn't unfamiliar. But we did. Perhaps they waited to see what I made of it; if so, then they didn't get much of a response. I didn't say much. And I waited because I wasn't supposed to know what to expect, and so the smart thing to do would be to pretend to be afraid and wait for one of them to "show me the way."

Eventually, Keith spoke up - "so are we actually gonna go down there or what?" - and Thomas, rolling his eyes, lowered himself into the passage and began walking down, down, down. Keith followed suit, and then Katie, and then, finally, me. Katherine waited for me and we walked together, as the hatch closed behind us, blocking out the natural light and the bizarre world beyond.

The corridor was relatively narrow, while the walls and stairs were completely smooth and shiny. The air felt cooler, slightly less thick, refreshing compared to what I had been inhaling all morning. Our footsteps echoed despite the small size of the area, ricocheting off the walls and breaking the quietness that had been hovering between us, the quietness that hung underground at every location, for every second.

We walked at an average pace and quickly found ourselves at the bottom of the stairs. The ground levelled out, and a corridor stretched before us. There were no windows (obviously) and no doors, excluding two closed ones at the very end, coupled with a small, smooth, black rectangle above it in the centre of the wall that functioned as a sensor. Upon our approach, a small red light turned on behind the glass of the sensor, and the doors slowly slid open, revealing the elevator which would take us to their home.

Thomas led, and walked in. Keith was next, then Katherine, just as before, which left me to awkwardly shuffle in with them. The elevator wasn't small, it was a decent size and had a large amount of room for us to manoeuvre. As I turned around to face the doorway, the metal slid closed, and a moment later the jolt I felt in my stomach told me we had begun our decent into the earth below.