A dank smell assaulted her nostrils. Rough hands set Alex down. Her boots sounded smooth against the hard stone. Every little movement sent sharp bolts of pain shooting up her leg. The men who deposited her seemed to shuffle off with grumbles as if they were being herded by a silent authority.Someone bent down close to her. Their toxic breath permeated the musty sack over her head. Alex leaned away,?but strong quick fingers grabbed a handful of her hair through the bag and forced her not to move. Stinging pain shot up from her arm as her jacket was pulled completely off. She felt exposed, as if naked and on display. Fingers squeezed her triceps and then cupped her breast. Alex tried to squirm away, but the other held her head steady. The hand squeezed her bleeding thigh and she cry out. She flung her weight forward to attack in a head butt. Hair ripped from her head where the captor held. The authority figure shoved her backwards into the captor and clout her across the face, sending

After about twenty minutes of wandering around the halls, he found a stairway down into an even lower level. Jack followed them quickly and then heard retching coming from behind him. Alex was trying to empty her already empty stomach. Must have been all the bouncing. He slowed his descent, trying to smooth his steps.Another maze of dark rooms covered the floor. No torches lit these walls. He tried to force his eyes to adjust, but just couldn't see anything. If someone was down here, he didn't want a flaming beacon of light letting them know where to shoot. He wouldn't be able to fight them off like this. With every step, Jack felt more drained, like he was stuck in a swamp. He wondered if this could be the Link working its magic to heal Alex. And if it was, maybe it would heal him in the process. It would be nice if he didn't feel so raw down there.The darkness resulted in various run-ins with the walls. Each time he heard a curt hiss as Alex's rear end touched the cold stone. Aft

Alex's footsteps echoed off the concrete sides of the old cracked sewer walls. She kicked a small rock that skipped across the smooth stone floor along until it tumbled up the curved edges of the wall. She was still upset over the loss of her boots along with her handy crowbar, but at least she was still alive. Small sacrifices to get Lexi back. Any sacrifice would be enough, as long as she got her back. The starlight revealed their path as it lazily slunk through the clouds and lit the jagged path ahead.They'd been walking for five days now and their food was running low. She still felt gritty and reeked of sulfur. They hadn't found a decent amount of clean water to shower off within their long trek. All the water from these huge pipes had dried up long ago. Alex knew she was ripe, but Jack stunk so bad he was starting to draw vultures, which seemed one of the many things still alive on the surface. They circled high up in the moonlit sky, cawing their aching hunger. They spoke nast

Alone now and listening to the fading footsteps of her defecting partner, Alex faced the large red letters. "Level 32" they read. Lexi was behind that door. This had to be it. Her two year fight would be over. She would be safe, Lexi would be safe. Alex sucked in the stale urine stained air and stilled her excited heart. She pushed the door open enough to peek in. Using the face of her watch as a mirror, she looked down the hallway.Alex slunk down the darkened hallway like a cat. Only the floor edge lighting showed the way. Something didn't feel right. Either everyone was asleep or there was no one here. If no one was here, then why would they leave the floor lighting on? She stopped and listened for a moment. She heard no breathing coming from any of the rooms. There really was no one here, at least not on this level.Alex poked her head into a couple of rooms. They were children's rooms, with toys scattered all over the place. She took note of each room as she went, a classroom, a

Around nineteen hundred hours, her stomach danced painfully. There was nothing she could do about it. There was no food on the surface, and even if there was, it would be poisoned by the sun. It stared back, straight ahead of her now, sinking just below the clouds and into the horizon. Tall buildings of an old city appeared, taller than the ones in the previous city. Close to her, two unusually shaped buildings loomed kilometers high. The buildings were large at the top, caved in at the sides, and large at the bottom. Some of the building's greyish-white tiles had fallen off and parts of the top were cracked, but overall, it was in the best condition of any building she had seen yet.Alex pulled her hand in her sleeve and tried to block the sun out so she could get a better look at the buildings on the horizon. It must have been a pretty major city; it was as big as the one she had broken into on the west coast of this continent. It was much bigger than the one she had just broken int