Eerie feelings fill the air as the noises from deep below go silent. Water drips echo in the distance. The rhythmic sound is almost enough to soothe me into sleep. Climbing the stairwell is proving difficult as I feel the depths calling me to follow it into the darkness below. A slow, crawling sensation tugs at my chest, like invisible fingers wrapping around my ribs, urging me downward. The pull isn’t just a feeling—it’s a whisper at the edge of my thoughts, a beckoning from something unseen. I hold the left side of my face with my left hand and wonder why I am feeling such a strong pull in that direction.


"Etha, got a change in heart?" Mia asks me.


"Uh, I'm not sure." I say, hesitation thick in my voice.


"Why is that?" She seems genuinely intrigued by the moment.


"I feel like something’s tryin’ to call me down there." I say.


I can hear the hissing begin again. It appears to me that she does not hear the noises. A slow sense of conflict bubbles within my chest, twisting my insides into knots.


"Well, if ya got a gut feeling, let's follow it." She says.


"I don’t know what it is. The way out would be by going up, according to logic." I admit.


"We've no way to know how deep underground we are, either." She says.


"I know. We're screwed." I admit.


"I shouldn’t have tangled you into this." Mia sighs. "We go down, see why you have this feeling."


She presses beside me and descends the stairwell. I hesitate, my foot hovering over the first step. The air is thick, heavy, pressing against my skin like something waiting, watching. Every instinct screams to turn back, but Mia moves forward without hesitation. I swallow hard and force myself to follow—whatever’s down there, I can’t let her face it alone. The structure groans around us as if alive, adjusting to the intrusion of our presence.


"We are gonna have to find another stairwell." She says after surveying the area.


"This way." I say as I bolt through a door labelled 'FL89.'


"Wait!" Mia attempts to call my attention.


I run into what seems to be a narrow set of walls. They’re cracked and leaning to the right. It seems to me like the structure broke at one time and ended up becoming a part of the sands of the Badlands.


Mia sighs, disgruntled. She didn’t expect this situation. Who could? I sit down and sigh. She sits beside me. I wrap my arm around her and pull her close to me. The heat from each other makes the area comfortable for me. Despite the dire situation, there's something grounding about having her this close—her presence feels like a lifeline in the suffocating uncertainty. I never thought much about what I wanted beyond survival, but in moments like this, I wonder if Mia is becoming something more to me than just an ally.


We look around, trying to figure out the way out from this natural disaster of a situation. Mia sighs with the depth of her lungs. I can’t help but sigh just after.


"Any ideas?" She asks.


"Keep finding the next way through this maze." I reply.


"And when do we have the surface again?" She replies.


I don’t know what we can do to get back to the surface in all honesty, but trying to find a way is better than sitting still. I stand and help her to her feet. We venture into another corner of the structure to try to find a stairwell we can try to ascend to the surface with. The sheer scale of this place is staggering. Massive corridors, built for thousands, now lie in ruin—pillars that once held ceilings high above are fractured, collapsed under the weight of time. I try to imagine the Old World as it was: bustling streets, glowing lights, a world that never knew hunger or desperation. Now, all that remains is dust, ghosts of something greater. Old Boston being the largest settlement for hundreds of miles.


We find an old red-lettered sign reading 'EXIT' and proceed through the doorway. We see a stairwell that seems to proceed upwards. We move with near silence up the stairway of stone. Mia seems to just be in a mindset of desperation, like myself. We don’t have the supplies to be down here.


We get halfway to the stairway marker of 'FL101' when we see the stairs have moved or broken. It’s discouraging, but we make our way back to 'FL100'. We enter the door to the area and find small glowing mushrooms throughout this building. I look around to see anything to tell us what we are in. This is not like the surface. There are pink crystals growing from the pillars and walls in the area. I take a breath as I see a light blue glowing flower vine that surrounds a sign that reads 'Ark Tech Research Centre Alpha Boston Division.'


"Uh, Mia..." I say.


"What’s up, Etha?" She asks.


I point to the sign I see in the blue dim lighting. She sighs deeply. It seems she knows where we are. She kneels for a moment.


"ArkTech certainly has a lot going on. We never thought they were even here." Mia says with softness.


"What’s that supposed to mean?" I ask.


"We are coming back here when we are done with our first mission. I’m going to let New Boston know we are only a few dozen miles off. They are going to go berserk. We knew Old Boston was near New Boston, but this is the discovery of ages." Mia sighs.


"So we coincidentally fall into the place you all dreamt of and we get trapped." I laugh a bit.


"This is a blessing in disguise, Etha. This is a research facility. It’s possible they could have tech in here that would help us get out and reveal this to New Boston." She says.


"Seems like you know your way around tech, Mia." I say.


Mia’s fingers fly over the keyboard with practiced precision, navigating through screens of ancient code like she was born in another era. I watch in quiet awe—there’s something about the way she moves, the certainty in her actions, that makes me feel like a child peering over the shoulder of a master.


She stops momentarily as she sees a folder list in the back ends of the computer. She wiggles and points, her excitement infectious. My pulse quickens as I step closer, drawn in by her enthusiasm. For a moment, the weight of our situation fades, replaced by the thrill of discovery. If she believes we've found something monumental, then maybe—just maybe—we're onto something truly extraordinary.


"Jackpot." Mia says.


I lean in to read the list:


'CLASSIFIED Projects Lists

  • Project Starseed
  • Project Aguafia
  • Project Fortress
  • Project Agenda 2640'

"What am I looking at?" I ask.


"A list of projects this location was involved in, I assume." She replies to me.


"So now our mission is to get back to tell people where this is?" I say.


"Yeah. But I still haven’t figured out how we are going to get to the surface." She admits.


I lead her to the nearest exit and sigh as we try to find the top of this structure. I go through the door before she can say anything and immediately regret going in without looking. My shoe squelches with an absolute tremor through me.


"Gross." I say.


"Yep." She laughs at my absent-mindedness.


"What did I even step in?" I ask.


"I don’t know for sure. Nor do I want to." She replies.


She is right. I can’t afford to let my guard down for even a second. Down here, one mistake could mean the difference between survival and never seeing the surface again. Every step, every movement needs to be calculated. Mia always seems so aware of everything, her instincts are sharp. I need to match that level of focus—hesitation, distraction, or overconfidence could get us both killed.


We slowly go upstairs again. We go up a bunch of flights before we hit a boxed-in room with a door. Before we can even think, the sound of sand running down the steps echoes like a bag of small marbles rolling toward us.


Mia kicks the door and momentarily allows a bunch of sand to pour down the steps. This gives me an idea, no matter how insane this may turn out to be.


"What if we drain the sand from the surface and bring it to us, rather than us to it?" I ask Mia.

Mia’s eyes widen as the realization clicks. A grin tugs at her lips—not just excitement, but the thrill of survival. "Alright, Etha," she says, rolling up her sleeves. "Let’s turn this whole damn desert against itself."