Natalie’s return to consciousness was slow and confused. She lay on a hard and uncomfortable surface, not at all like the bed she’s accustomed to, and her pillow… her nose wrinkled. Her pillow smelled just awful. “Natalie!” she recognized Corey’s voice, high as it was in his fear. What…? Her eyes fluttered open, sliding in and out of focus a couple of times, before landing on Corey’s face, lit in a pale turquoise light by something she couldn’t see. Natalie could see that he’d been crying while trying to wake her up and now that her eyes were opening, fresh, relieved tears spilled wetly from his eyes. “You’re alive!” he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her into an embrace.

The sudden motion sent a sharp pain through Natalie’s head and she moaned, “Oww… What are you talking about? Where…” she looked over his shoulder, and saw Dominic on his hands and knees shuffling around, searching for something while Corey looked after her. When he looked in their direction, his eyes squinted, it came clear to her that he was missing his glasses.

Then her heart stopped. The area around them was dimly lit by a glowing… what could only be fungus. Natalie pulled back from Corey with a soft grunt as her body, bruised by their fall, protested to even the smallest movement, but she needed to move freely, to be able to look around and take in their surroundings for herself. What she saw made her stomach clench, made her heart start to race. They had landed in what could only be described as a small alcove with a passage leading out, wide enough for them to walk comfortably one by one. The ground beneath them was smooth, almost polished, stone while the walls possessed a more natural look, with a rough surface and jagged edges here and there. The fungus that Natalie could now see had been serving as her pillow while she was unconscious looked like overgrown moss, bioluminescent clearly, and a relief to see if not for the light, then because fungus doesn’t grow in dry environments. At least they won’t die of dehydration, Natalie thought miserably.

“We’re Below,” she breathed, speaking the words neither of her friends had come to think in their own panic, “We’re going to die down here.”

Corey looked at her with alarmed eyes. Natalie’s shoulders curled in, already surrendering to the inevitable, already giving up any hope. Looking at Dominic, he found his friend had retrieved his glasses and was looking at her with devastated guilt, his own part in convincing her to take the risk… the fifty feet… weighing down on him.

“No,” Corey said, told them both. “No, you can’t think like that, Nat. You said people have got out of here, we can do the same. You can’t just give up!” he finished angrily.

“How?” Dominic asked, his own voice heavy as he gestured upward, “We must have fallen at least twenty feet, and there’s no climbing that wall.”

The others followed his gaze, and indeed, the soft glow of the fungus didn’t even touch a ceiling over their heads, showing only blackness, and the wall going back up was as smooth as the ground beneath their feet.

Corey swallowed. “So we can’t go back. Okay. There’s more than one entrance. We can find another and get out that way,” he looked at his dejected companions, struggling to not fall into their despair, “But one thing’s for sure. We can’t just sit here and hope that some other random person will manage to find the same entrance we did. We’re not the only ones in our grade who tried, and no doubt the older kids have already been there, done that. We’re on our own. We can’t go back. We stay, we starve. That means there’s only one way to go.”

“Forward.” Natalie looked past him, into the corridor beyond.

Corey nodded, his mouth dry with fear after his speech, forcing him to swallow before he spoke again. “I’ll go up front. Then Dominic, then you Nat.”

Natalie got to her feet, brushing the dust from her body, working to focus, to drag her mind from the pit of despair she’d been caught in. “We follow any passage that slopes upward,” she took a shaky breath, clenching and unclenching her hands, “We have a week. That’s the longest any of the survivors has spent down here. Dominic, did you bring your grand-dad’s watch?”

They both turned to Dominic where he still sat against the wall, staring at them in a daze. After a few moments of expectant silence, he seemed to realize that they were waiting for him to say something and blinked rapidly as though shaking himself from a stupor. “What?”

Natalie frowned and stepped over to him, holding out a hand to pull him to his feet. Dominic took the offered hand, and was nearly limp as Natalie firmly pulled him to his feet, making eye contact as she asked sternly, “Do you have your grand-dad’s watch with you, Dominic?”

The dazed boy pat down his pockets, before pulling the antique from one, and focusing on it, examining the old wind-up contraption for cracks. He noted with relief that it still ticked softly, and watched the dial move for a few counts, before looking back up at Natalie, and reporting quietly, “It’s eight forty-seven.”

Natalie smiled faintly, more relieved more that Dominic was coming back to his senses. “Okay. Then we know that fourteen passes of eight forty-seven are our week. Can you keep track of that, Dom?”

The smaller boy groped around in his pockets again, before producing a small notepad and well-whittled pencil. “Got it.”

“Then let’s get moving.” Corey said, standing at the edge of the alcove. Dominic nodded and put the items safely back into their pockets, moving to take his place behind Corey. Natalie couldn’t help but throw one last, wistful glance above her head towards the easy way, the way they’d come in, before she stepped into place.

Hiding his fear, Corey left the safety of the alcove, leading his friends down the passageway beyond at a cautious pace, keeping a wary eye on his surroundings. The glowing fungus was as plentiful outside of the alcove as it had been inside, lighting their way and giving them dim forward visibility, though after the absolute blindness of the first tunnel even the slightest amount of light was more than welcome.

The friends moved in silence, too tense to find the will to make conversation, each dwelling on their own fears. Natalie’s mind continually dredged up images, sketchings she’d seen of the wide variety of monstrosities described by survivors. Creatures out of nightmare, some with only two legs and two arms but mouths on head and hands that split and gaped with maws filled with needle-like teeth. Others utterly inhuman, warped and twisted, with flailing tentacles and oozing pustules, no mouth in sight but having watched his companion fall prey to the thing, the survivor made it clear that it still left nothing behind. She and her friends had no weapons, nothing to hold the creatures at bay, their only option would be to run.

Corey’s mind could only focus on the path ahead of them. He couldn’t afford to think too hard on the darkness, the shadows cast by the fungus up to the uneven surface of the walls that made it too easy for him to see shapes where there was nothing. Perhaps that’s all the monsters from Natalie’s stories were, hallucinations produced by claustrophobic people who’d been trapped alone in the dark for too long. He desperately hoped so.

Safe between his friends, Dominic’s mind was freer to wander outside of the caves, to the surface they’d left behind. The lake that the cathedral rested on was well traveled by the students at their school, Redwood Academy. The students in attendance were all children of well-off individuals, all destined to follow in their parents’ greatness. Dominic’s family were researchers, key members in the development of artificial organ tissue that had cut down the number of deaths by organ failure by massive amounts. Natalie’s father was a renowned historian who taught at a prestigious college. In addition to his well known fascination with the Below he was the leading expert in knowledge of past resource wars that had lead to the world as a whole coming to a historical mutual agreement that resulted in massive advancements in science and alternative energies, all over a hundred years ago. Corey’s mother led a team of deep sea explorers who’d come to discover an underwater resource that had aided in the development of new fuels to use in breaking the planet’s gravity, bringing the flying vehicles that the people of the past would envision into a reality.

Given their parents’ positions in the world, Dominic had no doubt that there would be authorities looking for them by the time dawn came. They’d come to find that the last place that the trio had visited was the cathedral and then they’d search the island, the cathedral… and they’d find nothing. Corey was right, the chances of the opening appearing to anyone else in time to save them were beyond astronomical. Especially since no one knew exactly how the Below chose who was “worthy” and who wasn’t. If they could identify the traits of the all the people who’d had the openings revealed to them, perhaps they’d find a common element - but then, he considered himself and his friends, perhaps there was nothing in common about them at all. Perhaps all of the talk of worthy was just talk and it was only random chance for someone to come along who could see the openings.

So, once they found nothing, Dominic mused as they walked on, there would be two results. One, the general population would come to the conclusion that they’d either drowned - though dragging the lake would prove that to be false. Then they’d start investigating the possibility that they’d been abducted and the wait for ransom would begin. The second result is one that gave Dominic a trace of optimism - Natalie’s dad would hear from the students at the school that the cathedral was one of the entrances Below. While he may not be able to see them himself - Natalie had told them he once tried, while they were on the boat out to the island - surely he would stop at nothing to find a way to help them.

So lost in thought was he, that Dominic didn’t notice when Corey came to an abrupt halt and collided into the larger boy.

Natalie’s hand on his shoulder helped stabilize Dominic as he recovered himself, looking curiously up at Corey. “There’s a crossroad up ahead,” Corey explained, shifting to the side to look at them with uncertainty, “Which way should we go?”

Natalie and Dominic looked at him, just as lost. After a moment, Natalie answered hesitantly, almost apologetically, “Corey, if you’re on point… you should decide. Any direction is good as another since we have no idea where we’re going to begin with.”

Corey’s shoulders slumped a little as the weight of responsibility settled squarely on them. Not liking to see his friend so suddenly despaired, Dominic pointed out light-heartedly, “It would be a little silly for us to stop at every twist and turn to have a debate on which direction we think is best,” he altered his voice to mimic Natalie, “‘I think we should go right, because clockwise is always better!’” then, to Corey’s, “‘But we’ve been going straight for forever, why should we change that now?’”

Corey coughed out a dry chuckle while Natalie rolled her eyes, defending herself with dignity, “I do not sound like that.”

The moment of levity helped Corey to turn back to face forward, squaring his shoulders as he resumed moving forward and turned right at the cross section. The friends resumed their march in silence, each returning to their musings. The next cross section was encountered much quicker than before, with another on its heels. Corey’s stomach clenched as he realized that it would be all but impossible to find their way back to the alcove they’d started their walk in, even if they had wanted to. The tunnels were identical, each lined with the softly glowing fungus, each with smooth floors and rough walls. Even as he took a moment at each cross section, trying to identify an upwards slope, or some variation in the tunnels, there there were none to be found.

So when something changed in the faint glow up ahead, it was difficult to fully identify exactly what was odd. Corey slowed, caution in every further step forward, the change in pace drawing Dominic and Natalie’s attention and their eyes focused ahead, though Corey obscured a good part of their view in the narrow tunnel, making it harder for them to notice what had changed, and they were too afraid to question him, thinking perhaps he saw one of those horrible monstrosities up ahead and to make a sound would draw its attention.

With all of his attention on the walls where the oddness was most pronounced, when Corey abruptly came upon the shift, he nearly tripped. “Gah!” he gasped, stumbling several feet forward while raising his hands to brace on the wall, the narrowness of the passage helping him not to fall. Now the change was obvious - the walls had taken on the smoothed quality that had belonged to the ground, while the ground adopted the rough, jagged surface of the walls. The switch was so abrupt that, looking back, he could see the exact line where one texture ended and the other began.

Dominic was taking in the same thing as him, a couple steps away from the switch, muttering quietly, “That is so not normal.” while Natalie breathed a soft sigh of relief. Changes in terrain weren’t nearly as horrible as what her spiking imagination continually conjured up.

With his heart pounding from the near fall, Corey took a deep breath, before telling the other two with a shaky smile, “Watch your step here.” then turning to resume walking, keeping his fingers tracing along the smoothed wall to help steady himself. Natalie and Dominic follow suit, their pace slowed even more now, for fear of falling on the sharp floor. An injury in the first few hours of their seven days would be the closest thing to a bad omen any of them would acknowledge.

With another couple turns, Corey eventually led them from the inverted terrain, and they all breathed easier. In a moment of curiosity brought on by growing fatigue and hunger, Dominic brought out his pocket watch, squinting in the dim light to make out the numbers and hands. “What time…?” Natalie asked him quietly, seeing him take the timepiece out.

“Getting close to eleven,” he answered quietly, “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to go.”

Natalie reached forward, lightly touching his arm, “I know,” her voice was faint and choked, as she held back sudden tears, “Corey?” Corey came to a stop, a few paces ahead of them, his eyes dull and weary. “I heard you,” he told them, “We can stop if you want to.”

Without further discussion, Dominic collapsed with a sigh, his legs folding beneath him as though incapable of holding him up a moment longer. Corey glanced down the corridor that they’d been walking down, estimating twenty feet from the last cross section, and no others in sight. With the narrowness of the passage, they’ll have to stretch out one-by-one to be comfortable. With a weary sigh, he followed Dominic’s example, laying down with his head pointing in the direction they were heading, making sure that he’ll remember this when they wake. Dominic stretched out, his feet to Corey’s while Natalie sat with her back to the wall, shifting a couple feet before finding a spot where she wasn’t jabbed uncomfortably then stretching her legs out in front of her. None of them spoke again, all falling into a deep sleep in another breath.