Squatting in refuse filled swamp water, Katherine looked at her male compatriots with a complete lack of comradery.

  It had been two days since they'd woken up in a tiny cement prison that steadily filled and drained with a viscous liquid peppered with lumps of undiscernible origin. The concrete cage had iron bars on both sides, held in place by lips that kept a small pool at all times. But the iron bars were set in stone, and the only possible exit was a grate overhead from which a faint light bounced around the sewer. After the fear for their lives wore them all down and they got some sleep in the sewage, the sudden question of digestion came up when Gary told everyone to turn around as he dropped his pants and inexpertly aimed a golden stream in the direction of the flowing water. Nobody wanted to know if there was any backflow, especially not after Michael had to do the same.

  Now Katherine was holding back a water balloon bladder with absolutely no method of relieving herself the way the boys had done. The lack of convenience turned to anger at the misfortune of gender.

  But that wasn't the boy's fault nor their responsibility, even if their innocence wasn't comforting for the struggling girl.

  "I wish they'd just drag us out already," Katherine blubbered, hoping for a quick end to the humiliation.

  "Do you want to try melting the bars again?" Garrett suggested, feeling calm and comfortable in the humid if dingy setting.

  "I don't want to waste my breath," Katherine grumbled, thinking back to screaming herself breathless for an hour just to make the metal glow.

  "What do you think they're doing?" Stanley asked.

  "I dunno," Gary said, "but shouldn't they feed prisoners? I'm starving."

  "I don't think child kidnappers care if we eat or not," Michael said. "Especially not if they plan to kil-"

  A thunderous roar shook the prison, reverberating the water and stone, almost breaking Katherine's concentration. Footsteps were heard above, the first sign of life that any of the kids had felt from the dingy cell. More shocking earthquakes followed the footsteps as heavy boots pounded towards the cell. Then, the spark of hope faded as the sound of footsteps began to fade, passing the kids by with the lingering hope of rescue.

  What followed the footsteps was a sound like a bus being dragged through sand, a heavy, continuous scraping sound. It was a full minute before the constant grinding noise faded past, leaving the children cautiously silent until a scream echoed from some distant horror.

  "We need to get out of here," Stanley declared, taking charge as his hands shook from the scream.

  The boy got to his feet and started feeling the gate, grabbing the padlock and feeling around it for the hundredth time. It was a basic combination lock with a small key hole, but Katherine couldn't get a good angle to melt it.

  'If only one of us knew how to lockpick,' Stanley thought, jiggling the padlock, 'or if we could steal the key.'

  The inspiration came like a bolt of lightning as Stanley looked down at Gary, the guy who could fabricate anything from thin air.

  "Gary, can you make a key?" Stanley asked.

  "What, like, to unlock things?"

  "No, like a giant novelty- YES! Make a key to unlock this thing so we can get out of here!"

  "What if the villains catch us!?" Michael pointed out.

  "What if they're testing us, seeing if we can escape?! We don't know! Just unlock this and we can find out."

  Gary stretched his legs standing up, then nudged Stanley aside so he could fiddle with the lock.

  "I've never done this before," he warned his cell mates, "so it might take a little before I can-"

  *click*

  "Oh!" Gary exclaimed, jangling the lock free and displaying it to his friends.

  "WHY DIDN'T YOU DO THAT EARLIER!" Katherine shrieked.

  "I didn't know I could!" Gary shouted back.

  "Let's get out of here," Stanley said, lifting the grate enough for his skinny, starving form to fit through. Once he was up, he opened the bars fully and helped the other guys out, but Katherine remained squatting in the sewer.

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  "Close the gate and go away," Katherine grumbled.

  "But we need to-"

  "GO AWAY!" she yelled, tears in her eyes as she was about to miss this golden opportunity.

  Stanley backed up a little, his hands up in surrender as he went to tell the guys that Katherine was going to be a few minutes late.

  While they waited, they investigated the room hallway outside. The room above their prison was the actual prison, with seats and a mattress and a sewer grate in the center for a toilet. It would look like the reason the sewer was turned into the prison was because the door had fallen off the actual prison room. The hallway outside was the same cement fixture as the room and sewer, but there were cracks in the floors, walls, and ceiling that made it look like a huge fight had taken place. There was also one long scrape down the entire hall in a slithering pattern, likely what the sandbus sound was.

  When Katherine was finished, her cheeks flushed to match the color of her hair. They went with all their soaked clothes out into the hallway, cautious to make too much noise even with their hunger and thirst gnawing at them.

  As they got to the end of the corridor, they only ran into another long hallway with enormous bulkhead doors every hundred yards. The signs of battle they passed were more numerous, and some of the concrete walls had holes in them. None of the kids knew where to go or what the battle was about, but they inched forwards until they reached the first bulkhead, which opened automatically. Inside was a mass of electronic scrap as a giant server room had been torn apart from a battle. Pressed against the wall were two bloody smears and vaguely human shapes that made them.

  "We need to get out of here," Stanley whispered, "sooner rather than later. Michael, can you turn invisible and try to find the exit?"

  Michael blinked awake, as if his hunger sapped so much brain power away that he forgot he could turn invisible. He disappeared in the next second and snuck through the hallway, checking for safety. As he peered through the non-architectural holes in the wall, he notices how long the holes went, going across several rooms and disappearing into darkness. The compound they found themselves in was much larger than the cross section of doors and rooms they could see.

  There were two shafts with wires and beams inside, which Michael approached cautiously to see they used to be elevator shafts. Used to be because the elevators were nowhere to be seen, but could have been in the water which covered an abyss of unknown number of floors. He held the crumbling wall and precariously leaned into the shaft to see that there were five floors above them, with a hole in the top floor that could lead to an exit.

  Michael returned to the group and told him what he found, and the group continued cautiously to the elevator shaft.

  "Do we not have stairs?" Katherine asked, looking around the ruined base.

  "If you want to wander around to find some, by my guest," Michael said while the others inspected the shaft upwards.

  With two day old almost malnourished muscles, the kids went one at a time grabbing the elevator frame and climbing along the gaps in the metal. It resembled a ladder with excessive distance between the steps, and each kid had to stretch their legs as far apart as their soaked clothes would allow. It was slippery and difficult, with Garrett having the hardest time since his moistened snake skin lost grip a few times. Once Gary had gotten to the top, he lost his grip a bit and nearly fell down the shaft. If Michael hadn't grabbed his ankle, snapping him out in time to catch the ledge in front of him.

  "Guys," Gary said, muffling a cough, "guys, we should go back...!"

  "We can't go back!" Stanley hissed, but the suddenly pale and crying Gary fixed his tone. "What's up there?"

  "Dead people," Gary coughed, "a lot of dead people!"

  "Anything that might hurt us?"

  "Just the smell."

  "I'll go first," Stanley said, tapping Michael to climb ahead of him.

  When Stanley got to the top, he saw the reason why Gary was so concerned. It was a literal pile of dead people, faces twisted and deformed sticking out from a fleshy mass of limbs and meat. The blood ran in rivers across the shattered floor, filling crevasses like tributaries. The smell coming off of it was so foul, it burned Stanley's nostrils and eyes, forcing out tears.

  "Oh," Stanley rasped, looking back as a wave of nausea splashed into his throat. He held it down and looked, trying to find something that looked like an exit.

  All it took was a cursory glance to the side where a hole in the ceiling bled natural light into an office space that went through a bulldozer remodeling.

  "Close your eyes when you get up here," Stanley said, gagging as saying the words put the corpse pile smell on his tongue.

  With that, Sam climbed up to the first floor and turned his back to the gore. One at a time, each person climbed up, winced at the bodies, and then Stanley helped them up while they closed their eyes. Katherine froze when she got to the top and the boys had to lift her the rest of the way. The five-man group kept their heads on a swivel, avoiding the pile behind them as they approached freedom.

  Stanley got under the hole and looked out into the open sky, seeing a tree canopy and blue sky.

  "Gary, can you create some stairs?" Stanley asked.

  "No, my constructs wouldn't support our weight. But," Gary reached up and almost touched the cracked ceiling, "I might be able to toss someone up there."

  "I'll go first," Michael volunteered, although he was certain he'd be first regardless.

  Gary and Michael awkwardly hugged and shrugged as the skinny invisible boy tried to climb up Gary the Goliath. When he was finally high enough to grab the edge of the hole. There was rebar bent inwards as if a meteor had crashed through, but it gave the invisible boy a handhold to climb up further. He scraped and clawed his way up to the dirt, feeling the difference in air quality that fifteen feet made.

  As soon as he got to the top, the struggle was almost worth it until he crested the top.

  What waited the unseeable boy was a mass of teeth surrounding a dark gullet and prickly tongue with quills. The teeth were the size of railroad spikes and a sickly yellow color, deep inlets twinged with blood. The smell as the thing exhaled was rotting flesh and maggot puke, making Michael swoon. That moment of weakness was enough to relax his legs and lose his footing, dropping back down into the pit.