::The Last Epoch-'13'::

Trapped Like Rats
I opened my eyes expecting to see a heavenly light of death. But I only saw a disgusting ceiling stained in blood and grime. I sensed rotting flesh; so quickly sitting up I take very shallow breaths. I saw Axel sitting across the room on the floor, disappointed. I looked to my right to see a doorway and on my left was an ominous, maggot-infested skeleton of some small animal. “Why did you have to stab that thing? You could still have that knife now if you didn’t have to be ‘the hero’,” Axel said angrily. “Don’t worry about that now, that’s the past. All we should worry about now is getting out of here and finding the others. I need some more answers.” I said standing up and walking toward the doorway. “Its no use. There’s an invisible energy-field keeping us in here.” Axel told me. “Did you notice that guy didn’t bleed when I stabbed him?” I said as I plucked a button from my shirt. “He didn’t?” Axel asked confused. “Nope.”
I tossed the button from my shirt through the doorway. I heard a popping sound as it was vaporized into a puff of smoke. I looked outside the cell for a reaction from anyone else. All I could see was a ball, about the size of a baseball, floating down the corridor, in mid air, towards me. It was a glossy black with a flickering red light looking at me. It floated up to eye level, and it flew back down the corridor. “Trapped like rats,” Axel said optimistically as I sat back down on the floor. Things seemed hopeless. All the other cells in the corridor seemed empty. We were alone.
Axel and I sat silently in this disease ridden Prison cell. Occasionally we could hear a curious sound like running water, but we never mentioned it. I waited to wake up from this nightmare. Both of us lost hope. I wondered if we would sit there, if anyone else is alive, or if we might be tortured. But I know I couldn’t let Axel know how scared I was. I had to be the rock, the anchor of hope. We sat on the floor staring at the rotting rodent corpse across the room.
Eventually, through the torturous silence, we were hardened from all negative input.
After a day and a half of hunger, thirst and only each others company, we were visited. Two guards, almost exactly like the ones in our previous encounter, approached the cell. I had to wake Axel from his nap. Both of us stood up and dusted our selves off. “Stand strong. We don’t know what we’ll see out there. Lets try to stay together.” I said under my breath as we followed the guards down the hall. They walked in front of us barely acknowledging we were there. We could have jumped the guards at any time but we decided to save our energy for any surprises likely to occur.
Axel and I followed the guards for a seemingly long walk down a long corridor. As I followed I couldn’t help but notice a peculiar rhythmic pattern in the walking of the guards. It seemed almost robotic, like the way the titan walked. That brought me to my next train of thought; where were the other crewmembers, where are we going? Axel and I treaded these halls that had no doors, only symbols in blue along the walls only feet apart. I guessed these symbols to be invisible doorways like in the hospital before. Except these doorways were sure to be jail cells as we were in before.
We slowed our pace, as did the guards who guided us. We felt we were at our destination. There was a large black symbol on the wall it was the end of the hallway. We approached it and came to a halt. Both of the guards lifted their hands as if praising the symbol. The symbol vanished and there was a doorway leading us into a room. Though they had never actually spoken, I suspect them of having a silent language.
This room had large double doors with two huge pillars at least 30ft tall on each side of it. The pillars had black hand Prints covering it except for on the bottom. In the corners of the room things were levitating as the needles were in the hospital before. I recognized one of the things floating in a corner. It was my pack and weapons including my knife. “Axel your stuff is floating over there, put it on.” I informed. I looked over at the doorway being guarded by the guards that led us here. The hologram door vanishes and two more Prisoners, in worse condition than us, entered the room. Grabbing their things out of mid air they seemed extremely frightened. Though I had never seen them before I could associate with them; they looked as I felt. Once we had our weapons, the doors opened leading us into a new hallway. This corridor was literally a breath of fresh air.
All four of us Prisoners had our weapons in hand. Our stranger friends had short alien guns, stranger than I had ever seen. I would have shot the guards, but they had disappeared when we had our backs turned. I was happy to be leaving the Prison but our lesser companions seemed scared and extremely nervous. I don’t know why they looked like they were walking to the gas chambers if there was such freedom being granted.
I looked at Axel as if I knew what I was doing. “Lets go!” we ran out through the doors armed and ready for anything. I thought we would be free, to be let out of the Prison for our innocence. We approached another set of double doors. Things seemed too good to be, and the cheer of the crowd was now louder than ever. The door was opening as we approached it and I could see a bright light of freedom shining through the crack. We stopped running and walked through the door into the light. Once my eyes adjusted I was awe-stricken. The source of all the loud cheering was thousands of people, I was in some sort of stadium. The stadium was enormous and we were the main attraction. This had to be at least twice the size of standard football stadiums back home. We were still underground though and we were nearly blinded by huge spotlights mounted on the caverns ceiling. “Whoa,” Axel chimed. “Holy CRAP!” we said in unison. They were cheering angrily now, and booing.
The audience was here to see some sort of event. Axel leans over to me and says, “This is just like the old coliseum in Italy. Maybe were supposed to use our weapons to battle some sort of gladiators or something.” “I don’t kn. . . . ”  I was interrupted by a sudden quaking of the ground.
There was some sort of movement in the sand on the other side of the stadium floor. A door under the sand opened and huge buildings came emerging from the ground as if they had been submerged for years. Entire buildings twelve stories tall were randomly emerging all over the coliseum floor.
Below us there was a violent shaking nearly knocking us off our feet. A building was erupting below our feet and we stood atop the building below us. These buildings were mere obstacles in our soon to be discovered task. We kneeled on the roof to stabilize ourselves as the tower rose faster and faster from the ground. When the building there was a sudden halt. We stood eye level with some of the spectators screaming at us. We waved as if to win over the crowd. I grinned in fear. “What the hell is going on here!?” I asked Axel through my chattering teeth.