I walk around my cell freely thinking of a plan to escape. The window isn't working, it's too time consuming and even if I miraculously manage to get all the bars off I still have to get myself up out of the window and it's about two feet above my head. I'm surprised I even got one bar off.

I take in my surroundings and see my heavy feet shackles laying on ground. I sudden plan slips into my mind ambitiously. I walk over and pick them up off the ground before jogging to the door, my muscles ache from the running I did how many days ago. Quickly I check the door and of course, it's still locked. I clutch the chains which are attached to the shackles and swing it over my shoulder hitting the door knob hard and fast. A loud boom echos in my room and I swing again, and again and again. My foot shackle smashes onto the ground and the severely dented door stands strong. I take my other shackle an hit the door knob, the echo of the steel on steel makes my ears ring before finally the handle smashes off and the door wiggles loosely in the frame.

The steel is capped in dents and I peer through the hole where the handle used to be, the other handle on the other side of the door is still attached. I push the door and it wriggles in its frame but doesn't open. I let a frustrated sigh out and quickly snatch the bar from the window and stick it in the hole in the door.

If I'm right when I push this bar through the hole which the gap in the door it will hit the remaining handle on the other side. Breaking it, hopefully.

I take the bar and jam it into the hole, a clunk is all I get. So I continue to hit it over repeatedly because I can't think of anything better and it worked before.

Clunk, clunk, clunk, pop. The door handle to the other side has finally popped out of place and finally my grey tormenter lets a low creak out as I push against it. I need to find everyone.

I take a step out and enter a dark hall with some sunlight managing to break through the cracks in the cement. "Hey!" A voice calls after me. I turn my head to see an overweight man sprinting towards me with a sword in hand.

Oh frack.

I freeze for a moment before I begin to sprint in the other direction, make lefts and rights trying to lose him. Solid steel doors pass as I continue to run, I wonder who's being captive I those those cells? Was their crime living, because that's ours.

I've lost how many times I've turned into a new hallway that looked like the one before it. Skinny, dark with beams of light coming through the cracks and endless amounts of steel doors to my left. I finally slow to a light jog catching my breath as I turn a new corner and head down a new hall I notice it's different. Everything is the same except for the fact that this hall has windows way up at the top of the wall letting plenty of warm sunlight through.

"So, you've finally escaped?" A low voice asks. I turn my head to see the man who entered my cell and took my cheese.

"You expected me to escape?" I ask breathlessly as I try to steady my heart.

"Do you really think you could've made that much noice and still escape? Patrick is our laziest guard too, so I didn't expect him to catch you." The man says crossing his tanned, well-built arms.

"Why?" An unintentional demanding voice erupts from my chest.

"Because it's for research purposes. I can't share that information it's confidential." The man walks towards me with a smug look on his face. I'm tempted to slap it right off but something tells me to hold back.

"I can only assume you did the same with my friends than?" I take a step back trying to keep a distance between myself and the cheese thief.

"Yes, the more samples we have the more accurate our data." The man says lacing his fingers through his short, thick dark brown hair.

"We aren't experiments. We're people." I snap.

"Yes, people who left our ancestors behind on the ground to died. People who are selfish and have no honour. The people who—"

"That wasn't our choice to make." I cut him off angrily, "we have no power or control over the past and the decisions our ancestors made. All that's left to do is to learn from it, forgive and forget."

"Forget? That's ludicrous of you to say. I'll never forget. I'll never forget the pain you caused upon my people, the death of my family—" I hold my hand up cutting him short as he takes a step forward.

"Well neither will I. You aren't the only one who's lost people you love, so don't you dare say that you're the only one. I've seen death too." I approach  the man, taking steady steps forward, my hands clenched into fists.

"Bad people deserve to die. Justice must be served." He lashes at me walking forward.

"We aren't bad. You're the bad ones, you purposely breached Stratis City to kill us!" I accuse him holding back the temptation to hit him in the face.

"You must be joking. We tried for a hundred years and to no avail. The past fifty we haven't touched your pitiful door because we wanted you to stay down there and never resurface."

"Wait," I pause thinking, "you didn't breach Stratis?"

I shouldn't believe this man, but in the off chance that he didn't... than who did? I still won't trust this man.

"No. I could've gone my entire life happily not seeing you or your kind." The man snaps crossing his arms.

"Oh? And what exactly is 'my kind'? Or is that confidential too?" I ask snarky crossing my arms attempting to mock him.

"The Undergrounders."

The Undergrounders? I mean it makes sense, but that's like grouping all the survivors above the ground together.

"Well I'm glad to tell you that I'm not an 'Undergrounder'. I'm apart of the Immunis." I say uncrossing my arms and rolling my shoulders.

"Who the hell cares? If you're from the ground than you're all the same. You," the man pauses pointing his finger at me, "are an Undergrounder."

I let a frustrated sigh out and clench my bar that's still in my hand, if I'm stuck talking to this man I'm going to get some information from him. I need to find out who else is near us, if he knows any of the other survivors.

"According to statistics approximately 75.3 million people survived the Hollow. That's about 0.01% of the population, meaning there are others who survived besides you. Are there any other groups of people near here?" I ask.

"That's confidential." He says.

"Seriously? Is everything confidential with you?"

"Only to our enemies."

"We aren't your enemies." I say exasperated taking a step forward, "if you weren't the ones who caused the breach maybe someone else did."

"No one touched your door."

"You don't know that."

"I do."

I let a frustrated sigh out and fiddle with the bar in my hand. I search through my memories to find the one of John, Adam and James closing the trap door effortlessly laying it back down unscathed of any noticeable new blemishes. The entrance didn't even looked touched...

"Oh my god." I whisper, gasping as a sudden realization hits me.

If someone broke Startis's seal there would have to be noticeable damage to the trap door or any of the other seals. The doors wouldn't be able to close properly because they would've been so damaged and bent. That means, the cause of the breach came from inside, not outside. Someone intentionally opened the doors and seals.

I stand shivers running down my spin rapidly. There is only one group in the Stratis with enough power to switch off the shield of Stratis, the Centre. They are more at fault than we gave them credit for.

It all makes sense. A couple weeks ago mom said that she just forgot to pick up our food, but Stratis must have started rationing because we were running low on live stalk and food due to our increased population. On the news there was a huge story about the infected and diseased algae farms which couldn't be harvested resulting in a food shortage. The Center was pretending everything was fine, because for them it is. They sacrificed our lives so they could keep more of the food for themselves, to preform tests on us for their own benefit, to save their Layer from a possible breach, and they purposely breach all of Stratis so they could get rid of the weaker Layers.

There was only one flaw in their plan, the escape of the Immunis.