Thirteen kept to the back, shoving his hands into his pockets. His fingers brushed the chips. Since he didn't need to protect them, changing to where they were more accessible was the more practical choice. He sniffed and craned his neck to the sky. They had been walking for an hour, going from the Eastern region and barely crossing the border. A few more hours, and they would be through the Central region. Still a long way from the Southern region.

When he conducted the meeting and told everyone what he came up with, they were incredulous at first. Even with Two's backing, confirming everything Thirteen pulled from Five's memory, they never relented in disbelieving the idea. So, Thirteen had called Eight and did a quick demonstration. It only cemented his conclusion.

Eight's memory consisted of a different landscape, but the same white corridors flanked with white pin lights and glass windows betraying scientists in laboratory coats appeared. In a different room with different blobs of faces, yet the same theme.

When Seven, the biggest cynic among their meager group, finally relented, everyone followed suit. Sixteen, the ever-amiable one, was the first to take Thirteen's reports to heart. Eighteen was a little hesitant, but with her years older than any of them, it was a given.

With all that explained, Thirteen asked for progress with the search. Seven had been to the Northern region and back, checking possible entry and exit points that might lead out of the grounds. He claimed to have tried the sewer method, and got nowhere.

"I seem to be going in circles," Seven had reported. "The corridors looked the same, and I even walked in a circle once. Think it was somewhere under the Central region. Miss one turn, and suddenly, you're back to where you started."

Slate nodded, a finger tapping her chin. "Same thing with the railroads in the Eastern region," she said. "I followed the lines to see if they led beyond the forest, but they curbed around the edge and went back."

There had been an edge, it seemed, and when he asked Eighteen to check it out, she came back with the report: "An invisible wall closed the entire grounds in a dome." Which was doubtful, but why would she lie? Why would anyone lie if they were all confused about their world?

Thirteen had told his fair share of lies, and most of them were to increase his chances of survival. Now that no one was after him, he simply lost the will to continue. Lies wouldn't serve anyone apart from those who tell them. In an ideal world as the one he lived inside his head, he wanted everyone to survive. Because it included him too.

Being selfless was easy if one had a foot in salvation's door.

So, more search operations ensued. He kept Five and Eight under close monitoring, daring the Corrector to green light another kill command. The three of them had gotten better at the four-suit card game they found in one of the metal desks. Whoever owned that must have went through tribulation and back just to keep it hidden.

A few days ago, everyone came back from what Thirteen thought to be another failed expedition. Then, Eighteen put her card on the table. "The Southern region," she said, looking around to meet everyone's eyes. "You have never been there, right?"

"A few sections reached that far," Five replied, fingers tapping against her arm with them crossed over her chest. "But they always had to go out due to how detached the region was."

Now, as the sun had taken a turn in the sky, bringing the light out with it, Thirteen understood why. They stood at the lip of the Central region, with its intact, stately buildings behind, and stared out into the mess of bricks, glass, and concrete that was the Southern region. It was like the part of the grounds Seventeen hid in until Thirteen and Two found him, only worse.

In the dark, Thirteen lost count of how many times he tripped over an exposed root of some grass network and gnarly tree or a chip in the pavement and in the asphalt. The tip of his boots glowed white against all the plaster and mud they traversed even in the dim moonlight. A dome, huh? That has got to be a huge dome for them to not even notice it. The sun still shone, and the moon still rose when it needed to. It couldn't be a simulation, could it?

Eighteen led them in a hazy queue, weaving around clear alleys that were smaller and darker. Toppled buildings covered most of the wider ones, the sight oddly reminiscent of a child's playground with towers made of blocks. The only difference was the buildings' sides jutted out towards the sky like hungry hands craving to be pulled from the ground. In the darkness of the night, their silhouettes likened to sleeping giants. Or fallen ones, the reinforcing steel rods protruding from their "bodies" resembling the weapons that slew them.

"This way," Eighteen said, waving a hand over her shoulder to beckon them. "Keep an eye on each other. This is a tricky road."

How did she find it, then? Thirteen tried remembering all the twists and turns they took so far, and they weren't short on being complicated. He had stopped paying attention after the third left after a long time of taking only forwards and rights. Eighteen couldn't have found this by luck. She must have spent a long time getting lost in the alleys like Seven did in the sewers.

The queue stalked towards a timely facade of a house. Residential, judging from the lines streaming in and out of the windows on its sides. Those could have been used for clothes, for drying. Some of those clothes had slipped from the wires, piling over each other on the immediate ground. What a waste of laundry.

The spaces between houses were alleys in themselves. Whoever owned land around these parts enjoyed a bounty. They drew closer to the door. Eighteen stepped up the porch lined with pots of dessicated succulents and gripped the knob. It twisted with ease. Thirteen eyed the hole punched through the glass window to the door's left. She must have unlocked it from the inside the first time she went here.

The dried plants bore witness to everyone's entry. Brittle leaves rustled against the gentle breeze blowing from the west, standing tall in their plastic boxes mounted on the fence guarding the house. White paint peeled off the planks, taking the splinters along with them. Thirteen ignored the dread nipping in his gut. Must be the nerves. They better find something here. Something they could use against the Corrector and would get them out of the Game.

He swallowed against the dryness creeping into his throat. Water has come and gone, and they have been walking under direct sunlight as early as the first light. The best course was to ignore, especially when they piled into the foyer and interesting details popped up.

Framed pictures hung on walls, showing frozen images of people either from ages past or the current era. Most were faded, hiding behind glass panes rimmed with ornate wood carvings. Dust and wisps of cobwebs hung from the sides and carpeted the edges. Speaking of carpets...

His boots crunched against shards of porcelain on his way past the narrow ante. Coats gathered grime from the ceiling and the particles swimming in the air from the pronged hanger in the ante's corner. The others dispersed into the rooms beyond, each one taking a different route. Slate disappeared into what appeared to be the kitchen, judging from the brightly colored cupboards and a hint of a metal sink in the arched entrance's corner. Seven came up a tall shelf by the thin, lacy curtains covering all the windows in the adjacent walls. The boy braced his hip and looked up at the dusty trinkets and dated books. Leave it to Seven to be fascinated by rubbish.

Five and Eight kept to their agreement, never straying from each other even as they branched left and ended up in an open room with a white, ornate table in the middle. Six cushioned chairs—all moth-eaten and flaked with dark splotches—surrounded the table like little soldiers ready to defend their territory. Eighteen urged Sixteen to check out if there were backdoors and to check the sheds. That left the rest of the living room and the remaining rooms in the house. Bedroom, maybe? And the second floor?

The second floor sounded more alluring, so he continued past the dining room in search of stairs. The facade had two rows of windows. A set of stairs should be present. The dim part of the house betrayed two doors. Opposite them were the wooden steps. He kicked the doors down to reveal comfort rooms. Untended comfort rooms. The water had long dried up, leaving a dusty chunk of marble in the middle. The ceiling had also caved in with time, breaking into moldy planks on the floor. Stairs, it was, then.

When he tried his weight on the first step, the planks creaked, whining like old ladies under the sun. He gritted his teeth and gripped the handrail. Tight. If the wood failed underneath him, at least, he'd have one last salvation before he hit the floor. Hefting his body through the steps, he winced and flinched with every painful note ripping from his boots. Relief flooded his system when he reached the landing, safe and sound.

He braved the brief corridor and came across a hooked corridor and another peeling to a hallway right above the kitchen and the dining room. Four rooms in total, including the one at the end of the hooked corridor. A square window stood parallel to the stair's landing, giving him a barred view of the city outside. Aside from the ornate facades of tower-like buildings—at least those who still stood up—vast landscapes of premium-cut land and eroding villas bled into the horizon.

Perhaps the rooms would have the coveted clues. He peeled into the nearest room and pushed the door inward. It was open. A four-poster stole his immediate attention, the lacy canopy betraying the general characteristic of the room's owner. A vanity with a shattered mirror stood next to it. All kinds of half-consumed cosmetics and beauty paraphernalia populated the desk, all unkempt and laid bare, as if discarded in a hurry.

He strode towards the bedside table and plucked a lone picture frame. Unlike the ones on the foyer, this one sported less dust on the glass. Less color bled out of the image, and a bright-eyed girl stared back at him. Large, doe eyes, hair coiffed at the shoulders and parted in the middle, a simple white blouse, and a red lip. He didn't recognize the face, and the dress was nothing like the clothes Five and the other girls wore. This couldn't have been in the same era, much less, the same century.

The frame thunked back to the table. He crouched and started pulling out the drawers underneath. Nothing but endless stacks of crinkly, yellow papers full of inked handwriting. Letters, more like. Dumped inside a dark, abandoned case without thought. Love letters, perhaps? Cheap. He plucked one but gave up trying to read through the loopy font. Whoever wrote this must be mad. Plain mad. And whoever received this must have been driven insane too.

The other parts of the room were uninteresting. The chest at the foot of the bed showed him more of those blouses and skirts. He pulled out a trunk from under the bed, coughing at the storm of dust it stirred up. More clothes, just folded and ironed neatly. A few books joined the case opposite the vanity proving just how little this girl enriched her mind. He flipped open some of them only to shut them immediately. They were in a language he didn't understand.

He sighed and trudged out of the room. He was about to check the opposite one when a loud thud echoed from the first floor. A faint mechanical whirring ticked in the whole house, followed by Seven's frantic babbling. Thirteen clicked his tongue and swung around the steps. His boots thumped against the crusty carpet covering most of the living room, aiming to where Seven sat on his rear, staring up at the shelf as if it had transformed into a monster.

Thirteen whirled to the object of interest and froze. Looming beyond them was a chute leading to the dark. Underground. More stairs peeled off the hole on the ground, revealed by the shelf skidding across a rusty mechanism. Seven must have pulled something he shouldn't have.

"Oh, there it is," Eighteen's flighty voice pierced behind him. He whirled to find the girl standing at the edge of the man-sized hole stopping the floorboards. "I was beginning to think the underground's entrance isn't in this area."

He jerked his chin at the blond girl. "How did you know about the underground?"

"I've noticed some weird cracks on some of the alleys, like the road was caving in," Eighteen reasoned. "If there's nothing but compact soil, they wouldn't curl inward as if a hollow pocket of air held them up."

Smart. Thirteen hadn't even noticed that. "So, shall we?" he asked the others. "This might lead us out of here."

He didn't wait for everyone to get there, trudging towards the stone steps and tackling the stairs on his own. The others scrambled in his wake, glancing at the ebbing light every now and then. Together, they strode across a hidden corridor leading deeper into the darkness. He spread his arms, his fingers brushing rough stone walls on both sides without his arms extending fully. The corridor was enough to fit one person.

The darkness was thick after a few minutes of walking forward. Hushed breaths and light sniffs echoed behind him. He counted the footsteps. Still the complete set. He put his arms forward. With him leading the group, he should be able to tell if they were about to run face-first into a wall. After a while, his fingers pressed against a cold surface. Metal. Something bumped behind him, followed by a suppressed grunt. The rest of the line bounced against each other because of his sudden pause.

"What is it?" Five's concerned voice rang from the rear. Eight's disgruntled snort floated with it.

Thirteen felt around, for some latch or a lock. His fingers came across a groove, then later what seemed to be a panel. His palm ran across it. Green light flashed overhead, drowning them in its eerier glow. What—

The metal gave in underneath Thirteen's hands. Something hissed, like hydraulic pipes releasing tension. Through the greenish tinge, he spied the doors swing inward, revealing a more spacious room. Underneath the heart of an old, abandoned city, something like hydraulics shouldn't exist, much less biometric sensors.

As if sensing their presence, the entire room whirred to life, starting from the spread of screens in the far end. It resembled the ones Thirteen built himself in the command center, except they glowed with a familiar symbol emblazoned in the digital middle. A series of recognizable letters flashed white beneath it.

Primeva Laboratories, Inc.

The realization sunk in. This was—

The doors slammed shut behind him. Before he could turn to check what happened, the sound of a gun cocking rang behind him. He didn't need to look. It pointed right behind his head judging from the shocked expression shining through the bluish tinge of the screens.

"Move a muscle, and I will shoot," Eighteen's voice bled in his ears. "I've just about had enough of you."