The good part: the fall finally stopped and everyone is safe. The bad part: we don't know what to do. The place where we were was very quiet, cold and dark. I slipped on my jacket and lit the torch from my bag. Now I can see something. My friends were already wearing their hoodies. I looked around. The floor was filled with sand and when I look up, the walls were made out of bricks. We were in some narrow passage kind of a place. Almost like a lobby. I looked up to see how deep we were. There was another floor above us. We can climb our way out if we had a rope but I don't want to go for it. "You are afraid of heights." Gautham asked me. "Yeah." I replied reculantly. After a long pause, "Every one is afraid of something." I said and nudged him. I knew his fear. Spiders. When we were young, Kelly, Gautham and I used to go to the same babysitter. Kelly was playing with dolls while I tried scaring Gautham with a rubber spider and he started yelling really loud and caused a huge tantrum. He confessed that he had spider phobia and so I slipped it back into my pocket and laughed. Ever since then, I started teasing him with the nursery rhyme 'Itsy Bitsy spider'. No wonder he was sweating when we were dealing with the spider lady. He shrugged as he erased that memory.

I found a switch on the wall and flicked it on, thinking it was a light switch. Unfortunately, it wasn't. As soon as I switched it on, the two walls which were very far from us started coming closer, one meter per a second. "Thanks a lot." Rama said.

"Quick! We will have to climb out of here!" Rahul said and gave each of us a long rope which he made a halo of and threw it up. It stuck there. Wow, he has a good aim. Gautham, Kelly and I started climbing the wall which was in front of me and the others started climbing the wall which was behind me. The side walls started coming closer and closer now. I gripped the rope really tight and started climbing up. I was feeling cold even with my jacket on. "Don't look down." My conscience kept telling me. My hands started sweating. I didn't stop . I looked up, and climbed higher and higher. I got very tempted to look down. But I looked up and thought, 'almost there. Halfway done.' My hands got even sweatier and I slipped. "Gotcha" Kelly said as she pulled me up to my rope. I looked beside me and found that the walls were really close now. About a few meters away from crushing us. We started climbing faster. "Don't look down." Gautham said. We almost reached. I climbed on for a second and found out that the other already reached. The walls were just an inch away as I climbed my way up. But my shoe got stuck between the two walls. I pulled really hard but it was of no use. "A little help?" I asked. All of the pulled me so hard we fell down on top of each other. We laughed and dusted ourselves, getting up.

I looked at the time. It was 9:30 pm. My eyes were heavy with sleep. "I guess we could get some sleep now." Rahul said, as if reading my mind. "I'll take the first guard." Kelly volunteered. I fell asleep immediately. I used my bag as a pillow just like the others.

I woke up at 8:30 am. The others were still sleeping, except for Rahul. "I'll take it from here." I said, smiling. Three days down, eleven more days to go. "I guess we should carry on. Let's wake them up." He said. "Let me wake them up." I said. I went next to Gautham and yelled "spider!" He woke up with a scream and punched me. Rahul and I started laughing. "Very funny." He said, rolling his eyes. I woke Kelly up and she woke Rama up.

Just as we were about to start walking, a boy bungee jumped from above us "Boo!" He said. I reacted fast and slapped him while Kelly screamed . He got down from hanging upside down. "Oh my gods! You slap hard." He said, rubbing his cheek. He wore a red shirt and a grey jacket. "Who are you?" Rama asked, raising his bag as if throwing it at him. "Allow me to introduce myself. Chakree. The only survivor in this place since you have come." He looked about fourteen. "Chakree?" Rama said, as if he knew him. The they did some silly handshake. "Sorry, this is Chakree, my childhood friend." He told us. Then turned to him and said, "Chakree, these are my friends, Rahul, Kelly, Gautham and Nithya."

"Can he come along?" Rama said.

"But the oracle.. It's not going to work out." I said.

"But we can't just leave him here." Gautham said.

After discussing if he should come along or not, without coming to any conclusion, "Will someone tell me what you're talking about?" Chakree said, getting really annoyed. "Come upstairs and see where I live. We can sit and talk there." He said and jumped up, caught a pole and climbed it up till he reached another floor. "Come on. It's safe." He said and Rama followed him. We all got up later.

His 'house' was amazing.

"Take a seat. And please tell me what you were talking about." We told him the whole thing, from the Spanish teacher to climbing up here. We spoke as if on cue, one incident per person. "According to the oracle, there are supposed to be five kids to do this job. No offence, but I think something will go wrong if you try coming along." Kelly finished. He nodded. "Yes. I have had the same mission as yours a few weeks back but then I was left the only one surviving till now, so I decided to just stay here."

"And let the earth die?" I said.

"Let's not talk about that. I'll give you this." He handed each of us a walkie talkie. I raised an eyebrow at him. "You still play with walkie talkies?" I said. "This is the best way to communicate. This is not a walkie talkie! It's a gadget which I made and you can use it no matter how far you are from me." I nodded. "Will you please show me the bathroom?" I said. I really needed to change my clothes and freshen up. "Yeah. You guys could stay here for sometime, freshen up, eat something and continue with your mission. At least stay for a night." He said and showed me the way to the washroom.

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