Chapter 10
The Prisoner

The corridors were long, dark, and stinky. There was a thick coating of  slime along the walls and bugs were crawling in it. The stench was somewhat similar to a rotten egg and it was strong enough to knock you over when it came in waves. The walls were lit very slightly by a light glow that seemed to be coming from no where. We walked slowly because there was about a 3cm deep layer of oil and water on the ground which was being constantly drained into gutters along the sides of the wall. It was fairly narrow, but the three of us managed to walk side by side together. After about five minutes or so, the corridor split in two. Alex opened the map again and checked it. It indicated a split, but one of the corridors wasn't mapped.
 "Let's take the one that's charted. Or we may get lost." suggested Alex.
 "But look!" I cried. "There's another corridor that circles all the way around this opening. It can't be very big, whatever's down there."
 "We shouldn't take any chances" Alex said.
 "Fine, whatever you say." I grumbled. We took off down the charted tunnel, toward one of the three staircases. We arrived there, only to find it missing. There was a door, but it was quite high up on the wall. The stairs were no where to be seen. We set off down another hallway in search of another stairway. The next one was intact, but the door was barred shut. There was no hope of opening it. Cursing and muttering, we finally found the third stairway. It was impossible to climb. Slime was running down the stairs, and had corroded it away to nothing but a slide. A slide covered in slime. Not only that, but the slime was coming from beneath the door. There was probably much more on the other side.
 "Okay," I said. "Obviously our only other option is the uncharted corridor."
 "It's too much of a risk!" Alex retorted.
 "Are you kidding!" I shouted. "That's what life's all about!"
 Both guys whined, but then followed me as I cautiously crept down the hall. It rose upwards a bit, and went from an oily drainage tunnel to a dirt hallway. After a few minutes I asked Alex how much longer this hall should be. He told me the end wasn't far off. Frederick seemed to be doing fine with this whole idea of walking, until he screamed and he fell down flat on his back.
 "Fred, are you all right?" I asked.
 "Oie!" he whispered.
 I laughed in spite of myself. I helped him up and tried to brush the dirt off his back. "You klutz!"
 "Oh Man!" interrupted Alex. "Do you guys hear that!"
 We stopped to listen. There was nothing, but all of a sudden we heard a loud cry. A growling was coming from down the hall.
 "Wh-who's there?" shouted Alex. The growling stopped.
 "We come in peace," yelled Frederick.
 "C'mon, let's go find out what that is!" said Alex.
 "Are you nuts?" I asked. "Don't you watch horror movies?"
 "What's a movie?" demanded Alex.
 "Forget it," I said. "But the point is, we should not go down a dark, stinky, unidentified corridor, especially if there's growling coming from inside it!"
 "Why not?" asked the guys.
 "Fine! If you're so thickheaded that you don't see why it's such a stupid idea, then I'll go down there myself to prove it to you and when I don't dome back, I'll yell ‘I told you so!' from my grave!"
With that I marched off down the hall.
 "Bunch of idiots," I muttered to myself, "think they can just run off down any old hall and be perfectly safe! Geez!" My thoughts were interrupted when I walked straight into a wall. "Ugh!" I screamed, as I wiped the slime off my face. "Disgusting!"
 "Try living in it." said a voice from next to me.
 "Yaah!" I screamed.
 "Ahh!" the voice screamed back.
 "Oh my God" I yelled, and ran back down the hall.
 "No! Wait, dammit! Wait!"
 I stopped running.
 "Cripes I don't believe this!" the voice yelled. "My first chance in five years to be free of this cell, and the fool who can help me runs off like some scared little chicken! Damn." And that was followed by more loud growling noises, and big thumps and bangs. I slowly walked back toward the end of the hall. There was a cell down there, to the left. I crept up to the bars and peered in. There was a girl in there, with dark brown hair, not too tall, but very muscular. She was shouting and cursing as she heaved herself against the wall, bashing it with her shoulder. Then she grabbed a pipe and started hitting the cell bars with it. It was then that she noticed me.