Onward and Upward

Written by: Stephen Brown; Mansfield Grey

We had been walking for a good hour now. The terrain was getting easier as we descended. The air was getting fresher and I was feeling a lot more awake. I felt stronger and my ribs didn’t hurt from the blast anymore. I asked Q, “Why do I feel so good the deeper we go?”

Q replied, “I feel really good too! I think it’s the rising oxygen levels for one thing, which will activate healing along with the vitamin shots I gave you this morning. The stem cells and Nano tech are healing at a faster rate than up on the surface. And by the way, have you noticed the cave we have been descending through is looking more and more like a tunnel? It is pretty easy to walk around in here and has been for a while – this looks manufactured. Another thing, we are so deep into the earth’s mantle, it should be about 150 degrees down here. The last I checked it was a balmy 83.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean Q.” I turned to the rest of the crew, “Hey boys, just a heads up, looks like we might see some company down here. As you can see it is pretty easy terrain. These are likely tunnels not caves, so be on alert, weapons close, code yellow. The higher oxygen levels and Q’s vitamins are making you feel alert and strong, so use that and stay focused. Got it?”

“Yes sir, Captain Sir!” Red Band 1 replied in unison.

We walked another five minutes and Q turned to me, “Hey Manny, we are now on an incline again. We are moving upward now.”

I think we all felt a little relief when Q said that. Hopefully we would be coming to another entrance and we could get out of here. But the question on everyone’s mind was who would build such an elaborate tunnel and why?

We had walked another five minutes and had begun our climb to the surface when it happened. Q’s electronics started to fail. The batteries in every one of his devices went dead. At the same time the bag of tricks started to vibrate. I had forgotten about how we got into this mess in the first place. It was the bag with Chin Lo’s weather machine. It was vibrating on my backpack. I took the bag off my pack and opened it up. We all gathered to look inside.

“Hey Manny, is it supposed to do that?” Bronco asked.