Our eyes opened slowly after I didn't know how long.

  The first thing I remember was the smell, it was horrible, it was like a rotting body was floating in rusty water, the metallic smell and the smell of death made a disgusting combination that made my MRE come back up and splatter on the concrete floor, I coughed as I stood up, my legs shaky as I tested my faculties, my sword arm was able to be moved, but I couldn't squeeze my fist, it just wouldn't do it. The wound in my left shoulder had stopped bleeding but the wound in my side was still in full swing like a blood waterfall, I was fucked up pretty bad.

  This was compounded by the fact that I had LOST MY SWORD!

  I punched the concrete wall in frustration, my team had abandoned me and all I had to defend myself were a few grenades and my revolver which I didn't have any more ammo for, as I had also been relieved of my ammo pack.

  I looked around me and saw I was in some sort of concrete tunnel with pipes running through and around it with vents every two feet along the ceiling.

  I took a step and realized that I had been laying in a thin puddle of this rust water, "great now I'm gonna get lockjaw." I grumbled, "Green? You there?" No answer, he must still be under.

  A few more steps and I heard a voice coming from the wall, "Hello?"

  It was the voice of a woman, I didn't know how much I trusted it, so I kept quiet until the vent at the top of the wall opened up and a girl my age poked her head out.

  She was dirty, covered in a thin film of blackened grease, likely due to lack of bathing but through all the grime I could tell she was Caucasian with blonde hair under a set of improvised clothes made of filthy burlap, she hissed at me from the vent, "dude, get your ass up here!"

  I blinked, "excuse me, what?"

  "Come on before the drones hear you!"

  As she extended a hand, a loud booming voice was heard, "I CAN SEE YOU, DESIRè."

  That fucking frantic metallic skittering again, I suppose the AI knew I was here too, I had no choice, I grabbed her hand and with her help, I got into the vent, it was surprisingly spacious.

  She pulled me deeper in as the large mechanical thing tried to get into the vent unsuccessfully.

  "Come on dude, I know a safe place!"

  Doubled over, I rushed with her deeper into the facility where we came out of a ground-level vent into what looked like the boiler room, concrete floors decorated with an array of pipes just like the sewers before, but with giant tanks between them, like large water heaters. Desirè sat down and patted the floor next to her, "so..." she said as I sat down, "Are you from Trigram? Are you here to rescue me?"

  I hesitantly shook my head, "No, I'm actually from Houska, my team and I were sent here to find out what the disturbances on this island were all about."

  "I expected to have company from Trigram..." she sighed and laid back on the floor, "you'd think they'd give more of a shit about me..."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  I craned my head to look around the dank boiler room, she'd re-purposed it into quite a suitable living area, one of the pipes had been torn open and leaked clean nonrusted water into a low area with drains in it, and there was some sort of fabric stretched between two other pipes in the approximate shape of a hammock. I could see she had several rats strung up over a vent that was blasting hot steam, food! Suddenly it dawned on me that she'd been here a long ass time.

  "When did they put you here?" I looked at her and she looked away, "I don't know how long I've been down here...I just know that I was sent by Trigram to kill a Houska official, they tore me to pieces, but I kept coming back...so eventually they locked my carcass down here and... viola."

  I couldn't believe what I was hearing, was this girl like me?

  Deciding to keep my origins a secret, I decided to press her about the Drones and the facility and the tale she told me was rather grim, to say the least.

  As soon as she began trying to leave the cell she'd been locked in, the walls shocked her, and shocked her, and then when she didn't let up, the cell filled with poison gas, when she woke up next she was down here, because apparently the AI that ran this place dumped the dead things its drones found in the sewer beneath the facility.

  "As soon as the AI realized his mistake, the drones started to patrol down here, looking for me and placing new cameras everywhere...I don't think he knows this room exists though, also because it's only accessible via that vent, I don't have to worry about drones stumbling into me...they're too big to fit into the vents."

  She sounded confident, but she looked so tired when she said that thing about the drones, I could only guess that she'd had some trial and error finding safe places to sleep.

  "What?" she saw my staring, "what's wrong?"

  "you look SO tired." was all I could say, I didn't much care to tell her why I was down here, the circumstances that led up to this moment made me feel like the most idiotic person in the history of the world, knowing that That black goo monster wanted in, we knew that and my squad still having fallen into that trap, I just couldn't stop kicking myself.

  "You'd be tired too if you were worried about your freedom every second of every day...I'm scared to sleep." Desirè had curled up into a little ball, sitting with her knees on her chest, "I'm usually the tough kid, but I'm not sure I can go on like this."

  I take out my revolver and wink at her, trying to give off some of Green's confident mojo, "It's alright, take a nap, I'll stand guard, we're in this together now."

  She looked uneasily at the revolver, "Wild west much?" I shake my head, "my only other weapon was lost to me on the surface, big iron here is all we got."

  She shrugged and got into her hammock, "You'll wake me if something comes up?"

  I once more gave her that reassuring nod and she laid in the hammock, almost instantly falling asleep.

  It felt like a full day before she woke back up to go to the bathroom, to achieve this, she dropped Trow and squatted over one of the drains in the divot beneath the broken pipe waterfall, taking time to let the water wash over her, attempting to wash off the grime. After she was done, she walked back over to me, it was only just now that I truly looked her over, she was beautiful, in the way that not even a large layer of grease could disguise, she was also emaciated and wearing a set of grimy, soaked tan pants, a pitted out, torn, long sleeve shirt and a burlap hat that covered her filthy hair, no shoes, and her feet looked all kinds of fucked up.

  "So, no disturbances?" she asked me, I shook my head, "Nothing to report here."

  She smiled and poked me on the nose, "You'll be MUCH more useful than I initially thought! We're gonna escape."

  Those words brought the widest smile to my face, "YES! So, what's the plan?"

  "First, names." she huffed, "Partners should tell each other their names."

  I nod, "JAB-76842, Code name, Agent Green."

  Her eyes widened, "You're a JAB?"

  I nodded, finally deciding to come clean, "I'm also a regenerator, JUST like you, I was rescued by Houska and now I'm free to do what I want...most of the time, I can help you get free too."

  I could see a hundred questions flash before her eyes, but then she stood at attention, "JAB-56473, Agent Mercy, BUT, Mr. 76842, YOU can call me Desirè, because FUCK Trigram and FUCK Houska!"

  I blinked, trying to remember my name, my REAL name, I couldn't remember for the life of me.

  It had been Green or Agent Green or JAB-76842, had I... forgotten my name? Had I forgotten ME??

  Green was Green but I was...