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Their world was dying. It was true that humans would eventually kill their home, and they did more than kill it. The world was now barren wasteland, a faint shadow of what it used to be. Earth used to be filled with color. Now, the only color could be found below, and it was only a dreary grey and brown mixture. Color had been long lost to the eyes of the remaining humans, now only having the ability to see color in old picture books for children and photos passed down generations.

Earth was now full of toxic gases and radio activity for there to anything but the mutated creatures that had become something entirely different than what the humans used to know as animals. They had morphed into their terrain, grabbing traits from the land around them. No human in the underground colony would dare set foot above anymore. When the humans moved underground, so waited a few years before moving to above ground, wanting to see the damage left behind and wanted to regrow. Out of a team of twenty, only three returned, shaken and paler than the moon herself. From then on, the sentence for going above and set your sights on the outside world was to be exiled to the surface and left for dead.

Rhys didn’t seem to think it was a bad idea to return. Generations had passed, and him and his older brother wished to see it all in person. Something once so beautiful could bounce back and regrow, correct? Of course it would. Earth was stubborn, like the humans. They built machines to stabilize the air underground, making it easier to breathe and live. Dirt down there was turned into fertile soil, stashed away in a large greenhouse, created by the First Settlers. Metal was found in the mines and tunnels that were found and created. Meat was found from the creatures that live within the deep dark. Rhys was an engineer, and his brother, Atrine, was a hunter. With their parents having been in the First Exiles, they were lost to the land above.

Night after night, Rhys and Atrine would sit in their beds, thinking of ways to escape, thinking of new plans to climb up the many stairs to reach the surface floor. Tonight was to be the night.