Chapter 3

When I woke up, I noticed I was in a bright room with curtains all around me. I laid there quietly for a moment, waiting for the fog to clear from my head. Finally I remembered what had happened, and instinctively reached with my right hand toward the bullet wound in my shoulder. There was a small bandage there, so I started to lift it.

"Hey, leave that alone." A female voice said from behind my bed.

"Hmm? Who are you?" I asked.

The girl stepped out from behind the bed to look at me face to face. It was Sienna!

"Sienna!"

"Hey, Yukari. I'm glad to see you made it out!" she said.

"I'm just happy to see you again. It's been hell." I replied.

"Yeah, I bet it was. Well, it's all uphill from here!" she said, smiling.

I nodded.

"Your bullet wound is all healed up. Anna actually did the hard work. You were losing a lot of blood, so she had to remove the bullet and stitch it herself before you got here. She did a really good job, I think."

"Yeah, it feels better, for sure. She sure seems to know a lot for a 10 year old." I remarked.

"Didn't Michael tell you? She's smart, really smart. Like one of those gifted children. I've been teaching her some nursing practices the past few months. I'm just happy to see her first human patient was a success!"

"…First?" I asked nervously.

"Oh, yeah. She'd only done stitching and such on mannequins up till now. But like I said, she did a fine job!"

My stomach was starting to feel a little uneasy again. It seemed this was going to be a familiar feeling for me outside of City Eternal.

"So anyway, if you're feeling up to it, Jonathan and Anna are waiting to see you," Sienna said.

"Oh, sure."

Sienna motioned to the wheelchair at the side of the bed. I slowly lifted myself off the bed and wobbled over to the chair. After carefully lowering myself in, Sienna pulled the curtains and wheeled me down the room. I saw a bunch of new faces. Doctors and nurses, kids with broken arms, people recovering from surgery, it was just like any hospital I'd ever known. I was shocked.

"I have to admit, this wasn't what I expected when I heard about a refugee camp," I said to Sienna.

"To be honest, it's only a refugee camp in name. It's more of an underground city."

"An underground city?" I asked.

"Yeah, hard to believe, isn't it? We're quite a ways down, too. This city is built like a massive underground building. There's somewhere along the lines of 250 floors, of varying heights." She replied.

"250 floors? How many people are there here?"

"Over a hundred thousand, I think. There's generations of people here who've never seen the inside of City Eternal. The situation is far different than the stories you heard about back at the dome."

I was stunned and speechless. How could so many people have lived outside the dome, and for so long? How could I have not known about all of this? I took a deep breath. It was going to be a long day, there was a lot to learn.

Sienna took me through a few more rooms, and up a floor on the elevator.

"This is actually just the emergency medical elevator. There's 5 of these that go from the top to the bottom. Besides that, there's 10 public elevators, and 5 massive service elevators. You should see the main service elevator sometime. It's bigger than anything I've ever seen." Sienna explained.

I made a mental note to check that out sometime. The elevator doors opened, and she wheeled me out to the waiting room.

"Hold on, I want to walk in," I said.

"Are you sure?" Sienna asked.

"I was shot in the shoulder. I'm not crippled." I snidely answered.

It felt good to be walking again. I walked over to the door, opened it, and saw Jonathan and Anna talking. They lifted their heads and once they noticed it was me, they jumped out of their chairs. Anna rushed over and hugged me.

"I'm so glad you're okay, Yuki!" she exclaimed.

"Heh, me too. And thank you for helping me, Sienna told me what you did!" I said.

"So, your shoulder going to be alright?" Jonathan asked.

"Yes, it is." I answered.

I looked around the room for a moment.

"Hey, where's Michael?" I asked.

"He said he was sorry he couldn't stay, he had business to take care of. He wanted us to meet him tonight at the rebellion headquarters." Jonathan replied.

"You should get some rest, Yukari. I'll show you both to your rooms." Sienna said.

Sienna took us back to the elevator, and we rode up a good 25 floors.

"Now remember, this elevator is just for medical, don't be using it all the time. You're just getting a free ride today because I'm here." Sienna reminded us with a grin.

The doors opened revealing a small hallway. Sienna took us to my room first. Jonathan opened the door, and I stepped inside. The apartment was amazing! It had a large living area, a fireplace, an eat-in kitchen, and two bedrooms. It was furnished with some old, but usable furniture.

"How in the… wow! This is better than my parent's house back in City Eternal!" I exclaimed.

"You can thank Michael for that. He's pretty high up on the rebellion's rank, so he pulled a few strings for you and Jonathan. I hope you two don't mind sharing it?" Sienna said.

Sharing? To be honest, the idea that the apartment would be big enough for two people never entered my mind. But now that I saw this place, I would feel bad not sharing it.

"We'll, uh, work it out," I said.

Sienna walked over to the kitchen counter, and scribbled some things on a pad of paper.

"I have to go," she said. "But if you need anything, this is my cell phone number. Michael's is on here too, although he tends not to answer it. There's a computer over there, it can answer any question you have about the camp. Don't forget to look up a map for the rebellion HQ; this place can be a maze sometimes."

"Really, Sienna, thank you. I hope to see you again, soon!" I said.

"Oh, you will. God willing I won't have any more emergencies today and I'll meet you all at the rebellion HQ tonight. Now get some rest, will ya?"

I smiled and waved goodbye as she shut the door.

Over the next few hours, Jonathan cooked up some delicious Mexican rice, and we devoured all the information the computer could give us about the camp, and it's history. It told us about how the camp started, how they survived off the waste of City Eternal, and about the recent rebellion movement. I was most interested in how they continuously dug deeper with this camp, expanding it as the years went by. It started out as just a niche inside an old subway system, and grew over the many years the refugees have lived out here.

It talked about how the camp operates as its own city, feeding off of the rubble of New York City, and of City Eternal. They adapted thrown away technology, processed waste for water, and recycled materials for construction. The service elevators were used to move materials and finished goods up and down the camp. A tram system connected the camp to the rebellion HQ, as well as the 5 defensive lines.

The defense of the camp seemed to be the highest priority. All incoming and outgoing materials and people had to be registered and logged. The five defense lines (of which two were contained within the camp itself) circled the camp. To date, only once had City Eternal attacked the camp, without reasonable success.

It was a lot to devour, and we were only at the tip of a very large iceberg. After spending a good three or four hours staring at the screen, Jonathan and I decided to take a quick nap before heading off to meet Michael. I went back into my bedroom, turned off the lights, and instantly went to sleep.