Reva, Vee and Dyceran stood in a crumbly rock tunnel, held up by thin wooden supports. The supports were slightly shaky, as if they could give out at any minute. The whole tunnel was carved from stone, leaving rough and uneven walls and floors. Dyceran had to crouch to fit in the tunnel.

Dyceran looked around the barren tunnels with a grim look on his face, like they were dragging up uncomfortable memories. "The bottom level... Never thought I'd be back..."

Vee led the way down the tunnel, the same uncomfortable expression on his face. "I know what you mean. Come on."

The three carefully crept their way across the halls uneven footing. Above them, a stampede of footsteps echoed through the cavern. The guards. They'd almost caught up. The trio pushed on regardless, trying to keep ahead of them.

Reva could barely keep up with the other two. She kept pausing to catch her breath. The air here was thick. Something about it was just wrong. She could taste toxins through her ventilator. Whatever was wrong with the air seemed to go unnoticed by Vee and Dyceran.

Vee noticed Reva stopping to catch her breath after her third or fourth stop. He stopped in his tracks, comforting her while waiting for her to catch her breath. "This is the bottom level, where the most hazardous materials are mined. This is where the most toxic pollutants come from. Your ventilator might not be blocking all of them. We have to hurry and get out of here."

Eventually, they came across the end of the hall. It just stopped. The trio stood at a rocky wall that hadn't been carved out yet. The very bottom of the mine. It was also that floor's miner quarters. The rooms were packed together just as tightly as Dyceran's floor, if not more so. Each room had a shoddy wooden door covering it, with just barely enough wall space between rooms for the hinges to attach to. The doors were so weak even Reva and Vee could rip them off the wall. The three ripped all the doors off, making record time through their collective effort. Once again, all the miners gathered around Dyceran and Vee. Reva watched from a distance. All the miners looked different than the previous floors, they looked thinner, paler, sicker. Some of them could barely stand. None of them were wearing ventilators. With each lungful of air they breathed, they got a lungful of toxins. With each breath, they coughed, they choked. Dyceran looked sympathetically at them. Vee fought back tears.

They gave the usual speech that they'd given at least a dozen times at this point. "We've come to get you out. We'll distract the guards. Find any exit you can. Go to the spaceport." This group of miners looked much less impressed by the speech. There were no cheers. No one ran off to freedom. Some limped down the hall, leaning on the wall for support. Some stood stationary, unsure of what to do. Some returned to their rooms, propping their doors back up.

This angered Vee. He ripped the door back off one of the miners rooms and pulled them back into the hall. Reva grabbed Vee, trying to get him off the miner.

"Stop Vee! We can't force them to come with us!"

Vee didn't answer. The miner tripped and fell to the floor as Vee pulled him, dazed and stunned. Dyceran grabbed Vee by the head, lifting him into the air.

"What are you doing? They don't want to go."

Vee looked up, tears in his eyes. "We can't just leave them Dyceran! They'll die!"

Dyceran put Vee back on the ground. Dyceran turned away, unable to look at Vee in his current state. 

"That's their decision to make."

The team went back the way they came, slowly following the limping miners. Reva lent her shoulders to two particularly sickly looking miners. They limped along to every step she took. Dyceran rushed to the front of the group, ready to shield any of the miners from potential harm. Vee followed behind the pack, still fighting back tears. He keeps looking back at the miners they left behind. After a minute or two, he shook his head and ran up through the ranks of the group to Reva's side.

"The guards will be here soon. We have to be ready to fight."

Reva continued guiding the two miner's down the hall. They wheezed with every step.

"These two need my help. Think you and Dyceran can handle it?"

Vee smiled for the first time since entering the bottom level.

"Of course we can!"

It wasn't long before Vee would have to put actions behind his words. After about twenty paces, the group could hear the loud echo of footsteps running towards them. The footsteps were loud and heavy, from the metal combat boots of the guards. It was accompanied by the clanking of their armour, and the barking of their commander's orders.

"The end of the mine is just up ahead! It's there we'll find the intruders and all the kidnapped miners! Let's hurry!!"

With that order, the guards converged on the groups position. They all saw the group and froze dead in their tracks. They all looked alarmed, too much so to speak properly. Eventually they worked up the courage, one by one.

"They're missing some of the miners!"

"And the one's they have are all sick and gross!"

"They must be vampires or something!!"

The commander, a Phonocoptrian dressed in navy blue armour, raised his arm to quiet the rest of the crowd.

"They're not vampires! They must have a shrink ray! The miners are all in their pockets. These ones must have got shrinking sickness."

A wide sense of relief washed over all the guards, enough that they all looked visibly calmer. They all breathed a sigh of relief as they raised their weapons.

"Oh!!"

"That makes sense!"

The commander raised his gun. It was noticeably bigger than the other guards. It was the same type of gun, but decked out with all sorts of modifications that looked homemade. His gun was almost double the length of a normal gun.

"If we shoot them, it should undo the shrinkage!!"

All the guards fired their rifles indiscriminately into the crowd. Each shot either hit a wall or Dyceran. Dyceran charged towards them, in an effort to restrict their aim. The commander flipped a few light switches glued to the side of his rifle, as the barrel started to glow.

"Cover me men! I still need to build my charge!"

Almost immediately, 5 guards jumped in front of the commander, forming a blockade between him and Dyceran. In the middle of the group, Vee grabbed his nerve gun from his jacket pocket and began rapidly running forward. Dyceran grabbed one of the guards in the blockade and threw him into a wall. The guard fell to the ground with a loud thunk, no longer conscious. The commander poked his rifle through the hole in the blockade. His gun sparked, an ominous red glow emanating from the barrel.

Vee let off a shot, knocking the blaster to the side. A bolt of bright red lightning arced out of the blaster, melting all the rock it came in contact with. Dyceran looked at the newly formed hole in the floor, still glowing from the molten rock, with a look of shock and terror on his face.

"You just saved my scales!"

"Anytime dude! Now take out the boy in blue so I don't have to do it again!"

Upon hearing this order, the four remaining blockade guards shot at Dyceran. Dyceran was uninjured, but mildly annoyed. He stopped to swat the lasers away, like how you'd swat a fly. The commander saw an opportunity and took off down the hall.

"Keep them busy men! I'll lock down the mine! They won't escape here alive!!"

Vee took off down the hall like a rocket. In the blink of an eye his gun was stashed away, and his knife was in hand. He weaved through the guards as elegantly as a dancer, stabbing and slicing along the way. An elbow here, a thigh there. The guards didn't even realize what was happening until Vee had frozen five of their limbs. The sixth tried to fight back, firing at Vee. He was too slow. By the time he pulled the trigger, Vee's feet had left the floor. He ran across the wall, pouncing off and slashing the guard in the head, knocking him out instantly. After that, it was a straight shot to the commander.

The commander was running, but he couldn't outrun Vee. He turned around to see Vee following closely behind him, no more than 30 metres back. Vee was close enough for the commander to see the smug smirk on his face. Vee knew he was going to catch up, and so did the commander. But the commander couldn't get caught! He had a job to do! So he aimed his rifle at Vee. It had been charging the entire time he was fleeing. He had one shot. He let it fly.

Red lightning ripped through the air, the heat transforming the sandy floor of the mine to glass. Vee saw it coming. He tried to move, but the blast was fast. Too fast. It hit him in the thighs. It felt like he was standing on the sun. The heat only lasted a few milliseconds, before his legs were fully disintegrated. He fell face first to the floor.

Vee tightened his grip on his knife. His legs weren't attached, but he could still feel them burning. It hurt, worse than any physical pain he'd felt before. It took every ounce of strength he had to roll over to his back. He winced, before plunging the knife into what was left of his thighs. The surviving nerves were immediately shut off, stopping all pain. He breathed a quick sigh of relief.

The commander threw his gun to the ground. Vee was no longer smirking, but the commander was. That arrogant fool thought he could get to the commander? That he could hurt him? Well, he wasn't going anywhere now. He was on the ground, writhing in pain. The commander pulled a small handgun out of a holster on the back of his hip, and continued marching forward, smirking the whole way.

Vee watched the commander stroll over. He was confident, cocky. He thought Vee was in pain. He hadn't noticed the knife. Vee would have one chance, and only one, to take him out. If it didn't work, Vee was a sitting duck. He had to be perfect, and he would be.

The commander stopped about three paces away from Vee's head. This was his chance to raise the morale of his troops. He just had to show off, remind everyone why they were better. They could still win this fight! He raised his gun, aiming at Vee's head.

"This is how you die scum! On the ground! Like-"

A shot echoed through the cave. A bright red laser lit up the cavern. The commander stood still, unflinching. He was completely motionless. Vee had shot him in the mouth with a nerve round, freezing him from the nose down. Vee had won. He breathed another quick sigh of relief, before tucking his gun back into his jacket pocket.

Reva and Dyceran came running up the hall, stopping at Vee's side. Reva was in a panic. She'd seen Vee beaten, she'd seen him bloody, but she'd never seen him this bad before. He was just laying there, in a pool of his own blood.

"Vee! Are you ok?!"

"Oh, yeah. I am. I killed my nerves, so I can't feel anything, but I am still bleeding pretty bad."

"Yeah we need to get you out of here. Now!"

Reva ripped off her jacket before ripping the sleeves off. She took each sleeve and wrapped them around Vee's thighs, tying them tightly.

"That should keep you alive until we can get you proper help."

Reva lifted Vee off the ground, placing him on Dyceran's back. Dyceran then went and grabbed all the sickly miners and placed them on his back. He held his hands behind his back, cupping them around the miners. They were about as hard to hold as a dozen eggs, not very heavy, but a lot for just two hands. He looked at Reva, a look of slight concern on his face.

"There is only one way to get to the surface fast enough to save him."

Reva nodded, immediately knowing what he was talking about.

"The mine carts."