Season 02 - Episode 05

‘to get out’

Ty is trying not to be frightened.

It's been several days since a whole great chunk of the world collapsed right in front of him. Since then, he's been crawling through miles and miles of box transit system tunnels, desperately trying to find a way out.

He was already at the edge of the parts of the system he knew when it happened. Now he's deep into unknown territory and everything is against him. The lighting in the tunnels is sporadic, working and failing and working again, seemingly at random. Every service hatch he comes across, every opportunity to get out of the tunnels, is locked, trapping him in and moving him on.

For the first two days he had resisted the temptation to steal food from the belts, it was a sackable offence. By the third day however, his stomach won out. Since then he has been pinching small morsels from meals as they rumble past, hoping their recipients won't notice.

Every time he does, he thinks of Mum, of all the times she told him that stealing was a terrible thing and that he must never, ever do it. He hopes she'll understand when he tells her what he's done. He thinks she will.

Sometimes he stops and looks out of the vents but all he sees out there is chaos and misery. Desperate, terrified people rush past in different directions, some clutching bundles of belongings, others in nothing but their underwear.

He sees people crying, fighting and worse. Sometimes he sees people doing things to one another that he doesn't want to see but he finds it hard to look away. Then, afterwards, he still sees the things he didn't want to see, carries them in his head through tunnel after tunnel.

There is no way home in the box transit system, not one he'll ever find anyway. His only way home is to get out, into the corridors, into all that misery and danger. What's happening beyond the vents reminds him of The Scapes, only now it's everywhere, all through The Levels.

He needs to get out, has to get out, even though he's afraid to. He has to get home. He doesn't even know if Mum and Dad and Ky are alive. Did The Scape they were on go down with everything else?

These things that he thinks, along with the things he has seen, all chase him on through the tunnels. The going is easier when the tunnels are lit and so he tries to follow the light. For hours he crawls, trying to decide if these tunnels are new or if he has been here before.

Then he reaches one tunnel, always the same and realises he has gone in a circle. Again. He's knows it's the same tunnel because it's always lit up and there is a strange hatch in the ceiling about half way along.

The hatch is almost completely hidden by a thick layer of grime but in the thin, pale light he can make out its edges. A long handle nestles within a circular recess at the centre of the hatch, surrounded by strange, faded markings that Ty doesn't understand.

He doesn't like the hatch. Each time he sees it confirms that he is lost and making no progress. More than this though, the hatch it is like nothing he's ever seen in the tunnels before and that scares him.

Ty sits in the pool of light under the hatch now, exhausted and aching. Darkness awaits him ahead and behind. Fear and frustration make his head feel funny and he begins to tremble for no reason.

He is lost, completely, utterly lost and doesn't know what he is going to do.

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