It's Somewhere Beneath Us

Embers

I opened my eyes to find myself lying in a dusty hospital bed, the white bulbs above me bleaching the color from the surrounding area. I remembered traveling down hallways with Alice, but I didn't recall blacking out. However, I suppose it was to be expected with how much strain my body had been under. I scanned the room to find the woman slumped in a visitors chair, fast asleep. Not wanting to disturb her, I sat up slowly and inspected my wounds. Bloody bandages covered my arms where lacerations had been made, and patches of gauze had been placed over the parts of my torso that hadn't been spared.

"You're awake."

My head pivoted to Alice, "I thought you were sleeping."

"This place has made me a pretty light sleeper."

I held up my bandaged hand and smiled, "I'm going to be very upset with you if you don't go back to Med school when we get out."

She laughed softly. "You're lucky to be alive. With how bad some of those cuts were, I'm surprised she didn't hit something vital. How are you feeling?"

"Surprising well, actually. Thank you, Alice. You saved my life."

She nodded and brushed a strand of hair from her face but didn't speak.

"Did you carry me here?"

"You blacked out pretty close by. I dragged you the rest of the way."

"Good thing there was a hospital room close by, huh?"

"Well, it was actually a few floors above where I found you, but you managed pretty well up until then."

"How long have I been out for?"

"About a day, I think. At least according to your watch beeps."

I nodded, but then another question dawned on me. "How long has it been since I last saw you?"

She pursed her lips and looked down to the floor, "probably around two months."

I shot up so straight that it caused the cuts on my stomach to sting, "T-Two months? Oh my gosh, Bea, I need to-"

Alice hopped up and crossed over to me, placing a hand on my shoulder as I tried to stand from the bed, "Joel, slow down. You lost a lot of blood. Your body is still recovering."

I certainly didn't feel like I had sustained life-threatening injuries, but that was most likely just adrenaline. My mind was in full-blown panic mode, but I did my best to obey. I didn't want to think about how much might have happened in just the couple of months I had been away. From my room, I now knew that my friends would be alright with their injuries, but that didn't mean that they weren't suffering this whole time. On top of that, if anyone from the surface had given up hope and tried to come find us... A million horrible possibilities raced through my head, but Alice stopped them all at once.

"Your friends are okay. I mean, at least they're alive. I've been monitoring their rooms."

I looked at her, confused, before my brain connected another thing she had said a bit ago. We had traveled several floors upward while I was bleeding out and practically unconscious.

"How are you doing that? How are you getting around so fast?"

"The elevator. Do you not remember riding it?"

"No."

"I guess you were pretty out of it." She said, twirling her earring. "There's an elevator in the middle of every floor. As far as I can tell, it and the rooms it connects to are the only places that the house can't move. The shaft goes all the way from the surface to the garage below. even deeper than that too."