Alexander lay awake that night, his eyes staring up at the ceiling as the noises of the world sank into the darkness that surrounded him. He couldn’t sleep, the aching pain in his still healing wounds doing most of the work but the odd gunshot not making it any easier. Both of his parents had doused the fire shortly after the dinner and then crawled onto their own mattress. Both of them had worked hard that day, and though their reunion had given them some energy, that quickly ebbed away. His father’s faint snores filled the main room, adding to the cries that echoed in the night, both of them succeeding in keeping Alexander wide awake.

The low embers of the dying fire quelled the worst of his fear, heating the room and providing just enough dim light to reflect off of his brilliant blue eyes. The shapes it provided on the ceiling entertained him for a few minutes, but soon the boy felt his boredom rise. He couldn’t sleep. And no matter how much he tried to force himself to do so, it only seemed to make the problem worse. Every activity his parents had taught him to employ in this situation simply didn’t help. He counted the grooves in the ceiling, crafting stories and legends for each strange shape. He thought about all he had seen and done that day, but nothing seemed to tire him.

He was worried about too much, anxious about too much. And the gnawing sensation in the pit of his stomach would not go away. Still he laid still for an hour or so, peering up at the ceiling and trying to slow him breathing, to trick his body into sleep, but at the end of that hour he was no closer to sleep.

Eventually he slid from the mattress, discarding the ragged blanket he had been given. He silently made his way to the door, tip toeing around the lumpy figures of his parents, knowing that if his mother caught him he’d be sent right back to the mattress under the window. Alexander didn’t have a specific goal, nor did he even particularly want to leave the room, but the boredom had been getting to him.

Giving his parents one last look he made his way into the building. Room after room he passed with similar scenes. Gathered families resting on flattened mattresses. Some still had their fires going, most did not. Not a soul stirred, the labour of the day before draining all in the apartment building of all they had. The faint sounds of human slumber met his ears as he descended downwards. Grumbling, grinding teeth, snoring, the chorus of a community at night. This deep in the halls of the building he couldn’t quite hear any of the bats outside. He could almost fool himself into believing only humans inhabited this place.

Eventually Alexander found another soul awake. The two had startled each other, one young form bumping into a much older one on a darkened stairway. Both let out gruff noises of discomfort, and both apologized before getting a good look at each other.

To the man, Alexander was an odd sight. A boy without an arm, and a free one at that, was an extreme rarity among the humans. Most people with an injury like that would have found themselves as a thrall, or as a meal. The off blue hospital gown that still hung to his frame only barely covered the long intricately wrapped bandages that wound their way along every wound. Up one scraped leg, around one plastered ankle, before crisscrossing his chest. It was a strangely imposing sight. The injured boy was evidently important to be kept alive and receive treatment like this, and the repeated apology seemed much more sincere the second time.

Alexander’s gaze found a slender elderly man. A scraggly white beard ran down to the middle of the man’s chest, obscuring many of the features on his wrinkled face. Brown eyes peered at the young boy ahead of him, once again worriedly apologizing for bumping into the child. The man’s clothing was ragged and untidy, a greasy t-shirt tight to a scrawny frame paired with cut up shorts that barely reached past the man’s knees. He was the oldest person Alexander had ever laid his eyes upon. Elderly were a rare sight in the wastes, the many years of hardship rarely left those weakened by the ravages of time alive.

“I’m so sorry,” the man grumbled once again, tugging nervously on his fingers as he bowed his head half an inch. He obviously didn’t know what to do with the child standing before him, and the look he got from the boy only heightened his nervousness.

Alexander’s gaze was stony and incredibly hard to read. The small bump he had received from the elderly man wasn’t the cause of his apparent anger. No it was the way he had immediately switched to cowering before him. Any respect drilled into Alexander for his elders immediately vanished upon seeing the man almost grovel below him.

The boy simply nodded at the apology, as if to say the man was forgiven, and began to move passed him. A bony hand hesitantly reached out to grip his shoulder, fingers much stronger than they should have been keeping him in place. The strength of the digits surprised Alexander as he slowly turned, meeting the gaze of the man once again.

The emotion in those eyes hardened slowly, the fear and subservience that had found their home there melting as the fury of the old over took the man. Alexander had been moving forwards, attempting to get to the lowest level of the apartment. He and the man had bumped into each other on the steps of the building, one heading into the basement, the other heading out of it. Alexander had just been meaning to explore the entirety of the building that was now his home, but the hand gripping his shoulder held in place.

“What do you think you are doing?” the man hissed, his warning tone holding traces of his older apologies. If it had been anybody else they would have already been sent packing. The only reason Alexander was receiving this warning was because the man didn’t know what to do with him. If it had been another boy of his age, they would have gotten a whack and been sent away the mere moment they had even looked towards the basement. Even taking a few steps towards them would have earned them a beating.

The grip on Alexander’s shoulder tightened again as the man’s eyes narrowed, sizing up Alexander as his mouth thinned to a line.

Alexander paused, once again the unfamiliar world he now found himself in leaving him at a loss. What was he doing? He was just exploring, checking out his surroundings. Even though the light of the building was low, it felt safe enough to do so. He couldn’t sleep, he was bored, and he saw nothing wrong with what he was doing. But the response he was getting from the man he had encountered surprised him.

“I was just exploring,” he answered innocently. It was the truth, and he saw no reason to hide his intentions.

“Against the rules,” the man grumbled, all at once losing the apologetic tone he had once held. He now glared at the boy with the suspicion he saved for all the other free children that lived in the building. They were all trouble makers, and though the boy was swaddled in bandages, he was probably no different. “Now git, before I’m forced to whack you,” the man said raising the cane by his side threateningly, the smoothed wood tapping against the plaster of Alexander’s cast.

Alexander had always been one for rules. For respecting the things that kept him alive. From the lessons his parents taught him, to the community he had been brought up in, following the rules meant you had a better chance at living. The things the adults in his community taught him were for his own good, and he truly believed that. It only took a few stories, and more than a handful of examples, for the lessons to be drilled into his mind.

You didn’t break many rules when you saw what happened to kids who did. When you saw their bloody remains, or the injuries they sustained.

But for the first time in his life, perhaps with all that had happened to him lately, the stress of it all weighing heavily at him, he bucked against those rules. Whereas normally Alexander would have heeded the warning of the man, the young teen instead grew angry. He grew rebellious towards the authority figure in front of him, and the change was swift in his demeanor. Alexander went from a curious child, to an angst ridden teen in a moment.

A reminding tap against his encased leg seemed to set him off, the angry growl he produced in response filled with all the emotions he had held deep within him all day. Though seeing his family had allowed him to retain control, that control seemed to shatter the moment the cane had lightly tapped him. Instantly the sensation threw him back into much more painful moments. Memories of sensations much worse than that, of hard claws and grasping fingers erupted in Alexander’s mind.

Raising his arm he shoved the old man roughly, causing the frail figure to stumble backwards half a step allowing Alexander to slip by.

The elderly man let out a surprised yelp, but found his balance quickly. He immediately took after the child, practiced feet taking step after step as he built up his pace. Alexander leaped the steps two at a time, feeling the strain on his injured ankle as he fought to outrun the now enraged man behind him. Swear words filled the air in between the two before bouncing off cold concrete.

The air around Alexander cooled measurably as he left the surface behind him and descended into the depths of the basement. He could hear the shambling footsteps behind him, but knew he didn’t have to run very far to make it to the next floor.

He stumbled into the dark hallway without much fanfare. With the reaction of the man behind him he was sure there was some grand secret down on this level. Some precious treasure that needed to be protected. Some person or family that needed special protection. Something to warrant the angry swear words echoing about the stairwell behind him.

Alexander was disappointed when he saw the hallway the stretched out before him. The empty concrete floor bare just like all the others above him. Nothing distinguished this floor from any of the ones above, save the decrease in temperature and ambient light. There were no windows leading outside on this floor, no flickering starlight. The only source of illumination came from a few dangling bundles of embers, tied to the wall in small little circular cages. The smoke they produced seemed to cling to everything, filling the air and spreading out along the floor.

The smoke curled against Alexander’s leg as he took a step forwards, shambling into the hallway and away from the still thumping footsteps behind him. He kept up his rapid pace moving deeper into the floor, only for a panicked yell to reach his ears.

Glancing backwards for only a moment he saw the face of the man he had shoved seconds ago, eyes wide and with his hands extended, calling the boy back to him. Gone was the anger, gone was the swear words. As soon as he had seen the boy deep in the hallway all that had dropped from him. The old man had resumed his pathetic state, adopting an almost begging tone to his voice as he called Alexander backwards.

Alexander turned back to the long hallway once again almost immediately. He ignore the plaintive cries behind him as he reached the first doorway on his path. Glancing inside he observed the picture before him with angry curiosity burning within him. He wanted to know why this damn floor was so important to the man, and why he had been stopped from going there so ineffectually.

The scene he saw made the boy freeze in horror. The eyes that turned to stare at him were of two kinds. The empty sets of the thralls, and the predatory gaze of those who fed upon them. The floor of the room was littered with luxurious pillows and sheets, the type that Alexander would never have been able to dream of. They looked so incredibly comfortable, and the blank eyed humans that relaxed upon them seemed to revel in their lush softness. To each thrall a bat was paired. Stretched out on pillows, or arranged in some strange standing manner, a dozen golden eyes turned to regard him.

Teeth stained with blood grew to strange grimaces as their meal was disturbed. Thralls with chunks of their flesh missing were dropped into bloody piles, only to stand a moment later and begin to tend to their wounds. The scars that littered their bodies showed just how much had been taken from them. One shirtless man had a large scar covering the bicep of one arm. Alexander wouldn’t have recognized the pattern if he had not seen a mirrored bite mark still fresh and bleeding on the other.

The strange language he had heard snippets of flickered in between sharp toothed mouth and flapping bat like ears as the creatures before him talked to one another. One made a shooing motion with one hand, as though that would be enough to free him from the terrified stupor that clung to his bones. Alexander could only stare as one of the bats shrugged, laughing in their strange tone, before sinking it’s fangs once again into the thrall beside it. Blood was slurped, flesh was chewed, and Alexander’s face grew paler by the moment.

It was only the strong hand that gripped his shoulder from behind that shook him back into reality. The old man regarded the boy with a knowing look, one horrific experience met with the eyes of someone who had seen worse, and slowly brought the boy back to the stairwell.

“Out, that’s the rule,” the man grumbled as he shunted the boy back upwards, pushing him away from the horrors below. Alexander nodded, once again understanding why a child should follow the rules as he made his way back up the steps. It was a long journey, and one that he took incredibly slowly.

Alexander played the scene back in his mind multiple times, hovering over every gory detail. As he crept into the ragged blanket and mattress that served as his bed, he knew sleep would not come any easier than it would have before his journey into the night. One detail kept creeping into his mind as he lay awake. It wasn’t the seamless way the razor like teeth had slid into human flesh. It wasn’t the entranced expression of both the bats and the thralls they fed upon. It was the simple fact that for a moment, for a second, before they had dropped their meals and began speaking to each other, the bats and that room had the same expression of the one he had met just the day before. Their cousin in the tunnels. The hunger. The joy. The enjoyment of another’s suffering, had once again been directed towards him.