Lisa

We fought hard to no avail. Our assailants took us by surprise and acted fast; they placed the hoods over our heads, wrestled us to the ground and bound our hands and feet all in a matter of a few seconds. One of the others screamed, I think it was Cathy. She was quickly silenced by one of them menacingly saying ‘Quiet!’ They hoisted us up on their shoulders and carried us off at great speed further down the tyre tracks in the direction that we’d been walking. None of us fought back or said anything. Fear, like we’d never felt before, pulsed through us and made us numb. We were taken and loaded into a vehicle, a truck, most likely; I heard steel being slammed shut and clasped behind us. They had entered the vehicle with us and were right next to us; I could hear their breathing and could feel the tip of one of their shoes periodically nudging into me when we hit a bump. They never said a word for the entire duration of the trip, which was actually more frightening than if they had been talking. We certainly didn’t say anything; not knowing who these people were or what they wanted with us we couldn’t take the risk of doing anything that might anger them. Once the initial panic had passed and I’d resigned myself to us being at the mercy of these people all I could think about was how foolish we’d been not to have turned around and gone back to the cabin when we’d first discovered the tyre tracks. Hannah had been a fool to have thought that there wouldn’t be any danger up ahead and the rest of us had been fools to have kept going with her. Of course there was something untoward going on! Why else would they go to such extremes to keep it all concealed?

The vehicle we were in—which I was now convinced was a truck—trundled along without stopping. I was hoping that we were being driven out of the forest and would be returned to the outside world. Logic told me this was not the case. Whoever it was that we’d been captured by wouldn’t take the chance of giving us the opportunity to talk about what was in the forest. We were being taken further into the forest, by the people who were helping Prospera keep its existence a secret. We were prisoners, on our way to some form of captivity or worse. Execution was a definite possibility. Not for a second did I have any faith in Hannah’s theory about the children that died suspiciously in Prospera being secreted out of the village and deposited in the outside world. Prospera wouldn’t leave so much to chance when knowledge of its existence was at stake; our capture was proof of that. My only real concern was for Miranda. I didn’t care about anything happening to us but I couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to her, she was too special and I loved her too much. I was already feeling terrible because I was powerless to stop any such thing from happening. I should have insisted that the two of us turn around earlier, were anything to happen to her I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.

The drive we took in the truck was long, I had no way of knowing how long but it was in the territory of an hour. When we stopped they pulled us out of the truck and hoisted us over their shoulders again. We were carried along what sounded like a gravel road that after a short time gave way to metal steps that we descended. We were placed on our feet and instructed to remain perfectly still. The restraints on our wrists and ankles were cut and we heard steel slamming behind us.

“You can remove your hoods now,” a voice said.

We were in a cell; a dark, uncomfortable cell deep underground. On the other side of the bars of our cell door were three men, all wearing military uniforms with the American flag emblazoned on the left hand side of their chests, under which patches with their name and rank were stitched. The soldier that was front and centre was Lt.Col Raymond, a middle aged white man with grey hair. To his left was Sgt Wilcox, a young black man, and to his right was Sgt Barry, a young white man with black hair. Sgt Wilcox and Sgt Barry stood with their legs apart and their arms behind their backs which were perfectly erect. They were the real thing, of that there was no doubt.

“From now on you are our prisoners; you will do what we tell you to do, how we tell you to do it and when we tell you to do it. Get used to your new accommodations; we’ll be calling on you soon,” Lt.Sgt Raymond said to us before they all walked off.

The cell we were in was like a cave, black rock on all sides with metal bars keeping us in. There were four of us in the cell, the girls; Kevin had been taken elsewhere. The first thing I did was to grab Miranda and hug her. For now at least we were safe, my fear about execution had not materialized and it didn’t look like it was going to. Survival was the only thing that mattered. Their intention was to make use of us, we had to remain useful to them and not give them reason to think of us as disposable.

“We have to do whatever they say; no matter what we can’t give them a reason to kill us because they will, that is the most important thing that we need to focus on,” I said to the others.

“What are American troops doing here? Does it have something to do with the surrender?” Cathy asked.

“They’ve obviously been here a lot longer than that,” I said to her.

“Are they the ones that have been helping to keep Prospera a secret?” Miranda asked.

“That’s what it looks like,” Hannah said, “The question is what are the Americans getting in return; what are they doing here?”

“We’re going to find out soon, it looks like they’ve brought us here to be their slaves,” I said.

Sounds reverberated through the caverns of our prison that portended hard times ahead for us. From the sounds of it what they were doing in these caves required a lot of very hard work. Somehow we had to figure out a way to protect Miranda. Hard work was not her strength and we couldn’t allow them to think of her as not being useful enough.

The ultimate truth about Prospera, that Hannah was determined to discover, could only be something horrible if it involved the Americans, which made our decision to embark on this trip even more stupid in retrospect. The situation that we found ourselves in was all Hannah’s fault and from the look of her she knew it. There were four bunks suspended by chains that were bolted to the walls of our cell; she was sitting on one of the bottom bunks with her face in her hands, coming to grips with the guilt that she was feeling for getting all of us into this mess from which escape looked impossible. The reality that it was entirely possible that we would never experience freedom again started to weigh on us as we came round to accepting our circumstances. We could be spending the rest of our lives in this dark cell that had nothing in it but four bunks suspended from the walls by chains and a toilet that offered no privacy. As the thought of that sank in, Cathy, Miranda and I fell into deep despair, chastising ourselves for our stupidity not to have abandoned the journey upon seeing the tyre tracks.