How long had passed, Zeel was unaware, but he knew it should be a relatively short amount of time…

But relatively short by Homo-Superior standards would not hold true for a Human like Caroline…

She stood next to Zeel, a dagger in her hand, contemplating whether she should end his life here and now…

Compared to previously, she was not only thinner and much dirtier, but her eyes now had the hardened look of a warrior instead of a Spy…

As if sensing what Caroline had decided, Zeel's eyes snapped open "You don't need to do that anymore…"

Caroline's body froze, and then a sigh of relief escaped her lips as she slumped to the ground in exhaustion…

"How long have you been awake?" She asked, a bit of blame in her tone…

It was almost as if Zeel's waited until she was on the brink before he intervened…

"I woke up yesterday, but I wanted to see what you would do…" Zeel admitted, hopping to his feet and scanning the chamber with his eyes "How long has it been?"

The mold on the walls told Zeel the amount of time that had passed, but of course, he needed more confirmation…

"About two months…" Caroline whispered, shaking her body back and forth as she thought about how hard the last two months had been "I couldn't find a way out, so I decided to explore without you…"

"Logical choice…" Zeel nodded, checking that the Quantum Armband was still on his person "Even if you found a way out, I didn't take you for someone to abandon a friend…"

"Is that what we are?"

"If we weren't…" Zeel sunk to his knees, eye level with Caroline "What makes you think you would still be alive… do I look that generous?"

The slitted pupil in Zeel's ruby-red eyes glowed ominously…

"You don't look generous but I know you're bullshitting me even now…" Caroline replied, never once backing down from Zeel's deadly stare "From the beginning, you knew we were trapped underground and you also knew there was no way out…"

Zeel's eyes flashed, but he responded with a carefree smile "What makes you think I knew that?"

"Because you could have escaped from the beginning, but you didn't…" Caroline smiled sadly, thinking about the training she received in the CIA "From experience, I know the only men who don't escape immediately are those who don't have anywhere to go…"

"You are smarter than I give you credit for…" Zeel was ridiculed, but in his mind, it was a compliment "I was not planning to escape when I killed everyone… I was using my voice to emit an electromagnetic field so dense it would irradiate the walls of these underground structures…"

"What does that mean?" Caroline inquired, confused…

"My voice created an upsurge of Electromagnetic waves within the 200 – 3000 nm range… just strong enough to embed radiation in the walls for as far as the sound traveled… then I can map the irradiated walls using my Quantum Armband…"

"So, you created a map?"

"I created a part of a map…" Zeel clarified…

Caroline frowned, smacking the ground hard in frustration "A part? As in not all of it? Then, how far down are we?"

"I don't know…" Zeel admitted, "My voice traveled for ten miles and that was not enough to cover the entire Underground Structure, much less tell me how deep we are…"

"But you knew this from the start!" Caroline yelled, "You knew it was hopeless from the start… why did you need to give us hope?"

"Us?" Zeel rolled his eyes exasperated, glancing around mockingly to see if anyone else was nearby "In case you didn't notice… you're the only one still alive, so how about you be grateful for my kindness…"

"But you knew!" Caroline argued, but her argument was weaker this time…

"It is one thing to know and another thing to confirm…" Zeel taught sagely, the same way he would explain things to Alice "I knew my wife would leave me someday, I just didn't think it would be willingly – I always thought I was going to kill her…"

Caroline sighed, once again glancing at the dagger in her hand…

"But there is some good news…" Zeel said, walking along the walls like an inspector…

"What good news?"

"Well… for one…" Zeel tapped the walls until he found a hollow spot; then, with a single punch, he uncovered a hidden chamber on the other side "I found the armory…"

Caroline peeked inside and could see weapons galore, but it was almost entirely made up of old rifles used in World War II…

"You said some good news so I assume there is more?"

"Well… this is good news for you, not me…" Zeel clarified, walking into the armory with Caroline behind him "In two months, there will be three baseball games happening simultaneously in the US… and all of those games will go boom…"

"Ho- How?" Caroline froze and started to stutter…

"One will be bombed by Zeppelin… another by a bank truck bringing the celebrity that will throw the first pitch… and the last…" Zeel turned to look Caroline in the eyes "By two kids, no older than ten-years-old, but as efficient and as ruthless as they come… and should those attempts fail – there are failsafe implanted inside your government…"

"No… I – I – I mean…" Caroline stuttered and took a deep breath to steady her mind "I mean, how do you know this?"

"I know this because while we were in the chamber filled with corpses, a few of them whispered the information to me…" Zeel said, picking a rifle from the pile to examine it "They whispered a lot of things into my ear but nothing else seemed relevant…"

"You just keep amazing me…" Caroline laughed slightly but groaned the next second when a familiar pain ran through her body, and her eyes drifted to the dagger once more…

Zeel sighed and blurred from his spot…

The next moment, Caroline found herself pinned to the wall…

"What are you doing?!" She yelled angrily, her mind jumping to the most logical conclusion "I should never have trusted you!"

Unbothered by her tears and angry screams, Zeel licked the fingers of his left hand and carefully slid his hand down Caroline's exposed stomach…

His hand continued into her baggie pants, and through the fabric of her dirty panties until his fingers greeted the crevice between her legs…

"Be calm!" Zeel warned as he pinned Caroline against the wall, careful not to cause any more damage than the previous two months had done…

At this point, her eyes had gone lifeless, but there was a burning darkness of revenge swirling within, something Zeel had also noticed in Lara's eyes at that time…

But this was different – he was different…

Zeel applied the spittle on his fingers to the walls of Caroline's vagina, and as soon as the deed was finished, he withdrew his hand and continued to sort the rifles like nothing happened…

Caroline slumped to the ground with a lifeless look, but as seconds turned to minutes, she slowly realized that the pain between her legs had subsided entirely…

"What did you do?" She questioned, rising to her feet, feeling the best she had been in a while…

"I didn't heal you with my spittle…" Zeel corrected whatever fantasy was in Caroline's mind "My spittle will hasten your natural heading but the human body was never made to heal vaginal cancer on its own… so the best I can do is stop the further infection and prevent from dying too quickly… if you can get to a hospital in a couple of weeks, then you should be able to survive…"

"What are my chances, Doc?" Caroline jokingly asked, trying to forget all about the previous violation…

Zeel was about to answer the precise fourteen percent his mind had calculated, but at the last second, he felt the need to say something different – something more human…

"You're going to be just fine…" He replied, the words flowing so naturally out of his mouth that Zeel even surprised himself…

It was surprising because Zeel knew he didn't mean to lie… he was simply seeking to comfort a broken girl who reminded him of someone he loved – Elizabeth…