"He's got to have written this down somewhere. Hopefully, he kept his research in this world." Isilya mumbles to herself as Levi and her search through the large building. Isilya had only been in a few of the rooms in the time that she's been there, so she had no idea what most of the rooms are. As they look, they find out that most of the rooms are bedrooms. There's a large kitchen connected to the main room, small rooms between each of the bedrooms that the guards used to check in on their customers, and a few small storage rooms.

Eventually, they find what appears to be a lab of sorts. Books and tools are scattered all over a long desk in the corner and on the floor. The walls are covered in diagrams of the portals and of the mechanical gloves that Clyde had designed. Notes are messily scribbled on sticky notes and stuck onto the diagrams. Pictures of places from both worlds hang above the desk.

Isilya walks around the room, taking in as much information as she can. She grabs an open journal from the desk and flips through the pages. She puts down the journal and picks up another one.

"Will you be able to figure it out from all of this?" Levi stays in the doorway, his eyes examining the room. He stares at Isilya as she flips through the journal in her hands.

"Probably. There's so much information here. It'll take me awhile to get through it all, but..." Isilya trails off, her nose buried in the book as she reads through a section of it. She looks up as Levi turns and leaves the room. She puts down the journal and runs to the doorway, stopping when she sees him walking back toward the stairs.

"Where are you going?" She stays just outside of the room, watching him get further and further away.

"None of your business." Levi doesn't bother looking at her as he continues to walk to the stairs. She watches him for another few seconds, then glances back at the lab. She considers letting him go without saying anything. Maybe he'll leave and she'll never see him again. Or maybe he'll come back and expect some sort of payment for his help. She's seen him in action. He's stronger than her and now he has her taser flashlight. Isilya curses herself for putting so much trust into this stranger so quickly. She was desperate, but did she make the wrong decision? She shudders at the thought. Either way, she knows that she can't go back on what she told him. He helped her get the kids back home like he said he would. Now it's her turn to do what she said she would. Unlike the men she's been stuck with for many months, she tries her best to be honest and true to her word.

"I thought you wanted answers. About the portals. About my world." Levi pauses at the bottom of the stairs, closing his eyes and letting out a breath. After a moment, he turns to meet her eyes.


Isilya and Levi search through the lab, skimming through books, journals, diagrams, and data. Isilya is surprised to see that most of what she looks through is in different languages. Not just one language, but many. Sometimes it seems like it switches mid-sentence. Levi slowly begins to lose interest, not being able to understand much of what he's reading. Isilya continues to look at everything, deciphering what she can. She eventually finds a book in a language that she recognizes more of than some others.

"I should've paid more attention in my High School Spanish class." She mutters to herself as she tries to recall what some of the familiar looking words mean.

Levi ends up sitting at the desk, staring at the pictures on the wall. They must be locations in Isilya's world. He stares at them and decides that they are not simple drawings. They're the same quality as the files they had found upstairs in Zak's office with the pictures of all of the kids. Levi considers asking Isilya how they are made but instead decides to ask her about what has really been bothering him. He realizes that Isilya hasn't seen much of the Underground, but she knows what kind of business happens down here. She knows what a lot of the people are like.

"Why did you stay behind?" He watches her as she continues to read through the book in her hands.

"I need to make sure that Zak hasn't been working with others who know about the portals. Others who might use them to do this to other people, other kids." Isilya's voice is quiet as she responds. She doesn't look up at him as she flips to the next page of the book. Levi considers her words for a few minutes.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" This causes Isilya to look up at him. She doesn't say anything for a few seconds, then she sighs. Placing the book on the bookshelf next to her, she turns to give him her full attention.

"I know that this world, specifically this Underground City, is bad. But, my world isn't great either." Isilya sighs as Levi narrows his eyes at her. She bites down on her bottom lip and stares at the floor.

"I know. It must seem like a paradise to you compared to this place. And there aren't any titans there, but..." Isilya blinks a few times and takes a deep breath in. She holds it for a few seconds before letting it go.

"But there are plenty of other monsters." She slowly looks up to meet Levi's gaze. He still seems skeptical.

"I have nothing to go back to, okay? Nobody in that world will miss me and I have nobody and nothing to miss. Besides, if I change my mind... Well, I'm planning on figuring out how to make and control the portals. I'll open a new one into my world, then." Isilya gets quieter and quieter as she speaks. She turns back to the book, opens it back up, and leans against the bookshelf.

Levi is silent for a few minutes as he considers her words. Then, he pulls something out of his pocket, walks over to her, and hands her a small, green bear. Isilya takes it from his hands and stares at it. She opens her mouth to speak but Levi cuts her off.

"Charlie gave it to me. He said you needed it more than he did." Isilya continues to look down at it, then eventually puts the bear in one of the larger pockets of the cloak. As Levi sits back down at the desk, Isilya continues reading through the book and quietly thanks him. He doesn't respond.

Over the next few hours, Levi begins to ask Isilya every question he can think of about her world. She answers everything to the best of her ability and silently wishes she had paid more attention in school. He asks about the words in the books and she gives him a brief explanation of different cultures and languages. He asks about the skyscrapers he saw in the portal. He asks about phones and the internet. Cars and planes. Computers and electricity. He listens to her tell him about what life is like without the titans. He barely believes her when she tells him that there isn't a shortage of food, although it is unevenly distributed and often wasted. There are many things he doesn't think he can believe, but after everything he's seen today, he doesn't think he has a good reason to doubt her.

Eventually, once Levi has gotten as much information as he thinks he can handle for one day, he stands up to leave. He looks around the room and at the organized piles of books that Isilya has created as she worked on answering his questions. He thinks about what Isilya had said earlier. It could be possible that Zak was working with other people, so others might know of this location. Even if that isn't true, there could still be past customers coming here expecting to see Zak and the others.

"You shouldn't stay here," Levi states, watching Isilya add another book to a tall pile. She picks up a book from another shelf and nods as if she's considering his words.

"I've decided to stay here." Isilya nods again to herself as she places the book on a shorter pile. Levi stares at her, unamused. She meets his eyes and they stare at one another, neither backing down. After a few seconds, Levi sighs and looks away, walking over to the door of the room. Isilya quickly takes his cloak off and hands it out to him. He stares at the black fabric in her arms and then at her. He shakes his head.

"Keep it. As a trade for the taser flashlight." Levi pulls the taser from his pocket to show her and then slides it back in. Isilya hesitantly nods and puts the cloak on again. She looks down as she fastens it and is surprised to see Levi still in the doorway when she looks up.

"If you're going to stay then we'll need to secure this place," Levi states, turning around and walking down the hall to get to work.


It's been a week since everyone left. Lillian put some food in a small cooler in her closet for Isilya. She also left some extra clothes and a laptop with a charger plugged into the wall. Isilya has been painstakingly translating the books and miscellaneous notes.

Lillian reached out to the police and they've been able to reunite most of the children with their parents. Some of them were harder to find or they lived in a different city or country so they took longer to contact and for them to get to the children.

When the police questioned everyone, they tried to be as honest as possible. Men had kidnapped them and kept them in a mostly underground facility. They were forced to do terrible things. Eventually, a stranger showed up and helped them escape. He helped them back to Lillian's apartment. Nobody knows where the man who saved them went. None of them remember where the building was, but they know that the men who kidnapped them all were killed. Some of the smaller kids try to tell the police about the magical portal, but none of the cops believe it or bother to look into it. They're too distracted trying to deal with the crying and screaming of the parents and the kids. Because of how busy this has made Lillian, Isilya hasn't seen her since she left. Instead, they leave one another notes in the dresser for the other to read when they have time.

Isilya hasn't seen Levi since then, either. Before he left, he had taken care of the bodies. She doesn't know where he put them or what he did with them. She didn't ask. He also helped her make a few escape tunnels from different ends on the building. He made the front door practically impossible to get in and out of. Nobody who knew what the building used to be used for would be able to bother Isilya.

With the tunnels, Isilya could easily go explore the Underground City. She considers it almost daily, but instead, she throws herself into research. It has been a slow process of translating the different languages. And it doesn't help that Lillian's internet is terribly slow.


Isilya sits at the long desk, slowly eating a pop-tart as she compares her notes with another journal that was mostly written in Spanish. Her eyes scan the same page for the third time. With a sigh, she puts down the journal and stares at the pictures above the desk. She recognizes some of them as different places in Los Angeles. Some of them are other, more widely known landmarks. The Eiffel Tower. The Leaning Tower of Pisa. The Venice Canals. The rest of the pictures are seemingly random areas that Isilya doesn't recognize. She finishes eating her pop-tart and picks up the journal again.

Isilya gets halfway through the page when she hears a noise coming from somewhere down the hall. Slowly, she puts the journal down on the desk and stands up, pulling a knife out from her boot as she does so. She silently walks over to the door of the lab, taking a deep breath and standing behind it. Flipping her hood over her head, she waits, straining to hear anything. Silence. Then, after a moment, footsteps. They getting louder, closer. They stop just outside of the door to the lab. Isilya forces herself to keep her breathing even as she drops into an offensive stance.

The doorknob turns. It swings open. Isilya's eyes widen when the person steps through the door. Levi glances down at the knife in her hand and rolls his eyes.

"Put the knife down, brat," Levi tells her. He walks over to the desk as Isilya relaxes. She lowers the knife and takes the hood away from her head. Levi looks up at her for a moment. She has her hair pulled back into a high ponytail. She's still wearing his cloak and another pair of black leggings. He looks down to read through her notes.

"You need to fix your hair." Isilya furrows her brow at Levi's words.

"Excuse you?" She crosses her arms and stares at him. He sits down in the chair and puts his feet up on the desk. She knows that his shoes are clean, and there wasn't anything on that side of the desk, so she bites her tongue to avoid saying anything.

"You said you people do that to yourselves. Can you undo it?" Levi finally looks up at her for more than a second. Isilya blinks. Then she laughs. Levi narrows his eyes slightly.

"I'm serious. It will draw too much attention." Levi states. Isilya calms down and nods.

"I know, but..." She trails off, reaching up to twirl her hair around her fingers. She had dyed her hair blue for years. When she was kidnapped, the men had brought her blue dye to maintain her hair. They also brought dye for everyone else they had kidnapped. They wanted their products to continue to be unique and strange in this world. The kids were in charge of dying their own hair. Though they were forced to keep it up, it had become something almost comforting to most of them. It was one of the only times they were sure to be left alone.

Because the men are no longer here, she won't be able to keep it blue. She could ask Lillian for some dye, but she knows that Lillian is already busy and that her hair is one of the least important things to worry about. But, as she stares down at the blue strands in her hand, she thinks of her little sister. She had been so excited when Isilya first dyed her hair. Since then, Isilya had maintained the color, even though her sister hasn't been around to see it for a long time. Isilya looks up at Levi and sighs.

"Kind of. It's a permanent dye. I can change the color by dying it again, but it will cost money. Or I could shave my head." Isilya absentmindedly continues to play with her hair as she speaks. Levi looks up at the part of her head that has already been shaved. The scars on her scalp stand at attention in their neat rows. He pulls his eyes away from them when Isilya continues to talk.

"My hair is naturally brown. It will grow back out into that color, eventually." Isilya looks away from her hair to meet Levi's eyes. They stare at one another for a while before he looks away with a grunt of defeat. After a moment, he stands up and stares at her. She tilts her head to the side and raises an eyebrow. Without warning, Levi advances towards Isilya. Her eyes widen at his speed and at the deadly look on his face. It reminds her of how he advanced on some of the kidnappers. Instinctively, she raises her knife and drops into a defensive stance.