Fingers search, skin scraping as they move across the surface of the rock wall. There! Her fingers grip the tiny crevice, and muscles give sullen feedback as she pulls herself up and searches for another place to hold on. The straps of her pack dig into her shoulders. Looking up, she sees the air above her is paler. She can actually make out the grey shape of the hand in front of her face.

Almost there.

With a final scramble she hauls her body up over the edge and onto flat stone. Lying on her stomach, she listens. Distantly she can hear Them . . .

She gets slowly to her feet, quiet as anything. Creep forward through the tunnel; pause in the spot where it opens up into the outside. The surface.

Reaching again, she pulls herself up out of the ground. It's freezing. Rapidly cooling sweat makes her shiver, but that will make her heat less noticeable to them. Their sounds are louder now; the clunking and sucking of their claws clamping onto pods and plucking them like ripe grapes.

Straightening slowly, her eyes take in the sight she will never get used to.

Fields. Endless fields. Rows upon rows of stalks, a half dozen pods on each one. Cables and wires run between the plants, connecting the braches of the vine. They move over the human crop, long arms reaching out to gather the harvest. A memorised quote comes to her mind;

"I am the real vine and my Father is the gardener. He breaks off every branch that does not bear fruit, and He prunes each branch that does bear fruit, so that it will be clean and bear more fruit."

Their searchlights scan over the ground, sweeping near her but not near enough for danger. The ground here is too rocky for anything to take root and grow.

Fingers curl into useless fists.

She turns her head to look behind her. She can see the glow of the power plant closer to the horizon, see its towers rising like those of a perverse fairytale; the Ivory Tower, the Emerald City.

Otherwise known as Hell.

She has been forbidden to go there. In the plant itself it is less dangerous than the fields, but the journey there is more or less suicide. There is no shelter, no way to dive under the surface like a rabbit if one of Them comes near.

So why is she going there?

Because she has to see the towers for herself. She has to . . . know.

Adjusting the straps of her backpack, Nuala sets out for the horizon.

(For interest's sake, the bible quote is from John 15:1-2)