A hallway. Another damn white hallway, just like the ones she had walked endlessly behind an escort for the past three months: that's what was beyond the caution sign.

Erin didn't know what she had expected once she entered the pokemon holding quarters, but she didn't think it was going to be more bland hallways. It was almost blinding, the way the light reflected off the endless sea of white.

There was no one in sight and no other doors to enter in her immediate vicinity, so Erin wasn't quite certain as how to begin. In movies she had seen, there were always signs with arrows telling the reader what led in what direction. Erin assumed that anyone who should have been there would know where to go. She should not, and did not.

So she turned right and began walking. When she reached the end of that path, she turned right again. After a few more bending turns in that awful white hallway, Erin turned into a more promising area. Here, there were two doors, though on opposite walls. One had a sign that read Janitor's Closet, and the other said Dark Room.

"What, Turner can't even go into town to get his pictures developed?" Erin said out loud in a moment of absentmindedness. She immediately cringed at her own voice and listened for the footsteps she was sure would be headed her way. Thankfully, there was nothing.

Continuing down the corridor however, her ears picked up the clip-clop of a guard's shoes as he made his rounds.

'Crap!' thought Erin, and she dashed silently back the way she had come. She needed a place to hide, and fast!

The rooms! Erin reached into her pocket and produced the key-card she had taken from one of the fallen scientists earlier and thanked the gods for her sudden thought to do so. She reached for the janitor's closet and then thought the better of it, reaching instead for the dark room. If it was a janitor coming her way instead of a guard, then she'd have to knock him out as well, and Erin didn't need a body trail. She would hide in the dark room until she thought it was safe to come out and resume her search.

But the second she stepped inside the room's boundaries she was certain that the room had been mislabeled. This room was anything but dark! A blinding light struck her eyes and bored through her eyelids. Even covering her eyes with her hands did Erin no good; the light came from everywhere! Then she noticed the voices…

"Get out!"

"Filthy human, we won't succumb to your trickery!"

"I'll rip the flesh from your bones!"

Erin was at a loss. Using her arms as a barricade for her eyes did not allow vision, but at least it was less painful than nothing. She could not find the card slot without the use of her hands but she needed her hands to keep from going blind. She backed up against the door and cringed, but still she could not escape from the radiance, and now those bodiless voices were in her head as well. Where was she!

But then she heard another voice. This voice sounded so weak, but gave the impression that it had once been strong. It struggled to make itself heard above the ruckus that the others made collectively.

"To your left! Search to your left!" is what this voice called out.

Not knowing what else to do, believing herself doomed otherwise, Erin reached out blindly with one arm and felt the air to her left. Only, when she reached out farther, she no longer hit only air, but a number of solid somethings hanging from the wall next to the door. She picked one up, felt it, and… what the… Goggles? Erin awkwardly strapped one around her face and the world seemed to go black. Tentatively she opened her eyes, expecting this to be a trick.

Erin gasped at what she saw. Light bulbs were stationed in every surface in the room. Not only did illumination come from the ceiling, as usual, but from the floor, the walls, and even in the tables, allowing for no shadows in the room whatsoever.

The goggles, such as the one Erin was wearing, acted as sunglasses. The area between the lenses and her eyes harbored no shadow either, but simply dimmed the light, allowing for vision.

The reason that Erin gasped, however, was the reason so much light was needed in this room. It wasn't called the dark room because the room itself was dark, but because it concealed dark type pokemon! All around her were poochyena, murkrow, sneasel, and every other kind of dark pokemon imaginable, all weak from the lack of darkness. Without shadows to manipulate, their ability was building up in their system like a toxin.

They were still screaming at her, but there was that one voice that knew her, that screamed her name rather than obscenities.

"Chasm!" cried Erin, running toward the caged umbreon in elation. "Chasm, are you alright? They didn't hurt you, did they?" Even as she said it, Erin had her answer. She knew that the scientists would not have been able to lay a hand on Chasm, but that didn't mean that she couldn't get injured in other ways.

The cages that had her and the other dark pokemon trapped were state of the art, just like everything else at the Agency. The bars were fused with lasers, so that they were a form of light as well. The pokemon would not be able to scratch their way through a prison made of photons. Chasm had wounds on her shoulders and one on the right side of her face that had not been there three months ago. Erin guessed that she had tried to push her way through the bars or attack the scientists on the other side and the solid form of light had burned her. Erin winced as she thought of the pain that had been inflicted on the stubborn umbreon.

"I'm fine," Chasm insisted. After a hesitant pause she continued, "I knew you would come for me, that I did. You have too a strong a spirit to be taken down so easily. I feared it might have taken numerous years before you learned of my location, but I did not doubt your arrival."

Erin was moved by Chasm's sudden display of emotion, but she had no time for heart-felt meetings at that time. Just then, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end as the room became eerily silent.

Erin glanced around, barely daring to breathe. All the pokemon were staring at her intently with wide eyes, barely breathing themselves.

"Are you here to help us?" asked the murkrow in the cage next to Chasm's.

"I- well- technically, I just came to rescue Chasm, but of course I will set all of you free if you want," she answered. They all began to yell and scream again. "Hey!" yelled Erin, "What I am attempting is an extremely delicate situation, and if you compromise that secrecy than I will not allow you to come." She wanted to assist them, but her first priority was her own pokemon.

They fell silent.

"Don't bother with big words," interrupted Chasm. "Most of these are lab-bred and won't be able to understand. They cause such a disturbance because no one likes being held against their will."

Erin nodded in understanding. "Now listen," she began. "I am here to rescue my friends. This means I have to be quiet. If I let you out of your cages, you have to be quiet as well. When I let you out, you can't make any noise. Does everybody understand?" All the prisoners gave their consent. "By the way, Chasm, how do I let everybody out?"

The umbreon turned her head to the far wall. "There is a switchboard in that corner that controls every cage."

Erin was already on her way over before Chasm even finished her sentence. She took one look at the mechanism and knew that each switch on its surface corresponded to each cage. To test it out, she flipped the control for Chasm's cage, and the bars of light instantly ceased functioning. Chasm leaped out and Erin flipped the switches for all the other cages harboring pokemon.

They were all elated and stretched their tired legs with a smile. Not many people live to see a dark type smile, and certainly not so many at once.

"All right!" cried Erin, catching their attention. "If I'm going to break you out of here, we're going to have to do this right." She pointed toward the door. "Once you pass that doorway, there can be no talking; everyone must be absolutely silent. No one makes any rash decisions or runs off without me telling them to. Okay?"

"Not all of us here are idiots." It was a sneasel who has spoken, and it didn't appear to appreciate being treated as if it were a toddler. Erin had been talking to them as such because that is what the students at an academy were told to do. The lab-bred pokemon did not have as much intelligence as the wild pokemon because of the years of cloning, so sometimes talking slower was the easiest way to communicate.

"I trust you to make your own decisions," Erin told the sneasel under her breath. "But many of these others would never survive on their own, and if I don't command them then they'll give us away and none of us will be able to escape."

The sneasel still seemed unsure, but then it glanced at Chasm, who gave a nod, and then it appeared content for the time being. "Very well."

Erin walked over toward the door and listened intently for any noise coming from the other side. She instantly felt foolish, because every room was insulated enough so that someone would literally have to crash through a wall for anyone outside to hear within. She reminded the pokemon once more that they had to be completely silent and then swiped the key-card. Her quest had begun anew, only this time it was more dangerous.

For the most part the dark types followed her directions well. Occasionally she would have to remind them to stay behind her and not wander off, but they kept their voices down. She assumed they followed that order so well because dark type pokemon didn't usually talk at all unless they were insulting another or screaming threats. Neither seemed appropriate at this time.

"Lady! Hey lady!"

Erin turned her head to address the young umbreon who had whispered, though it was a loud whisper, to catch her attention. He was standing in the middle of a hallway that the rest of the group had just turned out of. He was pointing at something that was beyond Erin's current point of view. "What is it?" she whispered back.

"There's someone there."

Erin's heart stopped cold in her chest. "Wha- what do you mean?" she managed to say.

"Hey!" came a voice, undeniably human. "Who's there?"

"Shit!" called Erin. "Everybody run!" She took her own advice and turned around in a full-out sprint in the opposite direction.

It was over. She knew that now. Everything was all over. She had been a fool to think that she could break out of there: a facility where everything was state-of-the-art. She should know that: she was being trained to be a state-of-the-art agent. In the future, Erin would probably have headed up assassin missions, where no one would have been able to cross her and live. She was a complete and utter fool. Now she would die.

"Hold it!" came the voice from behind.

"Don't hold it; keep running!" She couldn't think of anything else for them to do. It was all hopeless. None of them would ever see the light of day again, unless it was to steal or kill or ruin someone else's life, so she told them to run. This was the last order they would ever hear from her. She leaned to her left to turn a corner.

BAM!

Erin skidded to a stop and looked behind her. Her face drained of all its blood. Chasm! No, she realized, not Chasm, who was standing next to her, but another umbreon: the one who had first alerted them to the guard. He was lying in a pool of blood. The guard had shot him, and he was already dead.

Erin's eye twitched.

Chasm bumped her head up against Erin's knee, urging her on. "Come on, Erin. We need to run if we are to survive. I am weak and injured and will not be able to properly protect you."

Erin didn't move, but kept staring at the small umbreon. He was too young to have evolved from an eevee on his own, Erin realized. Most likely he had been experimented on and forced to evolve against his will. And now he was dead. These people had made his life a living hell, and now he was dead.

A second later the guard turned the corner in pursuit, and Erin snapped. She was standing two feet away from him with her hands resting limply at her side, but her reaction time was greater than most the agents working for Turner. Before the guard could point the gun at her to get in a shot, Erin's Bo staff had already lengthened and slammed into his stomach.

She kicked out with her right leg and knocked the gun from his hand and then slammed the staff upside his head and he was blown into the wall. But she didn't stop there. The man was already unconscious but Erin kept hitting him and kept hitting him. In her blind rage she wasn't able to tell if she was even making contact but she couldn't stop herself. All her rage and anger of the past three months were being let loose in this moment of chaos.

Suddenly Erin found herself unable to move. She struggled for a good thirty seconds before she noticed that Chasm was talking to her. Actually, Chasm was screaming at her.

"Erin! Erin stop it; you'll kill him! He's not moving and he won't come after us. Leave him alone!"

Erin calmed down enough to look around her. A darkness was draped around her body, except for her head. Chasm had trapped her in a force field that inhibited movement. The guard who had shot the young umbreon was immobile on the ground. There was blood. Erin's breathing slowed and she realized that her cheeks were wet. She had been crying. For the first time in three months, Erin had cried.

"I'm alright now Chasm, let's keep going."

All the other pokemon had now fled and their time was growing shorter. Erin wiped her eyes and continued down the hallway, in the opposite direction of the guard.

Then a thought hit her. Chasm had stopped her. When they first met, Chasm had attempted to kill her and even Abadon for associating with her. Chasm had killed a number of humans in her time, but she had just kept Erin from doing the same. Perhaps a part of Erin's earlier teaching had rubbed off. She needed those reminders now.

There! Down the hall was another door. When Erin reached it she read the sign next to it: Holding Block Prison Cell 4.

"If there's a prisoner in there, then we should help them, right?" Erin asked Chasm.

"Yes," answered the umbreon without hesitation. "They will most likely assist us in our escape, that they will." Before Erin could consent, the door became enshrouded in a dark mass and was then ripped off its hinges and thrown down the hallway. The suppression of her dark ability from being surrounded by so much light had apparently worn off.

"I did not mean to apply such force, but I am unused to using my abilities, that I am. Though, since our secrecy has already been blown by the numerous dark types running around, I don't suppose it matters much."

Erin looked within the room and gasped at her luck. Chained to the wall with its arms outstretched in either direction was the scyther she had met upon awakening at the Agency. "Khyt!" she called out.

The scyther was already looking in her direction, since his door had just seemingly disappeared, but only now recognized the agent standing in the doorway. "Erin, is that you? Why are you here?"

She ran up to him. "We're making a break for it and I'm finding my friends so I can leave. Chasm!"

Chasm understood her job and, in the same manner she disposed of the door, Khythas' limbs were stripped of their chains.

"Let's go!" cried Erin.

When the group turned to leave another guard was standing in the doorway, speaking into an earpiece. "Roger that. They're in the prison cell area. Repeat- oof!" Chasm, the swiftest of the group even in her weakened state, delivered a speedy body slam to the man's stomach, sending him into the opposite wall, unconscious. But now more guards would come.

"We have to hurry!" she cried, not missing a beat after her attack.

"No argument here," agreed the aged scyther. "But I'm not leaving without Nero!"

"Neither are we!" called Erin. "Don't worry."

The group continued to run, but Khyt, who had not been able to move at all for the past few months, was having a harder time keeping up.

"Another guard!" warned Chasm, hearing footsteps coming their way. "Two of them!"

"Another door!" was Erin's answer. "Hide in there!"

Chasm stripped the door off the wall just as she had the last.

"Okay, no hiding after all," said Erin. "Maybe we can distract them long enough to get away."

The sign to the side read: Greenhouse B. Erin didn't need to guess the type of the pokemon within. They were grass type, though by looking at the caged pokemon, it was hard to tell. There was little to no green, as one would expect.

The heater inside the room had been on way too long, and it was drying out their abilities and their appearance, though this was most likely the intention. Without fertile plants, a grass type would be able to do little. One treecko was in such bad shape that she had even grown rough, rocky sores on parts of her body. These pokemon, like the dark types, began to yell and scream obscenities at Erin upon her entrance.

"Quiet!" she yelled back, not caring who heard. "I'm here to break you out! Chasm, Khyt, get rid of their bars!"

Her two companions began to do just that: Chasm ripped open cages and tore off chains using her ability to control the darkness and Khyt slashed the bars apart with his massive scythes. When the pokemon were freed, they ran for the opening and soon a stampede had formed. Erin heard shots fired outside and cringed, but those were soon silenced. More than likely, the guards had been trampled by the hoard.

Everyone was frantic. There was no longer any order to anything, as Erin had intended when she began. Their cover was blown and guards with guns were chasing them. None of the pokemon she had freed had bothered to thank her, let alone do anything other than go on a frenzied rampage. They had all been cooped up for so long, probably longer than she had been there, that the thought of sudden freedom being thrown in their faces was too much to take in all at once. Thus the stampede.

"Keep going," said Erin, less enthused than before.

They traveled along the trail that the others had taken. It wasn't hard to follow. Not only could they still hear them, but some of the larger ones had run into the walls, cracking them and breaking the plaster, and occasionally another dead pokemon, trampled by the others or shot by a guard.

The group stopped once to free the inhabitants of Greenhouse A, who were sane enough to attempt order in their escape, which lasted only until they were surrounded by a group of eight guards. Here they saw the treecko with the sores again as well. Erin knocked out two with her staff, Khyt managed to delay one long enough for Chasm to attack, and the rest were taken down by the newly-freed grass types.

But Erin faltered when she saw the treecko fight. It used ground type attacks! It was a duel type, Erin realized. Those rocky sores weren't sores at all, but a ricky growth found on most ground types, like the black markings on Abadon's back. Though they were all dehydrated, Erin noticed that the treecko was able to fight harder than the rest. It proved Chasm's hypothesis that the dues types were quite possibly the next stage of pokemon evolution.

And they kept running. Occasionally they ran across one of the pokemon they had freed, but none followed them.

Eventually they traveled into a larger area with a door at the other end. With no better option, they entered.

"Good gods, what is this place?" Erin spoke under her breath.

When the three of them entered, the previously darkened room lit up to reveal an enormous space. Against one wall lay shelves and shelves that were lined with pokeballs. The opposite wall harbored a massive computer with an equally massive screen.

Erin eyed the pokeballs, thinking that Celeste could be in one of them, but it would take ages to look though all of them, and some of the pokemon inside could be hostile. The computer on the other hand, might be able to tell her what pokemon lay in what balls.

But when she attempted any action, the computer ordered a password be entered, and Erin didn't have the slightest clue as to what it might be.

"Great," she said, kicking its front and feeling defeated. "I don't suppose either of you is a computer hacker."

"Actually," said Chasm, "I might be of some use in this situation, that I might."

"How so?" asked Erin hastily.

" Dark energy will most likely interfere with the electrical current in the computer. I won't be able to direct anything as an experienced electric type might, but I should be able to cause enough confusion within the system that it will skip a step or two, including the password registration."

"Do it!" cried Erin, not willing to waste any more time.

Chasm closed her eyes and concentrated. The light in the room around the computer seemed to eerily darken and the air grew cooler. But suddenly the computer screen blipped and they were into the mainframe.

"Chasm! You're amazing!"

Chasm smirked in reply, though Erin knew she was not being haughty.

While Erin searched the database for any clues as to a map of the facility or which pokeballs held which pokemon, she introduced her two friends.

"Chasm, the scyther is Khyt. You remember Nero yelling about a kite when he flew off? That's who he was talking about. Khythas, is Nero's Guardian because Nero's blind. Khyt, this is Chasm, who you heard about from Nero, no doubt. Ah ha!" She had found something.

Before her was a list of the pokemon on the shelves, ordered by rows and columns. It appeared as if all of these pokemon were large: too large to be held in regular cages. She searched until she found the milotic, but her joy was short lived. There were at least ten of them and, large as the room was, it wasn't large enough to hold a milotic. If Erin opened up a pokeball to see if it held Celeste, they would all be crushed.

"Try clicking on it," suggested Khyt. When given a speculative look he said, "I do know something of human life."

Erin shrugged and did as he requested. Bingo. A short biography appeared beside the one she clicked on. It was nothing useful, only saying how one of the agents had raised it and then returned it later. She clicked on the next one, and the next one, neither of which were hers. Erin tried the forth in line. It read: taken from agent Erin upon her capture at the Pokecenter in Lilnith City.

"Score!" cried Erin happily. She ran to retrieve the ball in the designated spot on the shelf.

"Erin," said Khyt. "It looks as if you can click on your name as well."

In the description of Celeste, Erin's name was underlined, as some words were on the Internet when more information on the subject was available. She clicked on it out of curiosity.

Captured at the Pokecenter in Lilnith in hopes of forming her to be an agent for the Agency. Requested by Gym Leader Claire of Lilnith City.

This was the first Erin had heard of Claire's interference with her life. The word "agency" and Claire's name were underlined as well. Furious, Erin clicked on "Claire."

Former Gym Leader to Lilnith City Gym. Former underground informationist for the Agency during War Time. Position was compromised shortly after last agent request was made, and is now in the custody of Federal Agents.

War Time? What the heck was that? She clicked that as well.

"Oh… gods…"

"Erin!" called Chasm quietly, though requiring immediate attention. She was near the door the group had first entered with one of her large ears near the floor. "They're coming!"

"Okay," Erin replied as she backed out of the summaries. She still needed to find a map. "How long do we have?"

"A minute; no more than that."

Erin hastily pointed and clicked on anything that seemed like it would be remotely helpful in locating a map of the Agency, with an occasional "Try there," and "Click that," from Khyt. After half of their minute was up, they struck gold.

"Alright," she said after the map enlarged to encompass the entire screen. "We're here, so out would be… that way." She was pointing to one of the only two other doors in the room. "But we still don't know where Abadon and Nero are!"

"What're those?" asked Khyt, pointing with a scythed arm at the two black squares on the map that read "Classified." One of the squares was behind them, through the third door in the room by the shelves of pokeballs.

Erin almost discarded them, but then thought the better of it. Abadon would probably be considered classified. "Chasm," she asked. "Can you make the computer skip again and show what's in those classified boxes?"

"I'll do my best." Once more, the room grew cold and dark, but just as fast as it happened, everything was back to normal and new information was available to them, Chasm's trick having worked again.

Erin first chose the closest one, the one that was in the room behind them, and a description much like the others showed up on the screen. When she tried to speak, Erin couldn't get her words out right. "It… oh gods… it's Nero!"

As one, all three of their heads turned and then they ran toward the door. Khyt slashed a giant "X" in the middle of the door and Chasm delivered a body slam to the center, knocking it apart.

"Nero!" screamed Erin, rushing into the room, closely followed by her two pokemon companions. Erin screeched to a sudden halt at the sight of the mechanism in the middle of the room, and Khyt almost knocked her over attempting to find his charge. "Shit."

Nero was curled into a tiny ball within a sphere of energy. There was a giant metal machine of some sort that the sphere was sitting in that obviously powered it, but how that occurred was beyond the comprehension of anyone there. A control panel was set to the right, though was still connected to the main section by a myriad of cords and wires.

"Nerotalabiathin!" called Khyt, running up to the mew, who was set at his eye level.

Nero stirred sharply, as if he had just been woken up from a deep sleep.

"Nero, it is I, Khythas!"

"Khyt?" Nero whined meekly. He opened his eyes, his milky-white unseeing eyes. Then he began to cry. "Khyt, is that you?"

"Yes, child, it's me," he replied soothingly. "Everything will be alright now."

"I was so scared. I don't know where I am and nobody was nice to me. And now I can't see. There's something here that won't let me see through my mind and I'm scared. Why can't I see, Khyt? Where am I?"

Khyt almost broke down in tears at the young mew's questions and couldn't talk for a moment, though he tried. Erin, who had begun to cry as well, spoke for him. "Some bad men took you Nero, but it's okay now. Do you remember me? Erin? I'm here with Khyt and Chasm and we're going to get you out of here where you'll be able to see again. So don't worry anymore, this'll just take a second."

"Erin?" asked Nero, surprised but not disappointed. "Is Abadon here too?"

Chasm answered this time. "No young one, but we are going to find him as well, that we are, and then we'll all be free together. Then we can eat apples and play chase again. Do you remember when we played chase?" Granted, their last game of 'chase' consisted more of a livid Chasm attempting to capture a playful Nero between her claws, but that was beside the point now.

"Erin," Chasm continued, observing the energy sphere keeping Nero entrapped. "If the sphere is a form of psychic energy, then I will most likely be able to bypass it, surround Nero with an energy sphere of my own, and pull him out unharmed. Do you think I shou-"

Crash! Snap! Bang!

Erin was slamming her Bo staff into the control panel of the machine. She knew that Chasm would help until she collapsed and not complain once all because of her pride. But Erin saw right through that façade.

Erin had not slept in a number of hours, much longer than she ever had since she had been at the Agency. With the numerous hours of training and skill developing everyday, she collapsed onto her bed every night. But this night she had bypassed sleep and in the process gained a number of additional "training sessions" while she avoided the scientists and fought with the guards. She was exhausted, though she tried not to think about.

But Erin also knew that Chasm was tired. If she attempted what she proposed, then the umbreon would most likely keel over from the amount of energy lost. Erin couldn't allow that to happen, so she did the next best thing. She would beat the machine until it quit working.

"They're in here!" The guards had found them.

She continued to whack away at it.

"Erin, they're coming. We need a plan!" It was Khyt, but Erin didn't care.

She hit it some more.

The bar on the power strip hit maximum. Okay, she would beat the machine until it quit working, or until it fell under so much stress that it overloaded and then exploded.

"Take cover!" she screamed as she dove away. Not that there was anything to hide behind.

The guards ran in, aimed their guns to take a shot, the lights flickered, and the energy ball surrounding Nero lurched and then expanded in the blink in of an eye. The guards were caught off guard, which Erin thought a nice since of irony, and Erin, Chasm, and Khyt were pushed violently into the wall.

Erin barely remembered it, but was hurting in enough places when she coughed and pulled herself off the floor that she'd never deny it did happen. She shakily stood to her feet to view the damage. Khyt was basically fine, thanks to his solid exoskeleton, but Chasm was sitting down and panting hard. The walls were cracked and the guards who had entered mere seconds earlier were now lying unconscious just outside the open doorway.

"Nero?" she asked tentatively, fearing the worst from the blast. But then Erin sighed as she heard a tiny cough amidst the dust in the air. She pulled herself over to him. "Are you alright?"

He coughed again, but looked up at her with a smile and piercing blue eyes. "I sure am, though I'm hungry." Nero then leaned against her in what he deemed a hug until he spotted the scyther. "Khyt!" he called, hopping over to him, where the older pokemon embraced the mew in a careful hug with a sigh.

"I was so worried about you, young one. I am relieved to know you came to no harm."

He jumped down and sort of half flew, half hopped to the middle of the room. "I'm happy now that all my friends are here. Except Abadon. Erin, we need to find him so we can go find food. I want something to eat!" he said merrily. Nero couldn't be fazed for long.

Despite herself, Erin smirked. She stood, stretched, and retrieved the Bo staff, which had been blown across the room in the explosion. "All right, but we have to hurry. Can you hurry, Nero? You'll have to stay close to us and be extremely careful at all times. Stay away from everybody else. Understand?"

Nero nodded happily, more than likely thinking it all a game now.

"Right," Erin said with a nod to Khyt and Chasm. "Let's go." She jogged out of the room, expecting the adrenaline in her body to make her forget about her aching joints, and toward the only other door that they hadn't been through: the door that led, not only to Abadon, but also to freedom from the Agency. Soon they would either all be free, or they would all be dead.

Erin tried not to think about it too much as she entered into unknown territory.

0000000

And there you have it folks. Sorry for the long wait, but I'm not able to get on the computer more than once or twice a week. I had hoped to drag this chapter out a bit longer, but it was already long enough so I'll make the next scenes a full chapter as well. I hope you are still enjoying this story, as it is drawing to a close. There are only about four or five more chapters left until I wrap this thing up. Six at the very most. Depends on whether the chapters go long or not. Most likely they will. They tend to do that. I'll stop speaking in fragments now.

Anyway, please review and tell me what you like about my story and what you think I should do to improve on it. Thanks for all your tips in the past.