Secretly Mine

I continued down the narrow corridor, using the walls to navigate through the dark path.

I wish I had thought to bring a flashlight or something.

The camera was too small to have any sort of flash setting, but it did come with high-quality night vision. The footage wouldn't be a problem, but navigating the almost pitch black hallways was.

A few minutes later, I finally arrived at the base of the spiraling corridor, nearly tripping as I made it down the last step. Thankfully, there was a wooden crate in front of me that helped me catch my fall.

This room was as dark as the corridor I just came out of, but it was a lot more dangerous. There seemed to be boxes and crates stacked all over the room, causing me to crash into one at nearly every step.

"This must be some sort of storage room. It's so cramped in here," I mumbled as I nearly stumbled over another box.

After slowing down and taking very careful and calculated steps, I finally arrived at the other end of the room.

Using my hand, I traced the entire perimeter of the room, trying to find a door or hallway to get out of this room, but after searching for what felt like forever, I couldn't find anything.

Why would there be a secret pathway that led to a simple storage room? Surely, this isn't all that's down here?

I leaned against the wall in a corner of the room where there seemed to be no boxes, trying my best to remember how to proceed. Closing my eyes, I replayed my newest memory of following Karl and the other man down the spiraling stairwell into this room.

My memory ended just before entering this room, so I couldn't picture what was inside.

Soon, the familiar pounding headache reappeared. This time, I had to grit my teeth to suppress the pain. It felt like someone reached inside of my head and was ripping my brain in half.

The pain was so intense that I slid down the wall and curled up on the floor.

My palms were clammy, and my entire body trembled. I tried my best to clear my head because of how bad the pain was, but it was too late.

Flashes of new memories came flooding in. Karl and the man leading him made it to this room. And at the end of the hall, there was a trap door in the ground.

In my memory, I remembered watching Karl get tossed down the hatch before the other man climbed down the stairs after him.

So there's a trap door. I would've never found that in this dark room without that memory.

After regaining the memory, the headache subsided, but my body was left exhausted. It felt like I'd been forced to run a marathon every day while being deathly ill for an entire month straight.

Just propping myself up off the ground took all of my remaining energy. My hands shook, feeling like they would give out any moment. It took me three attempts to simply lift myself up off the ground.

"Okay, now I need to find this hidden trapdoor," I said after taking a deep breath.

Using my memory of the layout of this room, I realized that I should already be close to where the hidden trapdoor was. I took a few steps to my left and bent down to try to see if I could feel any difference in the floor pattern.

The pitch black darkness made the task of finding this trap door very difficult and frustrating.

"It should be around here somewhere," I said with increasing frustration. It was a race against time, and if I didn't hurry up and find it soon, my plan to save these people tonight would fail.

I searched the area around the boxes, but then realized I was most likely making a mistake.

If they're trying to keep this trapdoor hidden, they would keep it covered!

I immediately walked over to the large box that I thought was where the trapdoor was originally and pushed it. To my surprise, it wasn't heavy at all and moved with ease. This was something I was grateful for because I really didn't have much strength left, and I wasn't sure how much more exploring I had to do.

Once the large box was moved out of the way, I bent over to see if I could find any signs of the trapdoor. At first, the floor felt totally identical, but I noticed that the texture of the stone changed in a small area.

"This must be it."

I felt around the area a little more until I figured out the size and shape of the loose floor tile. Mustering the rest of my strength, I gripped the edges of the tile and lifted it up, revealing the ladder that went down.

Finally.

I took a brief moment to catch my breath. Though the floor tile had a different texture from the surrounding stone tile, it didn't feel any less heavy.

After uncovering the floor tile, the surrounding area was lit up slightly from the light coming from the hatch below. It seemed that the area underneath was at least somewhat lit.

"Hopefully, this place won't be teeming with guards," I mumbled and carefully lowered myself into the hatch.

Once I made it to the ground below, I turned around and looked around in shock. Originally, I expected a small room, but the area in front of me was like a giant medieval underground dungeon.

It stretched as far as I could see, making it seem like an entire underground network.

How many people do they keep here?!

Just from what I could see now, there were dozens of holding cells.

The hallway was segmented into smaller sections by thick stone archways, large enough to hide behind.

I quietly tiptoed over to the first archway and looked around, trying to be as stealthy as possible. I knew that it must have been here where my 'accident' happened, and I refused to allow history to repeat itself.

As I craned my neck around the first archway, that's when I finally saw it.