And Rock said not a word about the ordeal. They were there. Nothing was shooting at them. Mistake or no mistake, it was no harm, no foul.

The monkey stepped slowly to the first metal door straight ahead, taking in the poorly lit environment along the way. Another swipe of the card opened passage for them. He further used the opportunity to bring up another volumetric map on the console.

Navigating the facility from that point forward was a quiet and uneventful affair. Hunters remained inactive, but positioned at ready. Mono Beetles hovered and vaguely followed them in an attempt to be subtle. Cameras turned to watch their every move. But no guns were pointed, and very little seemed to be going on inside, until they reached the main prison hall.

They entered at the base of a reasonably long, rectangular chamber a few stories high, that looked like a fairly conventional cell block. There were some guards at the entrance, but they had nothing to say to the five intruders. They had apparently been briefed in advance; they only watched with a spectrum of emotions that ranged from curious for some, to glowering and suspicious from others. The guard presence overall was low, however, as was the prisoner population. No one made noise; only a few prisoners even came to the bars.

The group passed through the room without event, then through more doors, and another corridor. They were soon in a small hub room. The lighting was an unpleasant orange color; the walls and and floors looked bronzish because of it, while the ceiling above the light fixtures was blackened and difficult to see because of the bulbs' glare. There were six large, durable doors: The one they entered from, two on either side, and one straight ahead. The one straight ahead was conspicuous, if only for the fact that it had no fewer than fifteen Hunters squatting around it in an inactive state. However, it wasn't the group's destination; theirs was the second door on the left.

The door clanked and hissed. Rock paused at its threshold, eyes darting back and forth, unsure of what he expected to see inside. One could only hope Coop was still in question-answering condition.

The room inside was ill lit, and broke into a short hallway, which continued for maybe ten feet before it stopped, abruptly. Along the left side of the hallway was a desk and metal chair, with a silent, inactive computer terminal. Along the right side was a rectangular switchboard, broken into rows of switches. Currently, only one switch, 'Lights 7,' was on.

At the end of the hallway, the wall facing the T intersection was lined with massive panes of glass, like an indoor aquarium. Each piece of glass was matched with a heavy metal door fitted with a porthole. Beyond the glass of the doors and windows was blackness, and while the immediate vicinity was lit by minimalistic lighting, the broad hallway beyond was not. The walls of the hallway stretched up until they vanished into the black, and stretched out left and right, without any end in sight.

To the left, the sets of glass and doors marched away into the blackness where about a hundred feet away, a red light flashed. Periodically flickering on to bring the grim architecture of the prison out of the blackness, it was the last stop before the hallway continued into nothing.

To the right, shining from far away in the distance, one of the gargantuan glass slabs was lit up from the other side.

A lone bright patch in a stretch of darkness, the window spilled a square of white light out onto the metal wall opposite.

Within that room, they would see more glass. Empty glass ceiling, empty glass walls—all seeming to lead no-where, so that the impression was that of a room suspended in the middle of a massive abyss. The only light in the room came from the floor, which was tiled from corner to corner with bright white panels, lit from within like a colourless disco floor.

In the center of the glowing tiles was the over-sized form of Coop, sitting in a chair too big for him that was built for someone a different shape. The eagle was slumped over, stubby legs sticking out over the seat of the chair, arms dangling down by his sides. Hunched over as he was, it was impossible to tell if his eyes were open or not, but he wasn't moving.

The whole place had a tremendous sense of oldness and decay about it. Outside of the spartan, pristine interior of the cell, the walls were coated with black stains where condensation had etched trails of mildew into them, and tarnish had crept over every surface. Even the controls were archaic--endless rows of manual switches. The only high-tech aspect of the whole area was that each cell door had been retrofitted to accommodate one of the facility's electronic locks, incorporating the same networked electronic security device that was present around the rest of the facility.

There was another array of switches in front of the thing. Fairly self-explanatory in their purpose, they were labeled:

Lights int - Lights ext - Com Power - Talk

As could be expected at this stage, only 'Lights int', had been flipped.

Coop did not notice the activation of the lights. It was only when the voice clattered through intercom that he reacted.

He lurched in his seat as if he'd been shocked, looking around quickly for the source of the voice until his eyes settled on the backlit window.

He was blank for a moment, before a look of rage exploded on his face like an atomic bomb. He leapt off the chair, and threw it to the ground with a clang.

"YOU," he shouted. He rushed the window, and gave it an ineffective kick, with the only result being a distant toomp.

"What do you want, huh?!"

Coop turned a hideous glare onto Jam as she stood there.

"Thanks, by the way," he ground out.

"Oh yeah?"

"You stupid—"

Coop glowered for a moment longer, before the anger seemed to fall, collapsing in on itself and turning turn into a deep morbidity.

"Hnngggaaaah," he said. He looked down, and looked away.

"Great," he said, "Great. Just great. Great. That's—no, that's fine. Great."

He turned around and scowled at the chair.

"Great."

After a few moments of hunched, brooding man-silence, he turned around again.

"Well," he said, "it's too late now. The world's going to end; good luck."

"…What are you even doing here—are you idiots?" He added, bitterly, "How many miles underground are we? You'll probably end up in here with me before you ever get out of here."