(A/N: I'll be having this chapter and chapter 13 workshopped for my Creative Writing: Fiction class! I'm a little nervous as this story is a YA Sci-Fi, and not "serious fiction." But wish me luck!)

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ChapterTwelve: New York City and Hazan

September 2155

It's the next day. Cassie has packed everything up in all of her six suitcases, and in her purse. She arrived at a military base just outside of New York City. She saw a line was forming in front of the above-ground entrance to Hazan. The entrance looked like a tiny box elevator, only room enough for one per person. Cassie got in line. She couldn't see Lilly or Breyden. She figured they were either way ahead in the line, or where already inside Hazan. Either way, she took out her phone inside her black leather jacket just to pass the time.

Before she knew it, she was in front of the steel doors. She gulped nervously as the doors opened up. She walked in with her luggage. The elevator suddenly descended very quickly. It made her heart race with so many emotions. She was excited to finally leave Earth, yet she was starting to have a gnawing feeling creep inside her. She knew it was a deduction trying to tell her something, but it just wouldn't. She felt a brick wall in her head. The feeling was bad, and she knew it, but she couldn't deduce what it was.

After what seem like a good second, the elevator finally landed. The steel doors opened up, revealing a white room. There were people wearing white hazmat suits. As soon as she walked into the room, the hazmat people grabbed her luggage. One them asked, "Show your city assignment badge."

Cassie took out her very slick, modern City Assignment Card, which said "Parisian." Then the hazmat person sent the others to put her luggage in one of the shuttles heading to Parisian. She was led to what looked a human-sized clear box. It had a shower head inside.

The person leading her said, "That's to rinse off the radiation on your clothes and on your body. Don't worry, you don't need to get naked. It'll just vacuum up the radiation particles."

Cassie nodded, and entered the box. The person turned on the machine. Cassie felt like she was about to sucked into the vacuum. She did her best to hold onto the sides of the box. Before she knew it, the suction stopped. She was deemed "clean" by the machine.

As soon as she got out of the box, she was lead to the entrance of Hazan. The doors open to her. She stepped into the underground city. She looked around as she stood there. The ceiling had bright lights, as if they were to replace the sun. The buildings were either one or two floors. There were no skyscrapers. There were cars, but they looked rusted and old. She saw the Normals rushing around, trying to get all their belongings so they can be the first ones to get on the shuttles.

She stepped onto the ground. She looked down. The ground was rocky. There were no real sidewalks or streets. Just roughly smooth gravel that was about to crack open. She looked at the buildings as she walked around the city. The buildings looked like they were rotting with moisture. The roofs looked like they were crumbling from the pressures of New York City on the surface, despite the roofs not touching the ceiling.

Then she noticed the Normals. They didn't look healthy at all. Their skin colors were a sickly pale and translucent. She noticed their eyes looked dull to the point of becoming colorless. Yet, they were as vibrant as ever, as if looking very sick was normal for them. Unfortunately, that was their norm.

She soon entered a coffee shop that looked like a makeshift version of Starbucks. As she was about to order something to drink, she heard her name being called by a feminine voice. She turned around, and saw who it was. She grinned and hugged her bestie Lilly.

Cassie asked, "So where is your family?"

She replied, "They're getting in line, but I told them I wanted to explore a bit of this town. It looks..."

"Like it's decaying?"

"Exactly." Cassie soon smirked as she added, "Oh I found out this morning where I'll be working in Parisian."

"Where?" Lilly asked.

"I'll be working at a ForMero21 in the Eiffel District of Parisian! And it's a very posh part of the city!"

Lilly grinned when she heard the news. ForMero21 was a store that had three stores merge into one store: Forever 21, H&M, and Aeropostale. All three merged in 2066.

Lilly said excitedly, "I hope you'll get great discounts!"

"I should! I promise we'll go on a ForMero21 shopping spree one day," Cassie grinned happily.

The two noticed the coffee shop looked deserted. They looked out the glass-less windows. They saw people running towards something. Cassie gulped, "Deduction: Hazan is going to crumble."

Lilly nodded, "And that's why everyone is running. We need to go now."

The two girls ran out together, and ran with everyone. The crowd soon turned into a stampede. The all trampled on each other as they tried to get on their assigned shuttles. There was a total of thirty-six shuttles. Hazan was beginning to collapse due to the pressures from the buildings on the surface.

Lilly was able to reunite with her family after she climbed over the people scrambling to get inside the shuttles. Cassie, on the other hand, couldn't find Breyden and his family. She needed to get on one of the shuttles as fast as possible. She got into one of the shuttles headed to go to Parisian.

Just when she could catch a breath, a Normal guy punched her in the face. He yelled at her, "You fucking Mutant! Get off of the shuttle!"

Cassie's face regenerated within a second. There was no sign of a bruise on her face, but she ran away from on the shuttle, or at least tried to squeeze through the hordes of Normals. She soon bumped into a blonde girl, not much older than herself.

Cassie asked her, "Please help me! I'm being chased by some brute!"

The girl looked at her direction, and saw the guy. The girl looked back at Cassie, and said, "Come join me and my family."

The girl led Cassie to her family, who were huddled together on a corner of the shuttle. The girl then told her, "I'm Hannah. This is my family. My boyfriend James is somewhere around here...oh no..."

Cassie asked, "What is it?"

Hannah replied, "There's a stampede outside. I hope James got on one of the Parisian shuttles..."

"Deduction: He did. He's on this shuttle, but he can't look for you. He has to stay with his family."

Hannah stared at her, then she said, "You're a Mutant..."

Cassie sighed, "Yes, but the correct term is Gen-Mod."

"What are you doing here?"

"I want to get out of Earth. I'm tired of breathing in radiation and pollution. I'm tired of the nuclear winters. Hell, I'm tired of looking at buildings that are built on top of ruin from almost a hundred years ago! I want to live on a planet that's like what Earth used to be before the War of 2070."

Hannah looked down, feeling bad for calling her a "mutant." She said calmly, "I didn't think your kind had it bad on the surface."

"We can tolerate it, but it doesn't mean we actually like it."

Suddenly, the brute walked up to the two girls. He glared at Cassie, and growled, "Listen, Mutant! Get off this shuttle!"

As Hannah was about to speak, Cassie stares into the brute's eyes. Then she said sternly, "You will go stand at some corner on this shuttle. You will leave both the Normals and the Gen-Mods alone."

Suddenly, the man, who was in a trance, did exactly as she said. Hannah's eyes widen in shock. She knew Gen-Mods had every superpower imaginable. She asked, "Um, what did you just do?"

Cassie turned to face her. She replied, "I have this ability where I can hypnotize people to do as I say. I only use it if I'm in danger. It's called mind compulsion, I think. It was in an Upgrade I got when I was 12."

Hannah said, "Oh yeah. I heard it on this show called, 'The Vampire Diaries.'"

Then she noticed Cassie staring at her blankly. Hannah immediately realized that the people living on the surface world has no knowledge of entertainment prior to the 2100s. She felt her face reddening, and said sheepishly, "Um, my people only watch shows from the 2060s and earlier."

Cassie nodded, and said, "That makes sense. All I know is this ability has been around for decades, and I was missing this ability somehow."

The girls laughed. Suddenly, they felt their shuttle take off. They noticed the entire shuttle was over-capacity. Cassie peaked through a window. She saw a horde of people screaming and crying to get on the shuttles. There was no way to save them. Hazan was about to fully collapse on top of them. Then she looked back at those on the shuttle. She noticed the Normals were putting on some of kind of goggles with blackened lenses. She deduced they were doing this because their eyes were too sensitive to sunlight. It was the only way to protect their sight.

Soon, the shuttle was finally out of Earth, and was on its' way to GH569. For Cassie, she could feel her gnawing feeling growing inside of her even more. She knew something bad was going to happen, but didn't know what it was. As for Hannah, she was ready to live in a world that wasn't a former mine-shaft.