The door had opened and I could see door after door opening behind the first one. It was security tougher then anything I had ever seen in around the turn of the millennium.

"What's up with all this security?" Echo one had mentioned something about me being from Boston when he called me a spy. I realized I might have done better if I'd paid attention to that.

"We're New York. We're one of the most sought sites in the world. Security is needed. Just yesterday we had to fend off an attack from Boston." Echo one said all of this without turning to look at me.

"Why would Boston attack you?" This was getting way too weird.

"I can't say anything else until you're cleared by security. Sorry." He might say he was sorry but he didn't look sorry at all.

At this point we had reached the back of the shack where there seemed to be a set of decidedly ancient looking stairs. Not only were they stairs, which I would have thought obsolete by this time, the concrete they were made of seemed to be crumbling at the edges. In the middle of each step there were slight depressions where people had worn them away after decades of constant use. The footsteps echoed through the tunnel the stairs were in, making it seem quite loud. As we got further down, the sides of the tunnel appeared to be damp. In some places, moss was growing on the walls. Over the echoing sounds of footsteps, a steady drip would be heard from somewhere further down the tunnel.

After about a minute of going down the stairs, I finally lost patience. "Why did you build such a bad set of stairs and where do they even go? And where's New York City because all I saw up there were overgrown ruins?"

Echo one turned to look at me, halting Echo team's steady progress. The silence that filled the tunnel was deafening. "Maybe if you were more patient, we could get you down to have you cleared. Then maybe you could have some of your questions answer. Now, can we continue down without you interrupting anymore?" Echo one was plainly annoyed at me.

"Sure." I said, shrugging.

"Thank you." Echo one turned back around and started heading down the stairs once again. At this point, the stairs appeared to be newer and were no longer concrete but stone and dirt. We had gone down hundreds of stairs and the reason why the first several hundred were different from these eluded me. After just a few dozen more stairs, Echo leader came to a sudden halt and looked at all of his team and at me. After a moment he raised his communications device to his mouth. A faint click was audible as he pressed the on button.

"Control, this is Echo one, do you copy."

"We copy, Echo one, go ahead."

"Control, we are at the doors and are requesting clearance to enter. Infrared scan of the tunnel reveals no hostiles." I was startled by what Echo one said. I couldn't see and door nearby and I hadn't seen him carrying anything that resembled an infrared device. Of course, after two centuries or so of time, it was certainly possible to have learned to create extremely small infrared scanners.

"Echo one, we copy. Doors will be opening in fifteen seconds. Please stand by. Control, out."

"Thanks control. Echo team, out." Echo one clicked off the communications device and returned it to his pocket. After a second or two, bright lights were turned on overhead. I had to quickly close my eyes before the sudden brightness blinded me. As soon as my eyes were adjusted, I saw that there were two massive door about a dozen meters in front of me. I turned to look back the way we had come and couldn't even see the end of the stairs there were so many. Fifteen seconds after the last transmission from whomever control was, the massive doors began to slide open.

"All of you put your hands on your head, your guns by your side and step into the decontamination and identification unit." The m who had spoken wore a crisp military uniform and stood right inside the doors. Surrounding him were a couple dozen armed men. These men held their weapons in both hands, ready to bring them up in half a second. The room they were in was only about ten feet high and about fifty feet by fifty feet. All around the room there were armed guards and stationary weapons emplacements. On the far wall and the two side walls were smaller doors leading to the unknown.

Despite the apparently hostile actions of the men inside the room, Echo team calmly did as ordered and walked forward into a large, plastic box, big enough for about twenty men. They ushered me in with them. As soon as the whole team was in the plastic box, the massive doors through which we had entered began to close behind us. No one in the room was saying a word. As soon as the doors were completely closed and silence reigned, a faint hissing noise began. Small clouds of vapor could be seen being pumped into the plastic chamber. I began to panic but quickly brought myself under control when I saw that Echo team wasn't even flinching at the sound and sight of the gas.

As the gas reached me and I breathed it in, I realized that it wasn't immediately lethal by the fact that I wasn't dead. The gas quickly became too thick to allow a visual of what was happening out side of the chamber. In the silence it was easy to hear the hissing of escaping gas shut off. After a minute or two of waiting in the complete silence, the gas started to clear from around us. Soon the man who had ordered us into the chamber became visible along with the soldiers and as soon as all the gas had cleared, the man looked to one of his men. The man nodded and moved his mouth but no sound emerged and that's when it hit me that the chamber was sound proof. I assumed whatever the man had said involved identification since the gas was surely the decontamination the man had mentioned. The man nodded to another soldier and the soldier came forward and opened the door out of the chamber.

The amount of sound that had been in the room startled me when the door opened. All of Echo team seemed to have been expecting it and weren't at all startled. Echo team walked out of the chamber but this time they didn't take me with them. Two of the guards from outside of the chamber entered and dragged me out of the chamber to in front of the man who was obviously in charge, the one who had given all the commands.

The man looked at me. His expression wasn't one of disdain but more like curiosity. Before I had time to figure out what was going on, he looked at the two guards and spoke. "Take him to intelligence." His tone was expressionless. The two guards nodded and started walking to one of the doors on the side wall. Even with the little time that had passed since they grabbed me, their grips were already starting to hurt my arms.

"Hey, is there any way you could let go of me and let me walk there under my own power. My arms are really starting to hurt." The guards said nothing but they did release my arms. That didn't mean they trusted me. They moved from flanking positions to positions in front of and behind me. The one behind me brought his gun up and jabbed it into my back.

"Hey! Don't shoot me! I'm not going anywhere." The guards said nothing but continued walking. When we got to the door, the guard in front of me opened it. I was surprised that there were no security things on it. The reasons for that became evident when right behind the door was what appeared to be a PHALANX weapons system but was probably I much newer version of a weapon following the same basic principles. The guards walked around it and entered an elevator like shaft without an elevator in it. Amazingly we didn't fall to our deaths but rather hovered on a cushion of a powerful upward draft of air.

"This is amazing." I muttered. The guards just glanced at me and then went back to staring straight ahead.

"Intelligence division." That was the guard who had been in front the whole time. As soon as he had spoken, the cushion of air became less powerful and we began to fall slowly though we quickly picked up speed. Door after door flew past us as we hurtled further into the depths of the earth. After what seemed like a kilometer of falling that made me want to puke, we finally came to a halt in front of another door. On the door in small block letters were the words INTELLIGENCE DIVISION. The first guard opened the door and walked in.

A young man in another crisp military uniform, like the one on the man who had been in command in the first room, greeted us. "Welcome. Go down this hall and his cell is the fifth door on the right." He said, gesturing down a hall. The guards simply nodded and, once again flanking me with each one holding an arm, dragged me down the hall.

The man who had greeted us called after us. "Be careful with him. He might be a potential ally."

I have to assume that the guards didn't here the man because when we got to the cell, they threw me roughly into it without any signs of gentleness. They slammed the door behind them and left me sitting there, alone with my thoughts. There were a lot of questions I had about this new world I'd gotten myself into but the one plaguing my mind right now was "What will they do if they catch me trying to escape?"

From how jumpy everyone seemed around here they would probably kill me. Oh well, lots of time to contemplate it. Hours passed and I finally fell asleep. When I woke up, nothing had changed. I was still alone in my cell. It was another hour before anything changed. A young woman about my age wearing a white lab caot entered the room. I was surprised because through the little window on my door I saw that she didn't hit any lock off.

"Hello there." That was all she said. Nothing else. Just hello and then she sat down on the bench that was along the wall and just looked at me, expectantly. Finally she added, "Do you have any questions?"

I hesitated for a moment, not knowing if this was some kind of trick. "Yes. Yes I do."

"Then ask away. That's what I'm here for."

"I thought you were here to interrogate me. Isn't this the intelligence division? I mean, Echo leader kept on talking about needing to get cleared first, and so far all I've done is sit here."

She just looked at me expectantly some more. "Does it really matter what you've been told? Do you really believe everything you here? We live in a world of distrust and you're telling me that you believe everything. Unbelievable." She paused for a moment and then asked again. "Do you have any questions?"

"Yes, I do. First off, who are you?"

"Does it really matter? I'm just me. You know that. All a name would do is confuse you even more. Next question." She smiled knowing how much more confusion and anger she was causing in me.

"Was that door even locked? Because when you came in I didn't see you do anything to unlock it. You just turned the doorknob and it opened."

"It was never locked. We wanted to see if you tried to escape because that would make it much easier to figure out what to do with you." She paused for a moment and then added, "Bury your body."

"That makes me feel so much better. You mentioned a we. Who else is in this we besides you?"

"The intelligence division. Now, I think three questions is enough for the time being. We don't want you to know too much. Roll up your sleeve." From a small side back she removed a blood taking kit. I grimaced but rolled up my sleeve. She took a sample of my blood and left. This was going to be a long day.