Excerpt: Suns Dissapearing

The surprising lack of prisoners was a little bit disheartening. Alice was hoping that she would be able to report a big number, making Loraine swell with pride and the have her give her some big mission. In her head, Alice was a working assassin, killing men with one fell-swoop, slicing neck and breaking backs with a single kick, making the war that much easier, and ultimately helping in the final battle against good and evil to cure the human race of the technology that was surely going to kill them all in the end. The lack of prisoners, however, was not part to her plan.
The end of the row was did not bring what she had expected. Instead of just moving to the right and following down yet another row of cells, it branched off into two separate rows. Both looked equally empty, and both seemed to be of the same kind of dark dampness. It looked to be a mirror image, and Alice for a minute wondered if it was a mind trick played on those who weren't in the know until a hand jutted out of one of the cells and it didn't appear in the other row. Taking this as some kind of sign, Alice turned into the row that the hand had come from.
The emptiness of the cells was beginning to unnerve her and make her a little bit anxious. It was strange to not see the cells they had been told about filled with angry men, bursting with muscle and brute force. A chill shot through her, up her spine into her hair, raising goosebumps along her flesh. She stiffened as the creeping feeling of something wrong came over her. There wasn't a soul in sight, and it appeared that the first row of cells was the longest in the prison because the row that she was walking down was now forking off again. There hadn't been anyone in the cells.
Alice knew that she hadn't imagined that hand coming out of the cell. There had been a old, winkled hand that had stuck out from between the bars, but she had traveled the entire length of the hallway, and there hadn't been one single person in any of the cells. The bumps raised along her the skin on her arms still hadn't receded, and she had only seen a total of three prisoners so far into her journey through the jail and there had to more to see and report. Alice had to keep moving and to find the rest of the men. This time the fork in the road jutted off in a 't' shape, and a mouse skittered across the turn to the left. This the last time Alice had followed what had appeared to be the most obvious choice, she took a deep breath and turned to the right and was met with a little more luck this time. Three cells in she walked back a middle aged man who was in relatively good health and watched her as she walked passed. Even though his gaze was strange and she felt like she should be moving a little more quickly, it made Alice feel much more like there was a real world outside. The last few cells had thrown her into a mind set like the outside world had disappeared and thrown her into this prison full of people who truly belonged in an asylum. The heels Alice had on made a horribly loud noise on the cold floor and it echoed mercilessly with every step. They were pointed at the tip and were beginning to pinch at Alice's toes. The corset was pulled tight and the bottom of her rib cage was starting to ache. The sooner she finished moving through the prison the better.
The prison didn't divide this time as she found the end of the hallway, and the only option was to turn to the left. If she was right, Alice had walked far past the city hall's true basement and she was probably underneath one of the houses on the block that was close to the old meeting place. Here, in the row of cells that didn't go anywhere after ended about six cells down, Alice found Ryan.