The Captain's Daughter

Prologue

My name is Sophie Ackerman, I live down here in the Underground. Yeah... it's pretty bad. I'm skilled, though, and live alone.

When I was five years old, I was living with my dad. My mom died a few years before then due to sickness, common in the Underground. My dad would leave from time to time to do jobs that would get us money to survive. He had two friends, Farlan and Isabel. I really liked them. Farlan was pretty cool and nice and Isabel was really sweet and hyper. They were like my family.

One day, my dad, Farlan and Isabel suddenly got a job that I overheard would get us citizenship above ground. My dad reluctantly left me but promised that he'd be back soon. He didn't want to leave me, but even as a five year old, I was very skilled. He'd been training me ever since my mom died. He wanted me to survive down here. I knew the horrors of reality down here in the Underground, so I thrived. I knew how to survive. I had to trick, steal and sometimes even kill to get stuff that I needed just to make it through each day.

That was eleven years ago. My dad's never come back. I don't know why. I don't know if I'll ever forgive him for breaking his promise and leaving me down here alone. The only thing I have left from my dad is myself. I have his black hair and gray-blue eyes.

I was pretty infamous down here. Everybody knew who I was, but nobody knew my actual name or anything about me. The military police came after me a couple of times, but I managed to escape them.

I heard that the world above is pretty scary, though. There are apparently these man-eating monsters that roam the outside world. There are people in the military, however, that fight against them. They die a lot but I heard they're very brave and fight for humanity.

I wonder if that's where my dad is...