My name is Brinley. I live under the sea. I am not a fish. I am 15 years old. I have brown shavers hair. I have greenish brown eyes. My last name is Faymish. I have tanned skin from my mother. I have a wide smile and thin nose from my father. I have a pierced lip and eye brow. I am 5ft7 in height. My favourite colour is yellow. I have never seen the sun. I like to run. I have one sister. I don't know where she is. I miss her. I am Brinley Faymish. I have lived under the sea for 15 years. I want to leave. I will leave.




Chapter one

I have always lived where I am now, in a box. I suppose it's not really a box, more like a crazy big bunker under the sea. I have been told story's of people living in the 'above'. And about how they would be out side and look up and see nothing but open space. It seems so crazy and I'm not quite sure if these things are quite true, but I like to believe they do.

It was mainly told this by an old man by the name of Bruno. He used to roam the halls of level 21, which is the level above the one I live on. It was quite common for me to find myself talking to him. He told me many story's but the one that stuck with me was one about his kids, he liked to tell me how they used to go out 'on the town'. He said the meet with friends and drank lots and went crazy and had tones of fun.

I asked him what "out on the town" meant and why people would find it fun to go crazy,if you we're crazy now you would be sent to the psychiatric ward in the infirmary, or restrained, and can't imagine that to be fun.He looked at me very sadly and shook his head. He then said that I should get back to my flat.

That was the last conversation I ever had with Bruno, before he died. He was 87.
I was 9 then and to me he was just an old man telling stories. But now, looking back on it, it seems that he had something that he needed to tell everyone but something was stoping him. The way he looked at me told me that, the way that he stared with his sad eyes.

And though a talked to him so often, I realised when he died that I didn't know much about him. I knew that he had kids and been married and then remarried twice and he was a pilot. But that was it, I don't know the name of his kids or any or his wives. It took me about a week to realise that, and it felt terrible. I was grieving for a man that I hardly knew.

I have found myself looking back on the conversations I had with him a lot lately, and It always seems to feel like that there is something that he never got to tell me about, however small. So me being me, I want to find that out.


I kept asking about him and the things he had said, mainly to my parents, but they always told me that they had never herd of him or seen him. Except one day, it was one year since he had passed. My mother had already left for work so I had asked my father if he knew who had died a year ago today and he said,"How should I know Brinley?" My dad annoyed me when he was in one of his moods, and I usually would have walked away, but I wasn't in the mood for his bad mood, so I told him.

"Today is the anniversary of Mr Bruno's death" I had said solemnly
"Who?" He grunted to me
"Mr Bruno, the man who would sit in level 21 all the time and I would talk to him. Don't you remember me telling you about him?"

I think this was the first time my dad had realised that I had talked to a Mr Bruno at all because he looked at me like I had just killed several hundred people. He yelled at me and screamed why had I ever stopped to talk to such a man? I should have told him about this before now! Do I know who he is? What he's done? What he was capable of? Did I realise that you could have killed me, and made it look like a suicide, and he would have an alibi!?"

He screamed all this at me, to me I was like he was describing a completely different person, not Mr Bruno.

I stood in front of him, feeling more like an intruder, than his son.

"Now, Brinley," He said one hand on the kitchen table, supporting his bent over stature, the other sprouting one finger pointing at me "if you ever, so much a mention that name or refer to that man, in this flat ever again, god help me because I don't know what I'll do. Is that clear?"
I could only manage on small nod, so small I wasn't sure if he had seen it at first, but he had stood in and left the flat. In a surprisingly normal manor, even managing to nod to me in goodbye as he closed the door.

My dad had never yelled at me like he had that day, and he hasn't since.

Though, if he knew what I was doing at the moment, that sentence might have to be changed.

Yesterday, I went up to level 5 in education, and looked up the history on mr Bruno chamberlands. It didn't tell me much that I didn't already know, just that he was I pilot when people lived above sea level. He had 3 kids, he had been divorced twice, then married again, only for his wife to die from a stroke at age 61( just before people had been sent to live in the bunker). But, this couldn't discourage me, just motivate me to keep digging.




Chapter two

"Thanks, this looks great." I said to the server. Wincing to myself, it looked like it had just come from the sewer pipes. I think it was meant to be some kind of casserole.

It was lunch time and I was making my way to my lunch table. I sat down and caught the tail end of a conversation about my maths teachers tight skirt and nice arse. I was not arguing there. No one was actually eating their 'lunch', just fooling around with it and saying they wished that miss Ellen had bigger boobs. Again I had no objection.She was a new teacher and still hadn't figured out that teachers shouldn't have their skirts to look like a children's belt wrapped around her hips. Though, I was not going to be the one to tell her that. I don't think that any one else in my group was either.

"Right boys, shall we go?" That was Tim, the 'big man'.

He is quite intimidating when you first meet him, mainly because of his hulking stature, but once you get to know him he's a really funny guy.

"When do you think miss Ellen will realise that she needs to buy a longer skirt?" That was Ali, we're pretty good friends, we get on good. He's the kinda guy that makes you feel welcome and like you can tell him anything. but totally not boring in any way, shape or form.

"God I hope she never does, I finally want to go to maths now, my rents are starting to get of my case about my behaviour in class." This was brad, he had been in the headmasters office so often in his life that Mr Geoffrey our headmaster, would probably get nervy brad wasn't there.

But Brad was a good guy all round, loyal, funny, forgiving, and accepting, he is one of my best mates.

As we left the dining hall, the boys were making a hell of a noise and fooling about, so I took this as the perfect chance to excuse my self and do some research.

The library hall was on the other side of campus, but I knew a short cut.

There are doors all around the place but you never see any one use them, or have to use them your self. These doors are kinda like horizontal lifts but that only go to hallways that don't make people suspicious because they are cut off from the beaten track so no one really notices them. No one is actually supposed to know about these doors, and not many people do. But I am one of the fortunate few people that have found them.

I punch in the hallway number closest to the library on the touch screen panel on the wall. I push go and I feel a small jolt of movement. There's no real sound just a slow hum. When I first found the doors, didn't know how they worked or where they actually went. But I later figured out that it goes through slightly wider walls.

It took about three minutes to get to the library hallway. I slowly opened the door and checked that no one was out there. There wasn't, there never is. So I stepped out and walked around the corner and down the rustic hallway to the double doors of the library.