Days and nights passed as Alek and Mack explored the underground city. City wasn't, perhaps, the right word. It was much smaller than the human cities. But it was much bigger than any single building either of them had ever seen or imagined. The forty-eight vampires living there hardly began to fill up the available space, and the "Elevators" proved to be ways to access additional levels below! Those levels were empty as yet, the lights not even turned on. But the sheer scale of the place was staggering. Even on the occupied uppermost level there were dark, unused places. The door to "Research Department" proved to go to a huge room crammed with objects neither of them could identify, but it was dark and a little bit dusty. Synthesis was, of course, well lit and busy, as was Hydroponics, to a lesser degree. They grew the food there that they fed their human prisoners. "Storage" was a series of rooms stacked high with boxes. They were labeled with numbers though, not names, so the pair had no idea what was in them. "Recreation" turned out to be a gymnasium full of dusty, unused sports equipment. In "Library" they expected books, but instead found a room with a number of the panels and screens like the ones in the Central room, with dusty chairs in front of them.

They didn't only explore the city, they also explored the habits of its inhabitants. Their leader was almost never seen. He spent all his time in the Control room, emerging only to feed and to administer punishment to anybody who broke his rules.

The other vampires didn't spend much time out and about either. They were inclined to be lazy when not required to hunt their own food, and most of them did no more than they had to. There were assigned duty rosters of guarding and scouting, of running synthesis and hydroponics, but that took up very little time, with so many and so little to do. They mostly amused themselves with the endless pack games of vampire dominance, ranking themselves in hierarchies, after which the more powerful pushed around the weaker. During the day they all slept but the two guards on the humans. That was the duty that tended to be rewarded to the lowest ranked. Guarding during the night was easy, but needing to stay awake all day was incredibly difficult. And yet falling asleep would result in their leader administering painful punishment to the offenders. There were two shifts covering the daylight hours.

And once Mack and Alek had discovered this, everything slotted neatly into place.

It didn't take long for the other vampires to try and put the pair of newcomers into their places. Mack ended up, as he had figured he would, below some and above others. But Alek was not only weaker, he was deliberately throwing his mental battles. He wanted that day shift, and it wasn't long before he got it.