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A young woman, probably about 17, walked onto the platform only seconds after the two men stopped talking. She was alone, that was nothing new; she'd wandered the tunnels for 5 years now, after her parents had died. It'd been an isolated incident, the first act of violence in decades. It occured in the New-Sydney station, and only 4 people died, 2 of which were her mother and father.
Down here, the world functioned as one, united. Still, no one was well enough off to take her in, and so,with nothing else to do, Lara contented herself with traveling on what little money she earned or found, and was set and determoned to do two things: Travel every tunnel in existence, and see the surface. Every city she came upon, she'd search libraries, antique shops, anywhere she could think of for shreds of the past; the last maps of the surface, the lifestyle so long ago, up above, animals that once lived, plants.
Lara lowered the sack from her shoulders and set it on the platform floor, sitting down next to it. She unzipped it, praying to the God so many people had long ago forgotten. Did she have it? There were all of her belongings - a deck of cards, a bit of black nail polish, Adyl ( a small stuffed Panda, now thought to be a mythical creature, one of the few things she had left that Papa had given her) a black scarf, a compact mirror - Lara stopped briefly, flipping the mirror open.
She peered at her reflection, as she did every so often, and thought of how much she looked like Momma. From her fiery curls, which cascaded to her waist in a torrent of golds, auburns, and scarlets, to her pale freckled face, delicate features, and jade eyes, she was the shadow of her mother. Resuming her search, she rumaged through a pile of papers, a map of the tunnels, and all the pages of Days and Nights, an antique book she'd saved up for years to purchase, form an old woman in New-Cairo. At the very bottom of her sack, a wad of bills, which she'd "found". Well, she'd stolen them, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Good, she had all she needed.
Lara stood, brushing off her black pants, and hoisted the sack back onto her shoulders. Shivering, she spotted John.
"Sir," she inquired, " How long, do you know, until the next train?"

OOC: Just wanted to say, I'll be replying this weekend, but I can't now, because I've got way too much going on..

The train moved fast, interrupted only by sudden and frequent jolts of the old tracks on which it sped. Arien sat, as she often did, reading an old and tattered book that she had found on the train weeks before. Though the book was large, she had already read through it many times over, having seen nothing quite like it before. Arien was 21 and very beautiful, though not many would have guessed it because of the curtain of straight auburn hair that veiled her face as she sat completely immersed in her reading.
"Alrigh' there, miss Ren?" asked the conductor of the train, a squat man of about fifty with brown hair that was greying signifigantly, and who had taken to calling Arien 'Ren' for short.
After a long pause in which Arien was finishing her page she said,"I'm fine, thank you, Stan."
As Stan the conductor left into another car, Arien remembered vividly of when she first boarded the train two years ago. She had no money and no home, and paid for her passage by begging others that she passed. Stan had let her stay because he knew that there was no way she would make it on her own, and now the train was her home. She just watched the passengers come and go and occasionally one would talk to her, but they always had someone with them, a companion of sorts. And so they did not stay long. But always, always someone would leave a posession by accident on the train and Arien would collect it and add it to the others in her compartment. This was how she came across her book. She did not know what it was called, for the title was worn and had faded, but she knew what it was about: the world of long ago. It spoke of the brilliant blue skies, and striking green grass, and of trees and bright red flowers that grew without end. Of course, Arien knew that it was not true, but she liked fiction books all the same.
A sudden darkness brought Arien out of her daze and she realized that the train had stopped, and the power gone out. It was only a few moments before the emergency lights reacted and there was some visibility once more, to the applause of many passengers in various cars. She realized just how hungry she was, and pulled from her bag a small bread-like morsel that was wrapped in canvas. She ate it, thanking whatever force it was that caused a man to accidentally leave his lunch on the train, giving Arien food. And then, she heard the voice of Stan through the speakers in the ceiling saying his apologies and that the train would resume its course now, and only a few minutes later the train came to a hault in front of two people waiting to board the train to New-London.