Chapter 27
915 Words
The corridors echoed with their footsteps. In the distance, she could hear the noise of the crew. It was growing in volume again. It seemed it hadn’t taken long to understand they needed alternative escape routes. It sounded like there were a lot of them coming this way.
“Nearly there,” Olivier panted, still pulling on her arm as they ran.
Her legs felt tired as if she’d been using them for hours instead of lying asleep in her bed.
“What’s happening?” She begged.
“You didn’t hear it?” Olivier replied. “There was a message on the station comms.”
He stopped at another junction, glancing furtively around the blind corner before setting off again.
“No… I, I was… sleeping,” Emelia said.
Visions of the black towers flickered in her mind, then faded. It was a dream. She knew it was just a dream, but the feeling it left her was so real.
“I can’t believe you slept through it. It was… bad.” The way he said it carried more feeling than the simple word should need. Emelia shuddered.
Olivier stopped again. The access corridor to the evac bay is just down there.” He pointed to a pair of closed doors on the far side of an open space where the level’s corridors intersected.
“We get inside, we get into a pod and we don’t let anyone get us out, you hear?”
Emelia nodded. She looked at the doors. Their long, thin windows showed little of the far side, but she thought she saw movement. Just a shadow maybe.
Olivier started across the open space, his head moving fast as he searched each corridor for signs of whatever had him so scared. He stopped beside the doors and beckoned to her to follow.
Emelia felt herself seize. She was frozen on the spot, her legs refusing to move. Olivier waved her over again with renewed urgency. Emelia shook her head, her body starting to shake.
“Come on!” He hissed.
Emelia swallowed, hearing the sounds of the following mob grow steadily louder.
“This can’t be real,” she whispered to herself.
“What?”
Olivier crossed the space between them. He took her by the shoulders, holding her firmly. All Emelia could do was stand, caught between his hands, her mind too full of panic to harbour proper thoughts.
“This can’t be happening,” she gibbered the words, barely hearing her own voice.
Olivier stared at her, then bent to lift her over his shoulder. She squeaked with fear but didn’t fight him. He carried her to the doors, dropped her gently to the ground and entered a code into the door panel.
Nothing happened.
She heard him swear under his breath and turn quickly to look back the way they’d come. The noises that she could only think of as ‘pursuit’ were louder still. In a few seconds there would be dozens of crew surrounding them, as desperate to flee as they were. Through the window, she saw the shadows move again. Someone was already inside the bay.
“Damn thing!” Olivier hissed, repeating his code and seeing the red lock light flash again. “I can’t get it open.”
He looked through the window.
“There are people in there!” Emelia said nothing.
“It’s the bloody blacks.” He squinted, pressing his face close to the thick glass. “They’ve locked it. Fuckers!”
Emelia gasped at the word. She’d never heard him swear before. He didn’t seem to notice, his eyes searching the area around them.
“I’ll have to smash it,” he said distractedly. “Wait here, I’ll find something to break the window and-”
The doors slid open with a suddenness that made him jump back. Emelia stared, expecting to see someone had opened them from inside, but there was no one. At the opposite end of the short corridor, the evac bay was sealed closed. She could see figures moving inside.
“How did you do that?”
She looked at Olivier with wide eyes. What was he talking about?
He glanced down meaningfully and she followed the line of his eyes. The fingers of her right hand were outstretched, hovering millimetres from the panel. She hadn’t typed in a code. Had she?
It shouldn’t matter if she had. Her access was no greater than Olivier’s. If his code didn’t open the lock there was no reason hers should. And she hadn’t pressed the panel. She was sure. Almost sure.
“I, I don’t know,” she breathed.
Olivier didn’t waste any more time wondering. He pushed her through the opening, slamming his hand against the panel inside the door to seal it closed behind them again. Three steps into the corridor he stopped. Emelia came up against him, bumping against his back in a daze.
“What are they doing?” He mused.
She couldn’t see ahead, his body blocking her view, but she could feel the way he tensed.
“This isn’t right,” he added.
Then as suddenly as he’d pulled her from sleep he grabbed her arm and dived left. The yawning door of a huge, black locker opened ahead of her. Emelia opened her mouth, drawing in a breath as he pushed her inside. She felt like she was falling into blackness, the depths of the locker seeming to go on forever. Olivier came in behind her, pressing close and pulling the door closed.
“Shh!” He whispered as the faint echo of a voice reached them from the access corridor.
Trembling, confused and desperate to be anywhere else, Emelia closed her eyes and let the darkness swallow her.
- Writer
