Falling for You in 48 Hours（4）
707 Words
The blaring alarms echoed through the corridors, but these weren't signals of Felix's discovery—they were the sounds of liberation.
Gareth had led the soldiers in, and every encrypted door in the facility now slid open under the Resistance’s override codes.
Felix slipped out of the interrogation chamber as the lights flickered and died, plunging the complex into emergency darkness. He moved with instinctive caution, each step deliberate and silent against the cold floor.
Keeping close to the wall, he paused at each corner, tilting his head to listen before sliding forward—a fluid, almost weightless motion that defied the deathly pallor of his skin and the tremor in his hands.
System, he whispered inwardly, which way to the exit?
[Route calculated. Proceed left, then take two rights. Recommend maintaining stealth.]
No kidding, Felix thought, easing around the next corridor with his breath held.
And then—he froze.
A tall, broad-shouldered figure emerged from a cross-passage, moving with swift, silent purpose. It was Gareth, clad in form-fitting tactical gear, a suppressed rifle held at ready.
His eyes—sharp, dark, and focused—scanned the area before locking onto Felix. For a stretched second, neither moved. Then Gareth gave a curt, almost imperceptible nod and continued forward, already shifting back into mission mode.
But Felix’s pain-fogged brain couldn’t help latching onto the most irrelevant detail. As Gareth moved away, Felix blurted under his breath:
“…How is he even that tall?”
Gareth’s step hitched almost imperceptibly—just half a rhythm out of sync—but he didn’t look back.
Seriously,
Felix mentally complained to the system as he finally began moving again,
he probably doesn’t even need a ladder. Just reaches up and eats leaves right off the tree.
From somewhere deep in his mind, Felix heard a faint clk-kshhh—a sound like rusty gears grinding together.
He frowned. ...Are you laughing, system?
The system remained silent.
Whatever, Felix thought, shaking his head slightly.
Who was that guy anyway? The tall, serious-looking one who just passed by?
[That is General Gareth, second-in-command of the Starfall Resistance. Host may recall his name from earlier briefings.]
Vaguely, Felix shrugged inwardly. Doesn't matter. Let's just get out of this nightmare. I've had enough of creepy dark hallways to last a lifetime.
Feeling almost giddy with the prospect of escape, he began humming a soft, aimless tune under his breath—something silly from a commercial he’d seen back on Capital Star.
He even paused to squint at a garish wall sconce shaped like a twisted metal serpent. “Tacky,” he whispered, shaking his head with a faint grin.
Unbeknownst to him, his quiet humming drifted down the hall… right into the audio pickups of Gareth’s comm unit. The general, still clearing adjacent sectors, allowed himself a faint, almost invisible smirk beneath his helmet. The kid had spirit; he’d give him that.
But that smirk vanished a second later.
Without warning, the entire corridor shuddered. The “emergency darkness” hadn’t been their doing at all—it was bait. A deep, resonant hum filled the air as Gravitic Phase Fields activated at both ends of the hallway, sealing everyone inside in an invisible cage of alternating gravity wells.
Then the real lights blared on—harsh and artificial.
A smooth, synthesized voice echoed around them:
“Containment successful. Welcome, General. We’ve been expecting you.”
The walls themselves began to shift, panels sliding back to reveal shimmering energy emitters. They hadn’t just walked into a trap—they’d walked into a tuned gravitational labyrinth, designed specifically to counter Resistance assault patterns.
Felix’s little song died in his throat.
Then, a cold, amplified voice resonated through the chamber, seeming to come from everywhere at once. "You will all die here today. And every death," the voice hissed with venomous precision, "will be courtesy of you, Gareth."
The harsh lights revealed a figure stepping from a newly opened panel in the wall.
Clad in the impeccable uniform of a Stellaris Sovereignty high general, medals glinting coldly on his chest, it was his face—a face etched into the memory of every Resistance soldier—that sent a wave of disbelief through the trapped men......
- Writer
