WANTED: The Human known as Flame. Wanted for crimes against the Alliance including insurrection, treason and murder. Dead or Alive. 13000 credit reward.
-The Alliance Department of Security
---------------------------------------------------
Doctor Tomas paused in the doorway and raised a finger to his lips. He glanced back towards the hall, footsteps nearly stomping down the soft green carpet as Flame headed away from the room and their little group. Doctor Tomas still didn’t speak though, letting the door slide shut behind him as he stepped further into the room.
Maggie opened her mouth to say something, but Doctor Tomas raised his hand and shook his head. “It’s good to see you awake Maggie, how are you feeling?”
“How am I feeling?” There was a note of panic to her voice, sweat beading along her forehead. He couldn’t be serious! After what she had just heard? Flame had basically just ordered him to kill her!
“Yes, did you sleep well?” Doctor Tomas picked up one of the crystal datapads, writing on it rapidly. The strange obsidian pen barely making a sound against the surface. Maggie leaned forward slightly to read what it said when he held it up.
Play along.
“I- I slept alright, I just had some bad dreams.” She said uncertainly. Play along? Did he have a plan? Could she even trust him? She gave herself a mental shake. She had to trust someone out here, and Robin, Doctor Tomas and Theseus seemed to be the best bets. She certainly couldn’t trust Flame, she wanted her dead! Hadn’t she been acting cooperative? She had been going to her job, meeting people, even doing things like going to concerts! Wasn’t that enough to convince Flame that she didn’t have to kill her?
Apparently not, if she had to go by what she had heard outside the door.
“Bad dreams are a common occurrence with the Keys unfortunately. Do you want to talk about them?” Doctor Tomas erased the datapad and picked up Robin’s. He started to write into it rapidly, a deep frown on his face.
“Doc?” Robin asked, his own forehead wrinkled.
“They were- I was someplace really cold, and there was this weird little girl. She said they’re coming. But I don’t know who or what.” Maggie leaned over to try and look at what he was writing, but she couldn’t quite make it out.
“Interesting. Have you dreamt of anything else?” Doctor Tomas lowered his voice to nearly a whisper, speaking to them both. “You have to get off this station as soon as possible. I’m not sure how long I can stall her.”
“Uhm-” Maggie looked at Robin. “Just that last night. I think it was last night? How long was I asleep?”
“Just shy of two days. Your body needed the rest after going through so much stress. But with the integration of the Key you should be nearly fully healed. Maybe even better than before.” Doctor Tomas glanced at the door, silent for a moment. Then he nodded, as if he was satisfied by something. He returned to the whisper. “I’ve written down the dock you need to go to. Don’t go back to your pod. Don’t stop to talk to anyone. Avoid the main halls.”
“Doc, what is going to a dock going to do? And the one you want us to go to, are you sure?” Robin whispered. “And what about you? She’s going to know.”
“She might, but I won’t be here to listen to her yell. I have some people to talk to, Flame is becoming increasingly erratic.” Doctor Tomas frowned slightly, a touch of sadness entering his eyes. “I think I know why, but I can’t be sure, not yet. But it doesn’t matter right now, you need to leave.”
“Where are we even going to go? Isn’t she the head of your Liberty Coalition thing? Won’t she find us?” Maggie forced her voice to a whisper. She didn’t want to just leave! She had just gotten here, just started to get used to things here!
“I’m sending you where she won’t be able to reach you, but where I hope you’ll be safe.” Tomas raised his voice to a normal level and handed Maggie back the datapad. “I’m just going to make you a mix of vitamins, and something to help you sleep. Go ahead and lay back down for now. Your body is still going to be weak for some time.”
Maggie looked down at the datapad, a map highlighted on the screen that wound through corridors and up lifts she had never taken before. They had gone to the towers once or twice, but always through the main corridors and lifts. These all seemed like service corridors, they were so narrow compared to the main ones.
Doctor Tomas pulled Maggie’s shoes and clothes out of a closet, handing them to her. “Get dressed and go.” He whispered, and then headed out of the room.
Robin and Maggie exchanged glances, Maggie’s heart pounding. At least the awful heartburn was gone, but that didn’t help everything else. “Turn around.”
“You know this isn’t how I actually see, right?” Robin asked, one corner of his mouth turning up in a smile before he turned around so his back was to her.
“Are you saying I should hide your tablet under a pillow then? Don’t look!” She started to change as fast as she could, but it was still too slow. If she moved too fast she was overtaken by a wave of dizziness that felt like it took forever to go away. Bending over to put on her shoes was the worst part. She nearly passed out trying to pull them on.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“I’m just saying I could look even with my back turned, if I wasn’t such a gentleman of course.”
“Of course. Shrink your gentleman self down a bit.” Maggie shouldered her bag, her hands shaking as she looked at the map. “Which way do we go out of here?”
“Left.” Robin shrank down to the size of a thumbnail, and stood on the tablet. “Down the hall and another left to get to the service corridors it looks like. I wonder who he’s sending us to. He has to have someone in mind.”
“I don’t know, you’ve met everyone I know out here.” The door slid open, and Maggie peeked out, looking both ways down the hall before turning left and hurrying along the thin green carpeting that marked the medical bay. “The only person I could think of is Davian, he has his own ship, doesn’t he?”
“No, he travels with his unit usually. I think he just said that to impress you. Turn here.”
“Oh. Theseus isn’t back, is he?” Maggie turned down a slightly dimmer hallway that snaked around behind the patient rooms. She stepped over a cleaning bot, trying to walk faster without looking too conspicuous. She didn’t want to run, that was sure to grab attention.
“No. Even if he was he wouldn’t be docked in one of the towers.”
Three more twisting turns led them to a small service lift. Nothing so fancy as the one she had ridden with Theseus the first day here, with it’s stained glass. This one was little more than a metal and glass cage that zipped along up through the levels of the station. “Maybe he just expects us to sneak onto a ship?”
“Maybe. But he said he was sending you somewhere he thought you would be safe. No matter what kind of excuse you have, sneaking onto a ship is not safe.”
Suddenly, the tablet screen turned red, an alarm blaring out of it.
“Shit!” Maggie slammed her finger against the button for volume, frantically trying to silence it. She was not going to just leave Robin here! She couldn’t, she didn’t want to be alone out here! But if the tablet, datapad, whatever the hell you wanted to call it, kept blaring like that they were going to attract attention.
“Hang on, it’s alright, it’s going to be fine!” Robin’s form flickered rapidly as he paced across the screen, the map disappearing completely for a moment. His eyes widened, and his already pale blue face took on a sickly pallor. “Hold on, I’m going to override the lift.”
“You’re going to what?” Maggie stumbled as the lift jerked to a stop. “Why are we stopping?”
“Flame. I don’t know how she found out so quickly... there’s no way Doc Tomas set us up!” Robin’s form disappeared, only to reappear floating in front of the control panel for the lift.
Just as suddenly as they stopped, the lift was flying through the tubes of Galaux Station again, faster than Maggie had ever felt them go before. She grabbed ahold of one of the railings, holding on tight as the station sped by. “Are you sure it’s her?”
“Who else would it be?! Doc Tomas? I don’t know what’s going on but the sooner we get out of here the better. We’re almost to the level Doc told us to go to. Be ready to run.”
“Run? That’s going to attract a lot of attention! And what if Doc Tomas is setting us up?” She had to trust someone, she thought she could trust the doctor, but what if she was wrong?
She was certain she could trust Robin. She could even trust his brother, although she wasn’t sure she could like him. Couldn’t they trust the doctor too?
“I’d believe Flame want’s to kill you sooner than I’d believe Doc Tomas would want to set us up. Get ready, we’re going to stop!”
The warning had barely left Robin’s lips before the lift slammed to a halt as if it had hit something. Maggie stumbled, falling to her knees. The lift slid open onto a slightly wider corridor lit with emergency lighting.
“Come on Maggie, we need to go.” He was suddenly there in front of her, full-sized and lifting her to her feet. “I don’t think the station will be fooled to staying on emergency power for long.”
“How- did you do that?” Maggie stood unsteadily, and started to run. She looked down at the datapad, turning a corner as Robin appeared on the screen again, tiny as before.
“I don’t sleep, I’ve had a lot of time to poke around the stations systems.” Robin said.
The corridors up here were slightly wider, slightly nicer than the ones down in the bowels of the station. they smelled less like laundry detergent and more like the sea. Maggie dove around a corner, her breath like fire in her chest. It had been too long since she had really exercised. She was supposed to be exercising daily according to Doctor Tomas’s directions, but, well, who wasn’t supposed to exercise according to their doctor? That didn’t mean people actually did it. Bad enough he had her on a regimen for water and vitamins.
“One more corner, we’re almost there.” Robin looked over his shoulder.
“Thank God.” Maggie panted as she dove around the corner, and into a large hall with deep blue carpeting and ocean motifs on the walls. There was even a statue, one of the otter people, a Silvarian, holding up crystal orb. Other races gathered around the rock it stood on, looking up at the Silvarian in reverence.
It reminded Maggie of some of the religious statues she had seen growing up. Except this wasn’t Jesus, it was some furry alien. “What the- this doesn’t look like the docking bay Theseus landed in.”
“It’s not, it’s one of the bays for ships that are too big or important to go in the docks like everyone else. There’s a door on the far end, that’s our goal.” Robin’s voice was tense, and he scanned the room. It was oddly empty except for a lone human cleaning up what looked like a sushi bar.
“Right.” Maggie pinpointed the door, a round bubble, its prismatic surface hiding what lay on the other side. She took a deep breath that stabbed at her lungs. “Right. We’re home free.”
“Not yet you aren’t.” Flame’s voice growled from behind them, and there was a high-pitched hum.
“Maggie watch out!” Robin was suddenly full-sized, moving as quick as thought to push Maggie out of the way of the laserbeam that shot from Flame’s gun. It cut straight through his holographic form, scorching the carpet beyond. “RUN!”
“Shit! Shitshitshit.” Maggie stumbled before breaking into a run for the weird bubble. What if there was just space beyond it? What if it was something or someone else that wanted to kill her? She clutched onto the tablet that held Robin’s conciousness, another laserbeam shooting straight past her face, burning through her hair and leaving a burning mark along her cheek.
She was so close to the door, air burning in her lungs, heart pounding in her ears. The bubble telescoped open, showing a grey-furred Silvarian in long blue and silver robes.
It paused as a shot zipped by over it’s head, another one that just barely missed Maggie.
Thank God she was trained by the same people that trained movie henchmen!
She stumbled in through the door just as Flame got lucky.
Her back exploded with pain, and she screamed, falling forward as the smell of burnt flesh, cloth and hair filled the wide hallway. Robin’s form disappeared as the tablet skidded away, part of it looking like it had melted.
“NO!” Flame screamed in rage behind her as the door telescoped closed.
“Lift off!” The Silvarian yelled to someone she couldn’t see. Not that it mattered. The burning was starting to fade into icy coldness, the edges of her vision growing dark.
The strange otter creature waddled over to her, kneeling down to look her in the eyes. It spoke, but she couldn’t quite hear what it said. She couldn’t quite hear anything but the lonely howl of wind.
And then with a gust of snow, she couldn’t see anything but white.