“Keep it moving.” Rosa said, giving him another shove from behind. Noah had to grab on to one of the walls to not fall over, but did as she said.
Rosa had taken him underground, although that in itself didn’t mean much. The station hall had itself been underground as well. Still, there was a way in which the wide open and well-lit hall screamed “above ground” while the dark and cramped tunnels that ran underneath it convinced his brain that they were now “under ground.”
Of the two, Noah definitively preferred the latter.
His eyes had quickly adjusted to the dim environment, and now that his surroundings were made up of neatly organized tunnels and passageways he found that he could more easily keep his bearings. A result of spending most of his life in environments such as these.
Of course, his relief of being in a more familiar environment was only slightly ruined by the weight of Rosa’s hand on his shoulders. She didn’t drag or push him, the hand was simply a reminder that she was in control. He needed no reminder that she was armed, too.
“This way.” She said, then guided him into another branching corridor, the tightest one yet. After a few meters, the tunnel was narrow enough that even he could barely spread both arms without touching both walls.
A simple sliding door barred the entrance: it was of standard subterranean design: Interlocking parts of sheet metal containing thermal foams, set into rails that would collapse it against the wall instead of sliding into it in order to preserve space. Warning emblems had been burned into the door’s metal surface, and though the colors used to paint them over had almost faded their message was still crystal clear: “Warning: Confined space.” The text read, further punctuated by the icon for asphyxiation. Rosa walked up to the door’s control panel and punched in a code on the numpad. A claxon blared and the door flashed a blue light, indicating that the air beyond was safe.
Despite the system’s assurance, both Noah and Rosa brought their workskin’s rebreathers to their faces before the doors cycled open. It was a reflex bred into both of them, too many early Sindrionites had died to false all-clear signals for their descendants to repeat those mistakes. Air masks pressed to their faces, Noah and his captor entered the hallway, only lowering their rebreathers when their workskins had run an independent test of the air quality and confirmed that it was, in fact, safe to breathe.
The hallway carried on for maybe fifty meters or so, only lit by two out-of-date diode lights. The further one of the two lights even flickered out for a moment every few seconds. It reminded Noah of an insect’s death twitches. A single fan system stood in the center, lazily sucking air in and pumping new air out. The low whine the ventilation produced led Noah to believe this room had not seen much maintenance.
The passage was some kind of fire-suppression storage, from the looks of it. Both walls were lined with rows of CO2-bottles that ran deep into the structure. The bottles were connected to several high-pressure lines that ran through the passageway's ceiling and under the grated floor. If even a single one of those bottles started leaking, the room would probably not be safe to enter without rebreathers for at least a few hours, judging by the state of the fan system.
With how narrow the tunnel was, they were forced to walk single-file. Noah was in front, Rosa right behind him. She still kept her hand between his shoulder blades in a way that fell somewhere between guidance and a threat. Noah’s heart was throbbing so hard he was fairly certain Rosa could feel it with her hand, and if not she could surely hear it. They were an awful long way from other people by now, only those with express purposes ever came down here. It left him wondering what Rosa was planning.
She grabbed him by his collar at almost the same time that he saw that the door on the opposite side of the passageway was welded shut and he felt his blood turn to ice in his veins: It was a dead end. A room no-one had reason to visit except for monthly inspections, no one close enough to hear him, and an armed woman right behind him.
“Stay here.” She said calmly. “That door goes nowhere.”
Noah swallowed, feeling how his throat went dry. Was she going to kill him, after all?.
It seemed like an awful lot of trouble to drag him all the way down here just to execute him, but Rosa did seem to know what she was doing. Perhaps there were hurdles to overcome when trying to murder someone he just didn’t know about.
Rosa pulled her hand off of his back. Probably to line up a better shot, Noah thought to himself. He closed his eyes in preparation of the end and wondered what his final thoughts would be about. He felt them drift to his parents first, he should have been home by now. They were probably worried sick… He wished he could tell them goodbye, but Rosa had taken his dome from him.
Cai’s face appeared next. His brother looked a little bigger than he remembered him, a bit stronger too. They hadn’t talked face-to-face for nearly half a year, so Noah imagined him older and tougher, results of his years in the Academy. His memory-Cai seemed… disappointed? Like he was going to say that Noah should have seen the signs, or that he should have attempted an escape by now. Yeah… that’s what Cai would have done. There was still a chance to try it, to not go out like a coward, but Noah just couldn’t bring himself to move. He stood and awaited his end. He wished he could have at least visited his sister one last time. Although… He thought wryly, I’ll be seeing her soon enough.
A loud clank of metal on metal rang out from behind him and he let out an undignified yelp. At any moment, he expected the flashing pain of a bullet wound to rip through him, but after a few seconds of being fine he realized that he was still in one piece.
Noah finally dared to look behind him. Rosa stared at him with a look of bewilderment. The metal roster that usually covered the fans laid on the floor beside her. Her weapon was nowhere in sight, at least not until Noah noticed the shape of its gip under Rosa’s shirt.
“Wait, you didn’t think I was going to shoot you, right?” She asked after a few seconds. When Noah didn’t respond, her face twisted into something resembling amusement, only to be followed by a moment of shock and then… regret? She quickly turned away to hide her expression and set to work on the fans themselves, pushing the framework they were attached to back like a door.
“In here.” She said with a nod indicating the fan system. Noah had to fight a few seconds to get his muscles to respond. His legs were trembling, his arms refused to obey his commands. It was like he had to convince his own body that it was still alive.
Slowly, he got a little control back over his limbs. He shuffled over to the fan system without taking his eyes off Rosa. Only when he stood directly next to the fan system did he dare to take a look inside: Normally speaking, the air ducts leading to a small room like the one they were in would be too tight for even him to crawl through. This one, it seemed, had been modified so that it could easily fit an adult. That would also explain why the raster and the fans had been loose to begin with. A secret tunnel.
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Noah sat on the edge of the tube and prepared to lower himself when Rosa put her hand on his, making him freeze up.
“Hey.” She said softly. “Look at me.”
Her tone was so gentle and reassuring that Noah had to do a double take. What was the point in her acting nice to him at this point? Still, he turned his head to look up at her.
Rosa wore a fragile smile. Noah could tell that she was forcing herself to curl her lips up, which was weird. She seemed like quite the actor earlier, when she convinced him to take a detour. She stayed quiet for a while, simply looking at him with that fake smile on her face. It made Noah nervous.
“What’s up?” He finally asked.
“I just want you to know that you’re not as deep in shit as you think you are.” She said, then sniffed. Noah gawked at her with eyes wide open. Was she getting emotional? He could hardly believe it, yet the hint of a glitter in her eyes seemed to confirm his suspicion.
“Um… okay…” He simply said, not knowing what to say or do in response. Rosa turned away and made a hand gesture for him to continue, so he did. He pushed himself off the ledge with his hands and fell for about two meters, landing on a studded metal floor. The hydraulics in his semi-active workskin sprung into motion, cushioning most of the fall for his legs.
Noah stepped forward into what seemed to be part of an old maintenance shaft with steel plates welded in place to form a makeshift floor and ceiling and a security door taking up the wall opposite from him.. He felt a draft move past him and looked up to see an air vent– one of normal proportions –set into the ceiling. He had to admit that as far as hidden bases went, this was a pretty clever one. It was tucked away somewhere no one ever came and only accessible through a secret door in an otherwise completely normal room. Noah knew he would never have found it.
He heard a metallic clank, presumably Rosa setting the fans back in place, quickly followed by a heavy thump behind him as she joined him in the shaft.
Rosa stepped forwards and past Noah, any sign of her previous emotions gone. She really did seem to be throwing him for a loop, Noah thought. Either that, or she had just shown him a glimpse of her real emotions. It gave him some hope that her intentions were good, after all. He’d hardly allowed that thought to surface when Rosa’s words threw another wrench into his cogs.
“Open up in there.” She said, rapping her knuckles on the security door. “I’ve got cargo.”
Noah felt like he was stung. One moment things were going to be okay, the next he was cargo? He got himself worked up to the point that he wanted to burst out to Rosa, but at that point the heavy steel door opened and they were greeted by a boy hardly three years Noah’s senior. He had spiky hair with a copper hue Noah was fairly certain was the result of dye. The boy was short, but rugged, like he’d grown up in high gravity. His skin was a fair few shades darker than Noah’s own as well. If Noah had to guess, this boy was an Exo, an offworlder. He was so intrigued by the teenager’s exotic appearance that he had completely missed the gun in his stocky hands.
“By the graces, Rosa!” He said, his voice carrying a hint of annoyance. “Front door not good enough for ya?” He lowered the gun, then stepped aside so Rosa could enter.
“Quit joking around.” She responded, then stepped inside. For a moment, Noah thought she’d forgotten about him, but the guy who answered the door lifted his chin at him.
‘You coming, little man? It gets cold outside.” He said, the slightest hints of a foreign accent showing through his voice. Noah almost wanted to say that he could handle the cold. He had his workskin, after all. He decided against it and followed Rosa through the security door, giving the red-haired teenager a wide berth.
Noah didn’t know what he had been expecting the hideout to be after the long and dirty trek through the station’s underbelly, but it certainly wasn’t this. From the moment he passed through the door, all signs of industrial utilitarianism were gone, replaced by a decor that made him think of old tents and mystical old ladies peering into glass orbs. The ceiling, walls and floor of the surprisingly spacious chamber were all covered in velvety-red carpets and pillows, with a trio lazily floating orbs serving as the sole sources of light. A cloud of billowing, white smoke was dispensed by one of the orbs, dimming out the light a little. The sharp tang of incense hit Noah’s nose not long after and he had to suppress a sneeze.
The door closed behind them with a muffled click that belied its weight, and the teen that had stood guard resumed his post, opening some kind of feed on his dome which he scrolled through with an intense stare.
“Rosa!” A smooth and jovial voice called from the corner of the room. When Noah turned to face the source of the sound, all he saw was a large pile of pillows stacked on top of one another in the corner. Only when the voice spoke again did he notice the head poking out of the pillows, followed by the realization that there were no pillows at all: Only a gravidly obese man sprawled out on some kind of sofa, wearing robes with the exact same color and patterns as the surrounding walls and furniture, which had camouflaged him in the stuffy clouds of incense. “Finally back, eh?” He bellowed, fat chins wobbling with every syllable.
“You got my cargo?”
Rosa scoffed and wrapped one arm around Noah in a shockingly familiar way, pushing him towards the fat man.
“Don’t tell me you’re losing eyesight as quickly as you’re putting on weight, Roke.” She said, then clapped him on the shoulder. “Got him right here.”
Roke, as the man was apparently called, fished some kind of round fruit or sweet from a bowl next to him and pushed it past his lips as he considered Noah.
“Kind of a scrawny one, ain’t he?” He said, then shrugged, the motion hard to see through the many layers of cloth and flesh. “What’s your pitch?”
“He’s a bright kid, in peak physical condition too. Worth at LEAST three times what you paid for my last catch.” Rosa said, casually discussing Noah’s worth as if he wasn’t standing right next to her. Her every word was like a knife through his heart, and he felt tears start to well up. Even after everything… he had somehow still trusted Rosa. He never knew anyone could be so heartless. She’d been so kind, she’d reassured him things would be okay… treated him like cattle being led to the slaughterhouse.
How many others had fallen for her tricks, he wondered? How many other kids had she brought to this smoke-reeking hole to be sold off? His hand twitched. It wanted to move. When he tried it, it obeyed his commands. He’d frozen up before, he didn’t do so now. I don’t know how many of us she got… but I can make sure that I’m the last one. He thought to himself. A serene calmness came over him like a wave. His eyes glanced down to the shape in Rosa’s shirt he knew to be her weapon. He didn’t feel fear looking at it anymore, only determination.
It wasn’t much of a plan, he knew that perfectly well. He had no way out, and he was outnumbered. That mattered little to him anymore. Rosa was still distracted by the negotiations with her boss, and so was he, perhaps he could get them both.
His arm shot forwards, his fingers closing tightly around the grip that had terrified him for hours now. He jumped back and leveled the gun at Rosa’s face. When she looked at him, it was clear she knew the roles were reversed. She was the scared one now.
“Noah…” She began, holding her arms in front of her in a disarming gesture.
He pulled the trigger.