Deadlocked 5 (14 page)

"All right, good job. Now let's go before they find out we escaped."

Hailey pushed the door open just enough to peer through. I stood behind her and tried to look over her, but she pulled the door closed before I had a chance to see anything. "We've got a problem."

"What?" I asked as she started to move back down the hallway, away from the door.

"There are men coming this way." She took my hand and led me to the first short hall that branched off from the one we were on. We sprinted across the expanse to the window that looked in on someone else's Ready Room. We ducked down beside the mirror and I glanced inside to see a friend, River Dawn, looking into the mirror and pulling down the skin under her eye. She was oblivious to what was happening on the other side of her mirror as she preened herself.

I heard the door open and heavy boots enter the hall we'd just fled. Hailey laid flat on the floor and motioned for me to do the same. We stayed low and watched as the men walked hurriedly past this hall.

"Do you think they're going to your room?" asked Hailey.

"Let's not stick around to find out."

We got up and walked as quietly as we could down the hall. We looked in the direction the men had walked and saw them turn the corner that led to my room. It wouldn't take them long to realize we'd escaped. There wasn't time to consider the safest route, and we rushed back to the large metal door they had come through. Hailey opened it and slipped through before me. We closed the door before I had a chance to study the new room.

It was packed with tables, chairs, and computers. The room was about half the size of the Common Room, and there were multiple doors throughout. Strands of wire hung down from the ceiling and connected to the tables where the computers were set up.

"How are we supposed to get out of here?" I asked as I looked around the cluttered room.

Hailey pointed to a hall on the other side from us. "Maybe we should take the hall with the big glowing 'Exit' sign above it." She smirked at me as we headed that way.

"No need for sarcasm, beautiful," I said. "I didn't see the sign."

"No? Was it too big and glowing for you?"

"Stop it." I pushed at her back as we ran along.

We reached a series of metal doors that had a button on the side that pointed
up. When we pressed the button a circle of light appeared around it, but nothing else seemed to happen. Soon after, Hailey discovered a door that led to a staircase nearby. We went in, but just before the door closed behind us I heard a bell chime from the room we had left. I leaned back, stopped the door from closing behind me, and looked through the small gap to see what had caused the noise.

Men in armor, carrying weapons similar to the one used to blow the head off the man in the Common Room, came out of the doors that the button was beside. I cringed and eased the door
of the stairwell closed.

"What is it?" asked Hailey from above and I hushed her as I snuck up the stairs.

"There were more men down there," I whispered.

"Do you think we're being silly by sneaking around? Should we just go tell them that we want to go to the surface?"

I shook my head emphatically. "No."

"Why not? They let Paris and Echo leave. Why wouldn't they just let us go too?"

"We were just talking about that, Hailey. We don't know that they just let them leave. For all we know, they blew their heads off like they did that guy in the Common Room."

She nodded in agreement and we started to ascend the stone steps. We didn't make it far before an explosion shook the walls. We braced ourselves and then stared at one another once the rumble had ended. The lights flickered
, threatening to leave us in darkness before sputtering back to life. Dust and bits of stone fell down on us as the walls absorbed the blast. Before we could ponder the event, a shrill alarm rang out through the entire Facility.

"What is that?" Hailey had to scream over the alarm. "What happened?"

"I don't know, let's keep going."

There was another explosion, but this one felt further away and we didn't have to stop to steady ourselves. We passed several doors on our way up, but decided it would be best to continue moving toward the surface for as long as we could.

A door opened several floors below us and a woman screamed in pain and desperation. She cried out for help and we stopped, silently debating whether or not we should do something. The stairs rose in ten foot increments inside of the square shaft, and we couldn't see the woman when we looked over the railing. We could only hear her tortured gasps as she struggled to live. There was another voice that didn't speak, but growled and roared. I didn't understand what was happening, but Hailey decided to ignore the woman's pleas and continue upward. She saw that I had paused on the stairs and came back down to grab my hand and pull me onward.

The door on the landing just above us opened and a woman in blue stepped into the stairwell. I recognized her as one of our Instructors, and the validation of her existence as something other than a digital representation was hard for me to fathom. It was almost as if a ghost had walked out in front of us.

She didn't see us at first and was intent on climbing the stairs, but when she turned to take her first step up she caught sight of us below. "What the fuck?" The woman pointed a tool at us that looked similar to the weapons that the men had carried but was much smaller. "How did you get in here?"

"We just want to go to the surface," said Hailey in desperation. "We don't care about being Graduat
es. We just want to get to the Surface."

The Instructor seemed amused. "Wouldn't we all?" Her tone made me wonder if the Instructors were forced to live underground their entire lives as well.

"Can you take us?" I asked.

She grimaced and pointed the weapon at us with more insistence. "Girls, it's not safe in here right now. You need to go back down to your rooms."

Another explosion rocked the walls and we all stumbled as we tried to brace ourselves. Dust and small chunks of the wall rained down on us.

"What's going on?" I asked. "What are these explosions?"

"A terrorist attack."

"What's that?" asked Hailey, neither of us had ever heard the word 'terrorist' before.

"A rebel."

We were befuddled. The word 'rebel' was also foreign to us.
I would later come to realize the people running the Facility had excised all words from our studies that hinted at any sort of rebellion.

She got frustrated and rushed an explanation. "There's a group of people on the Surface that are trying to kill us. Do you understand that? They're dropping explosives into the vents and one of them destroyed a containment unit that was holding," she paused and struggled to explain. "Holding some bad people in it."

"Why are they…" my question was cut short by the angry roar of a man below us. Hailey and I turned to see a bloodied, haggard man climbing the steps behind us. We screamed and ran up, past the Instructor as she yelled at us to move out of the way.

The man below was dressed in a blue suit and had white skin that was splattered with blood. His black hair was wet and there was a gash on the side of his head that ran from over his ear down to his jaw. I could see his teeth between the flaps of skin along his wound. Saliva and blood oozed over his lips and out of the hole in his face.

Our Instructor aimed her weapon at the creature and took several shots, but the man below was unfazed. He scrambled up the stairs, using both his hands and feet as if he were an animal and not a man. He gripped the Instructor's foot as she continued to shoot her weapon into his shoulders in an attempt to hit him in the head. Finally, one of her shots hit the mark and the man's face slammed against the stair as brain matter spilled out from the wound. His body went limp and he slid down the staircase, his chin cracking against each step as he went.

The Instructor pushed her blonde hair to the side as she panted and looked at us. "Come on. We need to get you back down where it's safe."

Hailey laughed at the suggestion. "Down there?" She pointed down the stairs. "I'm not going back down there."

"Yes you are." The Instructor raised her weapon and pointed it at Hailey.

I snatched the barrel and pushed it up. The Instructor fired and I felt the heat and concussive force of the weapon as she jerked it away. She regained control of her weapon, but lost her balance in the process. Her foot slipped off the stair and she fell backward. She tried to grasp at the railing, but she tumbled over and rolled before collapsing onto the body of the man she'd killed. When she landed we heard a man growl from below.

The Instructor was dazed and had lost her grip on her weapon. I couldn't see where it was on the landing where the Instructor and her victim were laying. The groaning voice came from a man on the stairs that led up to where our Instructor had fallen. He was crawling, using only his arms as his legs dragged uselessly behind him.

He snagged his fingers on our Instructor's pants and used his grip to pull himself forward, which also dragged her toward him. She awoke from her daze and gasped at the sight of the man at her feet. She tried to find her gun, but couldn't and started to furiously kick at the creature that was crawling over her.

"Help!" She screamed out to us and I took a step down to try and help her, but Hailey held me back.

"We need to go."

I looked at Hailey in shock as she pulled my arm. "We can't leave her," I said as our Instructor cried out in pain.

"Yes we can, and we're going to. Now come on."

I took one last look down at the woman as the creature crawled over her. She was pushing at his chin as he snapped his jaws and clawed at her cheeks. His fingers invaded her mouth and he started to pull her jaw open. I didn't see what happened after, but as w
e ran up the next set of stairs I heard the woman's jaw pop and her scream turned to a gurgle.

The staircase came to an end at a set of double doors that were painted red. It had been a long climb, but not long enough to tire us out. We took a moment to look over the railing to see if we were being followed, but nothing revealed itself. Hailey unfurled the bloody towel that was wrapped around her hand and draped it over the railing.

"Are you ready?" asked Hailey as she set her hand on a long, horizontal bar that stretched across one of the doors.

"There's no turning back now. Do you think this is the Surface?"

"I hope so." She pushed the door open and I held my breath in anticipation. I'd dreamed of this moment my entire life. We'd seen thousands of pictures of a beautiful Surface, with towering trees, a blue sky, and beautiful people living in open-air habitats. The prospect of seeing it in real life was exhilarating.

Hailey opened the door enough for us to peek through. My heart sank when I saw yet another grey hallway.

This hall was much larger than any I'd seen before, and stretched at least fifty feet across. There were walkways on either side that were lined with a railing and a wide, flat area stretched out between them. There was a straight yellow line painted in the center of the larger section and the entire hall was filled with the sound of fans revolving above, creating a deafening hum that challenged even the shrill alarm that still whirred.

Another noise grew louder as we stared through the door. It was similar to the sound of the fans that lined the top of the massive corridor, but it was growing louder as we stood there. The small opening that Hailey held between the doors didn't allow me to look to the left, to where the sound originated, but I could see that there was a light on the concrete that was getting brighter
as the noise grew louder. Then a beastly machine rumbled past us. It rolled along on a series of wheels that were nearly as tall as me and there were pipes sticking up from it that had black smoke billowing from them. The smoke clouded the air and floated into our stairwell, causing us to choke as we tried not to cough. I turned away to keep the smoke from getting in my eyes and then caught sight of something moving on the stairs below us.

It was one of the bloodied men that seemed to infest the Facility. He was standing, but moved slower than the others. His skin was wrinkled and dark, as if he was covered in ash, and his right leg dragged as he stumbled up the stairs. He grasped Hailey's bloody towel and pressed it against his lips as he continued to stare at me.

"Hailey," I whispered. "Get out."

"What?" She turned to argue with me, but then saw the man below us. She took my hand as she pushed the door open wider. We crouched low and closed the door behind us.

The hallway we were in was much larger than I had thought. To our left, there was no end in sight. The hall just disappeared in a haze of black as it seemed to stretch on forever. To the right, in the direction the vehicle had gone, I saw a glimmer of bright light far in the distance.

"Hold up." We heard the faint sound of a man's voice ahead. As he spoke, the vehicle in the center of the hall slowed down and an awful squealing noise came from it as it rumbled to a stop.

Hailey led the way as she moved to the railing and squeezed through. She dropped down a couple feet to the paved area that the vehicle had driven down and waved for me to follow. Then she stayed low and rushed to stand beside one of the vehicle's towering wheels.