One

My feet pounded the tunnel ground, propelled faster by fear. Not one person had answered their phones, pagers, not even one text. I tried to calm myself down with the fact that, nine times out of ten, the people at the family reunion would be too occupied to answer a couple of texts. But the little voice at the back of my mind assumed the worst: The new humanoid robot army had found the Varzita’s underground hideout.
When I was near and didn’t hear any sound of a struggle, I allowed myself to relax. The relief was brutally killed when I saw black smoke billowing out of the double door entrance. I walked cautiously inside, still clinging desperately to a tiny strand of hope that there was some rational explanation for what I saw-and choked back a sob.
Bodies littered the floor; not one family member was immediately missing.
And on the on top of the deliberate pile, was a charred, stained lab coat, with Dr. E. Varzita sewn onto the side. And then, in the shadows, something moved. Coming toward me, and I let loose a scream loud enough to-

I woke up, gasping for air. I didn’t open my eyes, in a ritual-like hope that the fire, the manslaughter, the last two years had been a dream. But the rational side of me snickered ‘I told you so’ to the side of me clinging to memories when I opened my eyes, seeing dense forest around me.
I glared at the forest as I packed up. I just couldn’t get used to it. Tunnels upon tunnels were all I’d seen for the better part of my life, most of them halfway to the Earth’s mantle. Fresh air disconcerted me, and bright blue sky blinded me. Though, sadly, I couldn’t think of another way to search for hideouts.
This was very different from my dad, who had grown up in Mother Nature’s arms. His face glowed when he talked about tall trees, designing most inventions after nature’s hand. I unconsciously stopped packing, lost in painful memories. G2, the mutated rodent my dad had created, bit the hand she was in, most likely wanting food. I ignored her. The only thing that could pull me out was a huma-bot, as they were called. Too bad it was exactly that.
~~~
The human-like android emerged from the forest seconds after I had. The old model solar-bike I was riding refused to go any faster, and it saw me.
My heart raced, trying to keep up with the rotating sound of the huma-bot’s blades, which were getting dangerously loud.
I turned my head back to the faint trail, and switched off autopilot. Pushing the hair out of my face, I saw a gaping tunnel in front of me. Against my better judgment, I turned to it. Tunnels usually had twists, and I figured that the bulky thing chasing me wouldn’t corner well.
How wrong I was. Blackness covered the both of us immediately. The night vision goggle showed me that the tunnel continued straight for about another mile. I cringed in fear. No way out of this.
A wall of charges loomed in front of me. I closed my eyes, making the bike go faster, hoping that it wouldn’t be a slow death. When I could still hear the crackling of the wall and the hum of the motorcycle, I opened my eyes and looked around. The robot couldn’t get past the wall, and looked quite comical trying to do so. There was a light up ahead. I shifted the motor muffler into place, and slowed.
I tensed as I got closer and closer, and my jaw dropped when I saw what was at the end of the tunnel: a giant stadium.


Two

“And in second place- 19 year old Alexus Woodson,” said the judge into the microphone headset, placing the silver medal over my neck. I smiled outwardly, but sighed on the inside. Second place-again. No matter how hard I tried, I was always beaten at figure skating by-
“17 year old Vanessa Mor-elli,” the judge said, placing the medal over the 1st place girl’s neck. I was about to step off the podium when I heard a rumbling. I looked at the entrance tunnel, and saw someone was coming down it. I waved my hands, a signal for my glasses to become binoculars, and stifled a gasp.
It took me two seconds to assess the situation. A girl, no older than fifteen, had been chased by a robot down the entrance tunnel. Because no one had been there to meet her, hadn’t been diverted from where the entrance tunnel led: the main stadium, which was where the whole hideout population was at the moment.
For some reason (other than the fact that the middle of the floor was frozen over), I didn’t think it was a good idea for the girl to come riding in here, and I also wanted to release some of the anger at not winning first place, so I killed two birds in one stone: I punched Vanessa Mor-elli.
~~~
I cut the engine completely, and walked cautiously towards the gaping entrance to the rink/stadium. I could see those awards were being given out, to girls ranging from my age (fifteen) to nineteen. Suddenly, the girl on the 2nd place podium looked straight at me, and scowled grimly. She looked from me to something near the ceiling, and back at me, and mouthed, ‘up’. Then she punched the girl on the 1st place podium.
Instant chaos. I pushed my bike behind the stands, and took the stairs to the ceiling two at a time. When I got there, I saw a small door, barely distinguishable from the metal around it. I looked back to the 2nd place girl, and she nodded (while trying to fight the 1st place girl. Key word- TRYING). Quickly, I ducked in, and found myself in a stainless steel laboratory.
I choked back a sob, remembering my dad, then went to explore. There was a giant cloaked tube in the corner of the room. For the time being, I left it alone. To the left of the door, there were eight computers connected to a semi-circle type keyboard…thing.
I jumped when someone said behind me, “You like the room?” I spun around and saw the 2nd place girl. Only, when I had first seen her, she’d been as pale as chalk and had golden blond hair. Now, she had a nice tan and her hair was more of a dirty blond.
“Yeah,” I responded, not relaxing. “Why didn’t you just let me go in? Everybody seemed to be paying attention to the ceremony.”
“Because,” said 2nd place (‘I really need to learn her name,’ I thought). “All people to enter the hideout must have passed a trust test. If they haven’t, they will be shot dead the minute they come in. I don’t let people die if I can do something about it.” She walked over to a couple of hangers attached to the ceiling, took down an ankle length pink shift, and put it on over her figure skating dress.
“Then what do you plan on doing with me?” I asked.
She looked at me like it was obvious, while turning on the computer…s. “I plan on keeping you here, secret of course.” She then turned around and focused on a screen in the bottom left corner of the cluster.
“You can’t just keep me here!” I exclaimed.
The girl looked thoughtful. “You’re right. What’s your name?”
I gaped at her. “That wasn’t what I was talking about!”
“I know. I chose not to answer.” She looked at me. “Are you going to tell me your name or not?”
“Cryptin!” I said, heading to the door.
“I wouldn’t go out there,” said the girl. “People are looking for me, and I’m usually spotted around this doorway.”
I stopped and considered my options. The only thing I had to live for was the little guinea pig asleep in my pocket. I could stay in here, and see how things went. Or I could go out of the lab, and get shot to death. It was a hard decision. “Fine,” I said. “I will stay in here.”
The girl smiled at me. “Great! Just give me a second to find your file and transfer it here.”
I chose not to ask. Fatigue hit me like a speeding motorcycle. Carefully, I laid down, instantly going to sleep.
---
Something poked me in the leg. I curled into a ball, moaning a complaint.
“Get up!” Something smacked me in the back of my head. I cracked one eye open. Standing over me was a boy, about two years older than me. He had crystal blue eyes, with blond hair.
“Wh’rs2ndplacgrl?” I asked, my words more than a little slurred.
“Get out of here, Jonah!” screamed the exact girl I was looking for.
“But-”
“Out!” she said, a lizard-y undertone to her voice. A door was hurriedly slammed behind who I suspected was Jonah. “Up!” said the girl. “Upupupupup!” She successfully pulled me off of the floor.
I got up and brushed myself off, noticing that I was in a sleeveless silver shift. “Why, and where’s my stuff?” I thought of another question. “And what’s your name?”
The girl groaned, rolling her eyes. “My name’s Alexus Wood, your stuff’s in the cubby over there-” She pointed to a wall to the right of the lab door. “And I will explain when you have packed your stuff in a standard bag and are ready to go to your dorm.” She turned around and headed out the door.
I looked around, dazed. The walls seemed fragile, like you could throw paper at it and it would topple. Goosebumps popped up on my arm as I realized that my only possessions were a lab coat, a debit card, and- “G2!” I exclaimed, running to the cubby. I skidded to a halt as a podium rose up in front of me, with G2 in the middle of a bath. The mutant rodent noticed me, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear that it was glaring at me.
“Sorry,” I squeaked. An idea popped into my head. “I need some clothes,” I said, enunciating my words. A section of the cubby wall popped out, followed by two closets worth of dresses, pants, body suites, and shoes, all for ice-skating or for working in a lab. I selected a blue and black ice skating dress that I thought wasn’t too showy, along with some stockings and sneakers. Then I said, “I’m finished.” The closet rolled back into the wall.
I smiled. “Clothes,” I said, and the closet rolled back out. “I need a bag.” Another compartment revealed itself with duffel bags, back packs, sleeping bags, and some I couldn’t even name.
I chose the duffel, stuffing in it three other dresses, a pair of chem-shoes, skates, and some other stuff that I thought would be useful.
“I’m finished,” I said, then started to think about how I could tell Alexus I was finished. She didn’t have to think for long. Alexus came back into the room and said, “Good thing I hosed you down the night before.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, hefting the bag onto my shoulder. Then all of what she said clipped me over the head. “Last night? Just how long have I been asleep?”
“Well you came in here around noon, so that would be exactly-”
“Alexus!” I said, annoyed.
“So impatient,” she muttered. “It’s seven o’clock, and you have been asleep since one yesterday.”
“One!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t you wake me.”
“Because you wouldn’t’ve had anything to do, and you seemed tired!” said Alexus. “And anyways, I need to know: are you staying in the capital hideout?” The woman actually looked hopeful, though for what I couldn’t imagine.
I rolled my eyes. “Until I get sick of all the ice.”


Three

“I’ve uploaded fake files of you to the main database,” said Alexus as we walked briskly out of the stadium. “You will show up as Crypia Tin, since I didn’t know your last name.” She looked at me pointedly, but continued before I could get a word in.
“You came from a hideout up north, no family, and you do two things-You are a Renaissance Recreation Engineer and an amateur figure skater.” She paused. “Do you know how to figure skate?”
“No,” I said, thinking that that would be the end of it. How wrong I was.
---
“Hurry up!” exclaimed Alexus, surefooted-ly heading to wherever they were going.
I jogged after her, panting under the weight of my “new” stuff. I’d given up trying to keep track of the twists and turns, only trying to keep up with Alexus.
Suddenly, she stopped. “Here we are!” she exclaimed, sounding as excited as a child in a room of replicating candy. I looked at the room we’d come to. It was about the size of the main room of a house, but looked like a natural cave. I smiled. Traditional underground was my court.
“What do you think?” asked Alexus, sounding again like the afore mentioned child.
Looking around, I saw that the walls of the cave were coated in a layer of clear diamond, underneath of which was black stone. Stalactites and stalagmites made a path down the sunken floor to the cave, where a frozen waterfall forever fell into a naturally beautiful frozen pond.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Why are we here?”
“So I can teach you how to ice-skate,” said Alexus. She tackled me before I was halfway out the door.
“Get…off…me!” I grunted, beating at any part of her I could find.
“No!” she exclaimed. She hauled me up, and I saw the way we’d come was now smaller than a flash drive. “I need you to learn ice-skating!”
“Why?” I snapped. “I don’t even like it! Why didn’t you consider the fact that you know next to nothing about me when signing up for the position of entertainer!”
Alexus looked stunned, and…hurt. She looked away, pulling a veil of hair (which, along with her skin, was getting darker by the second) in between us. “I wanted company,” she said sheepishly.
The way she said it made me instantly guilty. “I…-”
“No,” she said. “Don’t say anything. I shouldn’t have done it in the first place.” She turned around and sped through the entrance, which grew to allow her, then it closed until it was just three feet in diameter.
I sighed. The first day here and I’d already offended someone. ‘Might as well try.’ I had nothing to lose, and I owed Alexus that much. ‘I really shouldn’t be getting attached to her.’
Groaning, I forced the skates onto my feet, taking my first wobbly steps out onto the ice. There was nothing to hold onto, so, naturally, I fell.
Getting to my feet, I heard someone laugh. Thinking it was Alexus, I began to tell her off, but the words died in my throat when I saw it wasn’t Alexus, but the same boy who had been in Alexus’s lab earlier. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“What does it look like?” I snapped.
“Well to me,” he said, stepping out onto the ice. I noticed that his high-tops had blades attached to them. “It looks like your wobbling and falling on your butt. But, considering I just saw Alexus run by-” I winced. “-I’d say you were trying to teach yourself to ice-skate.”
“Yes,” I said. “I am. So if you don’t mind…” I turned around and stomped to the miniature space behind the waterfall. I jumped when I saw him skate smoothly in through the other opening.
“Actually, you look like you need help,” he said.
“Then wouldn’t Alexus be the best one to help me?” I asked, strangely not wanting him to stay.
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “But she has a competition in one hour, which is why, I guess, she rushed out of here so quickly.”
“Well…” I said, trying to make myself agree with him. I’d never been good at lying.
“What did you do?”
“I might of...in some way...maybe...offended her.” The last part was mumbled.
“You did what!” He skated back out of the small space, swearing under his breath. I skated after him, trying not to think about falling. When I caught up I punched him in the arm. He swung around, glaring at me. Suddenly I felt very small. “What was that for?”
“Two things. I hate people swearing, and what did I do that was so bad?”
He clenched and unclenched his fist, eyes smoldering with fury. “Ice skating is big here-extremely big. Alexus’s performance depends on the mood she’s in, more so than anyone else. Mostly-psychologically-because of something that relates to your dad! And-”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,” I said. “What does this have to do with my dad?”
He looked at me strangely, and then something seemed to click in his head. “She didn’t tell you.” He smiled, looking bemused. “Then she actually wanted to...”
I was about to explode from curiosity. “What do you mean!”
He jumped, seeming to have forgotten I was there. “Looks like if you don’t find a way to make it up to Alexus, then you will ruin the first real friendship that you have here.”
“How?” I asked, furiously irritated with the boy.
“I can’t tell you,” he said simply.
“What!” I exclaimed, loud enough to shake the smaller stalactites. Two years worth of bottled up emotion came crashing down through that simple word. “You dragged this whole thing out, telling me it was my father’s fault, whom I’m sure you don’t know personally, and your not going to tell me!” I raised my foot, making as if to hit him, but drove the blade into the waterfall, smiling savagely as it shattered.
Jonah blanched at my display of brutality, but quickly concealed it. “Well someone has a temper.” He skated toward the entrance.
“Wait!” I clambered after him. “Can’t you tell me anything?”
He turned around, spraying ice bits in a wide arc. None got on his black jeans and sweater. “If you apologize,” he said testily.
I ground my teeth. He deserved one, but I didn’t want to give it. “Sorry,” I said. “Now spill.”
“Impatient, too,” he muttered. I glared at him. He sighed. “Your father was called here, because back then he’d been known for coming up with the cure for the common cold. Another disease was going around, nicknamed the Morgue Magnet.” He sat down on a rock cliff, and I decided to sit down beside him. “The disease was unnoticeable until the last few weeks you have to live. When that time comes, your skin will start changing color to conceal you with your surroundings, and you start sounding like a snake. This is to hide your body when you die. Guess who was the first victim.”
My eyes widened, thinking back to when I thought Alexus’s skin changing was just a trick of the light. “You mean Alexus is going to die?” I squeaked.
“No,” he said. “Your dad cured the disease, but the side affects never went away for Alexus. He theorized that it was because of the cold of the ice rinks, which, as you know, Alexus spent so much time in. She told my sister that she was okay that the side affects didn’t go away, but I think differently.” His eyes widened, and he swore again. I scowled. “My sister!” He took off running toward the entrance, hopping lithely through it. I clambered after him.
I didn’t ask questions, didn’t even know if I was supposed to be following him. All I did was throw off my skates besides his discarded ones and try to keep up.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 30.10.2009

Alle Rechte vorbehalten