Lifeboat

20. Darkness

Glass containers, more than six feet tall, and at least a foot in diameter, stood in a row across the middle of the room. The entire wall opposite me was composed of glass. I guessed an industrialised version of the material, tough and unbreakable. My life just wasn't that easy.

A dull scrabble of footsteps warned me of the limited time I had, and I rushed over to the left-side wall, pressing and feeling my way along it. Anything under my fingers to give me a clue as to an escape.

There has to be something.

My fingernails splintered under the force of my search. The footsteps were outside the door. The light of the ceiling strip reflected off the bulky central cylinders, their contents pulled my gaze, even if I fought so hard against it.

Nestled inside each of the containers, bodies of raw, unnatural forms slunk down to the bottom. Heads and limbs collected in weird, abnormal shapes. I forced my eyes back to the task at hand.

Breathe, girl. Get a grip.

Automatically, my hands carried on their work, feeling for niches or dents of possibility.

The footsteps had stopped. I froze for a second, held my breath and waited for some sign of what they were up to on the other side of the door. In equal measures of relief and alarm, I heard the scrape of a metallic instrument inside the lock. They would be through it soon.

Move, you idiot!

Forcing my legs and hands back into action, the rhythm of my accelerated heartbeat pulsed in an ever increasing pattern. I realised that my mouth gaped open, sucking in the stale oxygen of the closed room.

Something bubbled in the cylinders behind me.

I kept my fingers searching as my head swivelled round to try and catch the cause of the sound, it was far too lifelike. These things looked dead. Nothing moved. Swallowing, I focused my full attention on the wall.

The sound of a click and my fingers pushed back the wall.

Stunned, I stepped back and watched a section of the granite grind backwards, loudly exclaiming its reluctance on the movement.

A man's hand shot out from the darkness behind the wall and clutched at the loose material of my gown.

Voices at the lock break-in-progress behind me, sped my decision-making skills and I acquiesced to the grasping male digits. In this case perhaps it would be better to trust the devil that I didn't know.

The man's arm pulled me through the gap in the wall, which closed rapidly behind me.

I found myself in pitch black darkness.

He was close. I could hear his breathing, quick, sharp and short. Also with each exhale came a burst of coffee, bitter and strong. Way too potent for his proximity. Woah, this man needed to step back.

I smacked out at the blackness and was rewarded with a solid target, he ushered out a gasp of surprise and a familiar voice.

"Uh! For Christ's sake, watch it, Tyke."

My body lost its weight and gravity, a smile blazed onto my face.

"Dante!"

I flayed my arms around in the dark, praying to strike lucky.
"You're here?"

My right hand struck against the solidity of his body, causing him to grunt.

"Yes, but not for much longer if you keep this up. Can you tell me anything about where you've been?"

"Not really, why can you?"

"If I could, do you think I would be asking?"

I gathered my breath and my self control. Now was really not the time.
"Why don't you try telling me what you remember since we last saw each other?"

"Well said, Tyke. That was on the tip of my tongue. You go first."

Even though we happened to be enclosed together in danger, in what felt like a small space, I had the greatest comfort of knowing that my Dante was here with me. Close, by my side. My tight shoulders physically dropped with the warmth of his body so near, I swear this man could melt glaciers.

"I woke up to a psychopathic nurse trying to inject me, on a gurney, in a black walled room." I took hold of both his arms and pressed tightly. "Now, your turn."

Hesitation filled the air, then Dante's full, deep sonorous voice filled my senses. I paid very little attention to his actual words, and allowed myself to be lost in his placating tones.

"After you got set up in the medical chamber, there was a light, a very bright light, blue I think, then I must have been drugged because I passed out. When I came around, I was alone, here in this room, but the lights were on. I spent, oh, what could have been a day or so, just looking around for a way out. I'm so thirsty. Do you have water? No, of course you don't. Why would they have turned out the lights unless they had wanted me to die? I'm rambling. I'm sorry."

An uneasy sensation crept along my skin at his revelations. This wasn't the Dante I remembered.

"Sorry, but I actually do want to know, do you have water?"

My voice scratched out as parched as his.
"No."
Then, wondering if he had been through a similar scary experience as I had, I wet my lips with my tongue and gave him a proper answer.
"Sorry, but I have no idea how to help you."

"What do you mean by 'you'? We're in this together now."

His words cut with an icy edge. They threw me for a moment. Once I had gathered my emotions and harnessed in the mounting turmoil of panic which threatened to boil over, I spoke calmly and rationally, begging for the real Dante to answer.
"You spent the time looking, but did you also spend it pushing? You obviously found this spring in the wall, it stands to reason that there may be others, right?"

The vicious snap he gave back to me jolted me physically backwards into the solid, cold wall.

"What the hell do you think I've been doing here? Playing with myself? I've touched every God damn inch of this crappy hole and nothing! Okay? Nothing."

Maybe now would not be a good time to reprimand him for his coarseness and bad attitude. I would bide my time for that. Right now, I had to escape. Living emotionally boxed up for the first fifteen years of my known life had taught me well to make the most of the moment. Seize the day. I groped around the walls, systematically sliding my hands from the floor up to as far as I could reach above. Pushing and prodding, willing something to give. Dante must have felt me moving around him in our tight confines, he grunted at me in despair, before launching into a rant of injustice.

"It's useless. There's no way out. The government has left us to rot. They don't want the complications. Why would they? How can we ever get the divisions to work together? And why would they want to? Things are pretty nice for the World Union State. Why rock the boat, ey? Bring back freedom of wildlife and hunting and foraging? Come on, they can't make money out of that. Why should they want it back? Processed foods are safe, disease free, and given to those who truly merit it. No, no, life is better under control. I see it now."

My fingertips slipped into a gully and caught on a latch. After applying pressure, a slit of light and a grind of moving stone rewarded my efforts.

"Dante, you know you don't believe that. Get over yourself." Bolstered by my success, my sass had returned.