Smoking Power

Chapter 37

I snort at Declan's earlier words, "Relax, man, we got this," I mimic in a purposely high-pitched-squeaky-voice for the benefit of Charles and Declan's confused faces to my random snort. Unfortunately our job of finding the red button was significantly harder then we'd already believed. It turns out that it was in the corner in of the steel door and we had to actually hold the button down for three seconds after stopping the six second countdown by pressing the button for the first time. Of course by the time we'd figured that out, the six seconds were long gone.

"Yeah well maybe if you hadn't shoved me out of the, ow!" Declan's words of defence for himself gets paused when his knee crashes into the steel wall next to us, "Out of the way." He finally manages to get out while pausing in the cramped tunnel to rub his bruised knee.

Fortunately, fifteen minutes into our meaningless insults, excessive blaming and speeches of boredom while we waited for one long hour just for the chance to type the password in again, Alfred managed to come up with a not-so-pleasant-plan. Surprisingly enough the crazy-underground-caveman-complex, actually has air vents! Shocker isn't it? Better yet they spread over the whole centre. So what better way to get to the top level then completely skipping the lift and second level, by crawling through a tiny, dirty, stuffy pipe? Through two whole levels? Note sarcasm there.

I sigh as I shuffle around in the cramped space and dust the flakes of rock, sand and goodness knows what else, off my hands. I haven't had a shower in days and it's really starting to become more and more visible. Sure, me looking like a drowned rat that's been coated in muck, isn't exactly my biggest worry at the moment, but I'm more worried about everyone else in this fowl place being able to sniff us out. It wouldn't be hard judging by the horrible smell the envelopes my nose now as I'm stuck behind a slightly stinky Charles and purely revolting Declan.

"Alright guys, it's not far now," Charles says after a moment into our unvoiced decision for a rest, oblivious to my concerns, "We're almost through level two. Up ahead there's the tiny stairs that lead up to level one, which I can tell will be an absolute joy to climb up," He sarcastically says, "But before that I can see an air vent and I want to see what's going on down below."

Declan and I look up from our sore knees that we were inspecting, and nod our heads at Charles in sync, agreeing with his smart idea. Charles doesn't say anything except turn down a tiny tunnel to the left. He crawls a little way before stopping and making room for Declan and I to join him above the tiny window down to the world far below, also known as an air vent.

Straight away my eyes zoom in on the red flashing lights that are placed at corner of every corridor. The alarms are off. It isn't a surprise since I did kinda knew before, but as I actually see the alarms flashing, alerting everyone in the whole facility that we're here, it unnerves me slightly.

Ignoring the repetitive red flashing, I focus on what's actually happening. As far as I can tell we're above a normal hallway. Slightly wider then most of the ones that we walked through before, perhaps, but there's no real action happening at the moment. All the doors aligning the cream coloured walls are closed. In fact, if it weren't for the red blinking alarms, I'd be wondering if this place was deserted.

I momentarily freeze. Clark is the controller and basically, the guy that everyone wants at the moment so he can use the lavapick for their teams behalf. Gareth only wants power which, evidently, involves using the lavapick. To use the lavapick though, you kinda need Clark. But Gareth now knows that we've escaped and that we have more people with us then he had originally planned. In some ways, we're his only real threat aside from Marco who probably wants to kill Clark which will stop anyone from using the lavapick unless by some miracle another one randomly showed up. So what's stopping Gareth from taking his ultimate key to power and moving away from his threats? If he did then that'll explain why this place looks empty.