Mr. Forgettable #Wattys2016

9

Jacob didn't understand what was happening to him. He thought he had won their little chase. He had reached Larkin and cornered her. There was no way she could escape.

As he sunk through the asphalt of the alleyway, he frantically glanced around. No words could come out of his mouth as he slowly disappeared from the world above. He felt light as a feather as Larkin took him below ground.

When his body was clear of the earth above, he abruptly dropped the rest of the way to the floor.

Jacob landed in a heap and let out a muffled groan. He glanced up and saw Larkin standing over him in her super suit, smirking.

"That was so unfair," he complained, standing up and dusting off his khaki shorts.

Larkin smiled. "I win." She then turned-tail and began to skip down the dimly lit hallway.

Jacob called out for her to wait, so she skipped at a slightly less strenuous pace. As he began to follow her, he noticed his surroundings. The walls were a pale grey color, lined with a type of corrugated metal. The occasional LED bulb would light the tunnel. The floor was plain dirt, brown and dirty as it should be. There were no doors or turns in sight. He wondered if it ever ended.

After what had to have been at least ten minutes of moderate jogging, Jacob pulled himself to a stop behind Larkin.

"Is this it?" he asked. There wasn't a door anywhere in sight. Not even a crack in the walls to speak of. "If your top secret hideout is a tunnel that doesn't have any rooms attached to it, why didn't we stop back where you dumped me on the ground?" He could see the end of the tunnel from here. Only a few steps further and they would run into a wall of dirt.

Larkin smirked again, and, at this point, Jacob decided that she did that much too often.

"You see, this is my secret hideout," she explained, putting emphasis on secret. "No one is supposed to have access to this place except for the one and only Coalescence. Now come on. I don't want to spend all night here. I do have to be home tomorrow, or my parents will know something's up."

She held out her palm for Jacob to hold onto.

"I don't need to hold your hand," he scoffed. Jacob's pride clouded his understanding.

"If you want to stand out here, then no, you don't. If you wish to go in my secret lair, then I suggest you stop being a baby," she quipped. Larkin didn't waste another second before taking his hand in hers and stepping through the wall.

Again, Jacob felt the unnerving sensation of being lighter than he really was as he was dragged through a no-longer solid object. How fun. Twice in one day, he thought.

()()()

It only took Larkin a couple of seconds to step through the wall into her secret base. She felt Jacob stumble along after her.

"That is very disconcerting. Please warn me next time," he whined.

"Look at you, using big words," she quipped. Larkin dropped his hand and stepped into the interior of her base, her home away from home.

She walked over to a stiff backed chair in front of a double monitor computer and sat down. Jacob simply stood where she had left him, gaping. She had to admit, her base was pretty impressive.

The two of them stood on the main level, deep in the earth. The room was perfectly square, with an extremely high ceiling. Jacob craned his neck to look up at the girders and catwalks crossing the ceiling. At the same level as the catwalks, massive glass cases hugged the walls. Jacob would come to learn that they were stuffed with an assortment of odds and ends. At ground level, a desk sat in one corner. Next to the desk, a projector sat with a stack of newspapers on top. There was also an enormous bookshelf, filled to the very edges. There were various news clipping hanging in frames on the walls, all relating to heroes or villains in some way.