Subject 0017

Chapter Two.

She couldn't believe this. The only people that she genuinely loved and trusted in this world, gone. No, she wouldn't believe this. He had to be wrong. She glanced at him once more, trying to decipher whether his information was accurate or not. Who even was he? Why was he helping her? This boy, man, whoever he was, just stood there, offering her a way out of this hell-hole, knowing full well that he would be putting his own life at risk by doing so. It had to be a trap.

"Escape now, think later! We don't have time!"

That brought her back to reality. Suddenly, nothing mattered. Not her parents' death, not her powers, not the other human stood before her, none of it. The only significant thought in her mind right now was running away from this lock-up that she had been forced to call a home for over two years. The Boy-man was right. Any answers that she wanted and needed could be obtained later, now wasn't the time.

So she ran.

He could practically visualise the cogs inside of her head spinning. Her internal voice must have finally made a decision as she started to move, at first towards the furthest side of the room, away from him. He thought that she was refusing the offer to escape – too scared, or maybe she didn't trust him enough, or simply because she might have liked being alone – until she turned around after picking up an almost microscopic white oblong object, and ran towards him. Ungracefully, she grabbed his left wrist and looked at the watch. "Just over one minute left. Let's go"

He was momentarily stunned until his reflexes kicked in. Leading the way, he sprinted through a maze of corridors, with her hot on his tail. She was already starting to feel the result of barely being able to exercise for the past 24 months. Her heart rate soared, her legs strained to keep up with the strenuous pace set up by the aforementioned Boy-man, and the feeling of her heart thumping against her chest was heightened immensely. What was she doing? How could she place her entire trust into a person that she hadn't even known for longer than five minutes? She didn't even know his name, and he certainly didn't know hers. Yet the haste in his actions to keep from getting both of them caught, and probably killed, implied that maybe he was genuinely trying to help her. The main question however, was why?

A piercing noise broke through the jittery atmosphere. The warning bell. She looked at Boy-man in front of her and hoped for the love of all things sane and sensible that this tan, tall, trouble-making male had devised a backup plan considering he was exceptionally aware of this very alarm in the first place. Once the sound resonated into his ears, he stopped abruptly and rotated completely until he was facing her for the first time since being at her cell door. She had to tilt her head vertically to be able to focus on him properly, his height and the proximity of their figures not helping.

"What are your powers?"
"You're using me? That's what this is?"

"Look, do you want to get out of here alive or not?"

"Yes."

"Well then, we're on the same page, but we need to work together if we have any chance of survival."

"I... I can levitate."

"...Wow."

"C'mon Mr Genius. What do we do?"

He rolled his eyes and simply responded with "Here, follow me." He sprinted off again, this time heading for a specific location, it seemed. She started to believe that the idea of their escape was just going to remain as that: an idea. She followed him like a lost puppy anyway, for he was her only way of eradicating her body from this wretched place, her only way of retrieving answers and explanations.

He slowed down slightly until he was face to face with a door. There wasn't anything special about this particular door, it looked exactly identical to the others, an opaque black, lifeless. Pulling out a metallic circular object from his back pocket, he pressed down on it and a vivid hologram projected from it. She noticed that it was no bigger than the 'quarter' coin that she used to learn about during 21st Century America' in her History class. He manoeuvred the object, and ergo the hologram, in a pattern until the door unlocked. He jogged in, pulling her with him impatiently.

She expected the room to explode with light, if not naturally than at least artificially with the ridiculously cheap lights that she had spotted around the building. They were both surrounded by darkness, to the point where she couldn't even distinguish the outline of her own hands.

He couldn't see her at all. With lengthy crimson hair as vibrant as hers, he thought she would be visible at all times, in all situations, but evidently not. He imagined that with a power like hers, and the way she had been treated for it, she probably wouldn't have wanted to be noticeable anyway. Her power. Levitation, how could that get them out of there?

"What are we doing in here? How is this helping us to escape? Why is this room so dar-"

"Shh. Keep talking to a minimal and only whisper. This place buys me time to figure out what our next move is. Now let me think."

His voice was at a much lower decibel than hers, but she seemed to have understood the implied message and she stopped talking completely. He was grateful for that, as a series of marching could be heard from outside the room, accompanying the infuriating alarm bell. Had she have spoken one more word, they would have been caught immediately. His head tilted in all directions, trying to glimpse at potential opportunities of fleeing, though it was in vain because he still couldn't see a thing. Calmly shutting his eyes to be greeted with the same darkness that enveloped him physically, he tried to visualise the room. Monitors and machines behind his back and to his left, a set of chairs stacked up to his right. He imagined the walls, climbing higher and higher until they're greeted with the monotonous, flat surface of the ceiling. Envisioning the wall to his right with some monitors leaned against it, he noticed an air vent, perfect.

"There's an air vent on the wall to your right. The hatches are never sealed so you can take them off with ease. You'll need to work fast because they have trackers on both of us and they're probably on the way here as we speak."

"Okay but where am I going? And what about you?"

"Keep going straight, and turn right at the second junction, then the first left after that. Keep going straight until you see the vent on the wall. Exit from there and you'll be outside. Wait for me there."

"Again, what about you?"

"I'll distract the idiots that are chasing after us so that they won't try to find you. Now go."