Clair de Lune

15. Sniper

We took off down the hall, taking the staircase down to the lower level before tearing through the A Class hallway to get to wherever Necro was leading me. I watched in terror as red lights flooded the building, an alarm having been raised to signal our escape. I scrambled to think of a way to distract the building and it came to me while we passed by a few of the more noisy cells.

"Necro," I held my hand out as I ran beside him, "hand me the keycard."

"Here, have a plan?" He fished it out of the pocket of his sweats to hand over to me, just as we rounded a corner and found ourselves barricaded. Agents had lined up to block whatever way he'd been trying to find and were now turned and running towards us.

"Shit!"

In a panic, I slammed the keycard through three doorways, listening to the unearthly screams as they ensued from one of them. Something that wasn't even remotely human rolled out into the hall behind us and we didn't hesitate to use it to our advantage. I found a small hallway between two sections of cells and we ducked down it, attempting to get to the other side. I swore again when I saw agents blocking the exit and when I attempted to turn back around I found that we were walled in.

"Necro, we're sandwiched, what do we do?" I huffed, my anxiety and my fear kicking into high gear.

"There should be-" Something rattled and he shouted triumphantly, "Yes! Hellfire, you're stronger than me, I need you to-!"

I slammed my foot down on the grate he was hanging onto, listening as it broke and fell in. He jumped in first with myself not far behind, and we scooted down the vent as fast as our cramping legs could carry us. He paused ahead of me and I heard him rattle another grate, right before he shifted his feet in front of him and kicked it out. Another few moments of him readjusting and he spoke.

"Go head-first, reach over to the right with your left hand, and grab the rail. It's a ladder down and if you don't you're going to fall probably about thirty feet."

I whistled, watching as he disappeared into the darkness. I shoved the gun I was carrying into my back pocket, doing exactly as he said and reaching over with my left hand. I now knew why, seeing as I'd have to swing myself out and over just to get onto the damn thing. With a deep breath and a few encouraging words from myself I swung out over the ledge and managed to lodge my foot onto a rung, instantly providing myself stability and eliminating the chance of a heart attack. Necro was already far below me so I began to hop the rungs a few at a time, just to get away from this place even quicker.

My foot hit stable ground suddenly and I felt relief wash over me. I reached out and found Necro standing not too far from me, his hand reaching up to squeeze mine gently. I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me, which meant that I'd have to hug the walls just to try and find where I was going. Necro stayed close to me the entire time but I knew the darkness would never affect him in the same way it did with me.

"Just keep going forward, it's going to be a while before we hit the end but you'll know it once we get there." He told me, and I nodded, taking a deep breath to steady my nerves.

Everything smelled like mildew and stone down here, and from what I could tell, we were walking through that maintenance shaft he'd tried to get out from earlier. There was a sound coming from above us that didn't quite make sense to me, a soft caress like water hitting the shore. It mesmerized me the entire walk, something akin to a trance. My anxiety plummeted and I even found myself smiling as I walked. Suddenly I was glad Necro couldn't see because I'm sure he'd be questioning my sanity.

What I thought "a while" meant turned out to be wrong and instead we were walking through the tunnel for a solid hour and a half before I found anything resembling an exit. A sound began to interrupt that of the gentle waves and it became clearer and clearer the farther we went: it was rain. My eyes strained in the darkness, but it paid off when I was finally able to see a small sliver of light coming through what I could only assume to be the door. My pace picked up and I ended up tripping over something, landing on my bandaged hands and finding that there was a set of stairs leading up to the light. Necro leapt ahead of me and we both paused to find out that there were two stone slabs that acted like the blockade to the outside world. On the count of three we took a deep breath and pushed with all of our might, the stone giving way and allowing us to tumble out into the pouring rain.