Once Again

Chapter 5

The next morning she woke up, by no means capable of functioning like a regular human being. A clanking sound from the vent seemed to be what had woken her up, Heron climbing out to confirm her suspicion. Merle glared at him for a couple moments through sleep-blurred eyes after her brain had realized that it was Heron and not just some random person climbing through the vents. She sat up, looking regretfully at the case she had been lying on. Merle couldn't exactly change at the moment, but she really wanted to. Her clothing was sticking to her and her hair was mussed up, and she was sure that she probably looked like she felt at the moment: half dead.

Tempted to just lie there for a couple minutes -- or hours, she forced herself to stand, bumping her head on the ceiling, which she had temporarily forgotten about. Merle groaned, more out of annoyance than in pain, which quickly was replaced by relief when she realized that they had escaped being discovered. It was a good thing everyone who walked through the hallways of the building was probably doing some fancy science crap, as they were all looking down at their tablets and laptops.

The light was faint and pale, a morning light that scarcely illuminated anything beyond the careful outlines of objects. She heard some noise beyond the areas she could see, assuming that it was the sounds of scientists up early and bustling about in their nerd labs. The alcove seemed lower than the day before, probably because her perspective had been skewed, but still seemed somewhat high. Merle briefly wondered how exactly she would get down, but dismissed the thought. If she got up, she must be able to get back down, and if she fell down she probably wouldn't die or anything too drastic.

And if she broke her neck, she was going to die anyway,

Heron had picked up her tablet that she had forgotten to put away last night, fiddling around with it. Merle watched him for a couple seconds, internally laughing when his expression changed to one of confusion when the screen asked for a password. Heron scowled at her, thrusting the tablet in her direction. Merle took it from his hands.

"What's the password?" he demanded. Merle gave him a look.

"Do you really think I'll tell you?" It was at this sentence when Merle realized that it wasn't asked for fun, she didn't actually trust him. Frankly, who would trust an eleven-year-old, especially a genetic mutant to boot? Heron frowned at her, though she could tell he had expected her not to say, and turned around with his front facing the wall opposite Merle with a sullen look on his face. Merle wondered when his brooding would end, as she really wanted to escape before any massive seizure-thing occurred and ended with her alerting everyone in the building to where they were.

His melodramatic sulking ended soon enough. "We should go." Merle shrugged, checking the time on her watch, frowning when she realized it must have reset or something during the night. Sighing, with Heron watching her curiously, she opened her tablet. It was five in the morning, which meant she had slept for two hours.

Merle was surprised she hadn't passed out yet. Two hours was really no time whatsoever, but whenever she was with friends for a long period of time, she could survive on nonexistent sleep. With a lot of dramatic mood swings and general irritability, but she still was fully capable of doing so. Heron, on the other hand, was painfully chipper. He still had his permanently sullen face that only grew more so as he got into the more negative spectrum of feelings, but he was awake. And there was no stupid delay in his actions, but that was probably because he didn't have some stupid syndrome that was freakishly annoying.

Heron gestured down at the ground. Merle raised her eyebrows.

"Now?" she said, pointing downwards.

"Well, yeah. When else did you think we were going?" Heron replied, preparing to leap down.

"There are people in the building!" Merle hissed, "Or are you deaf?"