Deer Luhan, With Love

42

Chapter 42 – In Which I Accidentally Blow Up Half a Factory

Deer Luhan,

…I guess the moral to take away from this is not to use any form of electrically-powered timer?

Leigh

After several tense moments of jiggling the wire around in the lock barrel, I was rewarded with a happy little click and I pocketed the tools, slumping down the door with relief, eyes closed.  It rattled as somebody shook the handle, and then I heard a muffled voice say, “it’s locked; he won’t be in here.”

“What, in a locked storage room?  Not a chance.  Window, maybe?  Or perhaps he didn’t come down this corridor.”

The abrupt draining of adrenaline when I heard that was so intense I thought I might faint.  I was safe, at least for the moment.  That said, I should probably make sure there wasn’t another entrance to this storage roo—

Wait.  Is this place big enough for me to stay for any length of time without blacking out or something?  I opened my eyes.

Red, yellow and orange blazed in front of me with the terror-inspiring awe of the Balrog, and I nearly screamed.  Just in time, I clapped a hand over my mouth to prevent any sound from coming out.  My heart took a few more seconds to calm down, but that gave me time to register two things.

The first was that this blob of fiery colours wasn’t nearly as big, nor as petrifying, as the Balrog, and I wasn’t on a slender stone bridge over an abyss and it didn’t have a whip.

The second was that it was human in shape, motionless, and its head was propped up on a box or shelf of some kind.

The heck is some guy doing passed out in a storage closet?  I shifted the night-vision goggles off and dug out Luhan’s phone to take a good look at the person.  Was he or she drunk or something?

It was a guy.  That much became clear as the light from the phone hit his torso, and I saw that he was wearing a bulletproof vest similar to mine and that his left shoulder looked distorted.  His chest was rising and falling shallowly, and crusted blood covered the left side of his face.

The sight of pink hair, though, was like Christmas come early.  I stared for several seconds, absolutely stunned by my good luck, and then blinked, hastily rubbing my eyes.

Nope, that’s definitely pink hair.

I glanced at my phone.  According to the app, Luhan was still supposed to be about ten metres away.  I closed the app and turned the phone off.  I no longer needed it.

I’ve actually found Luhan.  Miracles happen.

A chuckle of disbelief escaped me, and I hastily clamped a hand back over my mouth.  The last thing I wanted to do was attract any attention, particularly when Luhan obviously wasn’t in the best state.  And I somehow had to get him out.

Frowning, I reached out and tapped him on the cheek.  I wasn’t sure if he was unconscious or just asleep, and I wouldn’t have put it past him to be either.  The storage room wasn’t that big, and he’d been in there for several hours.  If he was cramped, bored and hiding, I wouldn’t have blamed him for drifting off.  And if he was injured, concussed and in pain, it wasn’t exactly unlikely he’d passed out, either.  But that would make life much more difficult.

He didn’t respond to my initial prods, so I took out a small LED torch and shone it over him, looking for anything else that might be wrong.  One of his legs was splayed at an odd angle, but that was it.  Nothing bleeding, as far as I could see.  Which reminded me: he had a head injury.