Lost In Time: A Doctor Who Fanfiction

Chapter 68 - Hidden Heroes

Lyssa forced herself to breathe quietly through her mouth as she crawled through the dusty air vent. At first she'd thought she'd need some sort of screwdriver to get into the vents, or that she'd have to break her way in. As it turned out, the vent cover was magnetically attached to the wall, and all she'd needed to do was apply enough force to pull it away, nearly tumbling off her precarious perch on the shelves below when it finally snapped free.

Once she'd regained her balance, she glanced around the room behind her. She'd done her best to return everything to their proper places, although to anyone familiar with the room it would be obvious someone had messed things up. The really tricky part had come when she'd tried to reach the vent. 

If she'd moved the table over underneath, it would have been immediately apparent how she'd gotten out (not that it likely wouldn't have been anyways), so she'd had to trust - hope, really - that the shelves would hold her weight, holding her breath every time they'd creaked or groaned as she'd climbed upwards.

Fortunately, the shelves had been fastened to the wall, and by keeping her weight close to the supports she was able to make her way to the top without knocking anything over, or falling to a noisy demise. From there, she'd been able to open the vent and take a look inside.

It appeared to be just over a foot and a half tall, and roughly twice that in width. In other words - just big enough for her fit in, though there wouldn't be much room to navigate around. Good thing she wasn't claustrophobic.

At least, she hoped she wasn't. This would be a horrible way to find out she actually was.

On the bright side, the dust covering everything meant it had been undisturbed for some time now, and she might actually have some time to get somewhere before her escape route had been noticed. 

Taking one last look around the room to make sure she hadn't missed anything, she saw a few scraps of paper on the floor that she'd missed in her clean-up after tearing their personal files to shreds and dumping them down the drain. It would likely be found quickly enough, but there was no writing on them, and nothing that would point to her using the air vent to escape either, so she ignored them.

Everything else appeared to be in order, so she turned back to the vent. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself, picked up the vent cover, and crawled in. Once she was fully inside, she curled her body up as much as she could and reached backwards, sliding the vent cover back out into the room and awkwardly tried to fit it back into place. It snapped back into place after about a minute of sliding it around against the wall, only for her to realize that she'd snapped it on upside down.

Stifling a groan, she grabbed the cover again, pushed it away from the wall, and flipped it around, fiddling around with it until it snapped into place again. As best as she could see around herself, it was straight and in place, so she awkwardly uncurled herself and looked ahead of her. She could see a few yards ahead of her lit by the light coming through the grille, but everything after that was pitch black.

The Doctor owed her so much if they survived this.

Taking a deep breath again - and immediately pinching her nose to keep from sneezing when she inhaled dust - she started forward. It was an awkward way of moving, as she was basically army crawling her way in the dark, the low ceiling forcing her down. 

She used her hands to feel around in front of her, never knowing if there was going to be a sudden drop or other obstacle in her path. Or worse - something alive, but she forced her mind away from such thoughts. If she was crawling through a tiny tunnel alone in the dark, she had to keep her mind focused, or she was gonna have a breakdown in short order.