Hacker

Chapter nine part two

They dropped downwards at an incredible speed. Everywhere Alison had contact with the steel it would burn her skin red from the friction. Her knuckles turned a pale white on her hand holding the boy and it didn’t help that he was constantly bumping into the sides and roof. The same time tomorrow he would be black and blue and very, very sore. Her bracelet slapped the metal side and sparks flared dangerously close to his face. Alison yanked her hand away, causing them both fling into the opposite side. The sudden shift allowed Ali to see further down the shoot. The shoot opened up into one large tunnel with a scattering of falling rubbish banging noisily against the rounded walls.

Alison flew into the larger tunnel, an empty soda can smacking the back of her head as she fell. I’m going to kill Lucien if I survive this she thought trying to ignore the throbbing pain in the back of her already aching skull. She’d lost her grip on the boy as they entered the tunnel and she watched him slide ahead of her. Could things get any worse? It turned out they could. Alison struggled desperately to recapture the boy with no luck. Her flailing limbs meeting with random rubbish and ricochetting it away. The air in the tunnel became noticeably warmer. They rounded another bend and the tunnel tapered off, filling with more and more garbage. The heat was nearly unbearable now, the air stuffy and the metal searing.

Alison could feel the heat caress her face and knew with threads of dread snaking their way to her stomach that they were approaching the incinerator. The incinerator was the hospital’s way of ensuring that none of the rubbish exiting the building had any traces of dangerous substances. They did this by burning all the garbage in a huge high tech furnace, leaving behind only a fine ash. Alison deduced that the enormous flaming cylinder that appeared ahead of them was the incinerator. The rubbish entered and then was blasted into to smitherings in front of her eyes. Alison tried to swallow but her throat was too dry.

A soda can- Alison suspect it was the same one that had struck her before- plummeted into the furnace. Alison could hear the snap and crackle as the can imploded upon itself and disappeared into the furnaces depths. Condensed red hot flames burned insanely inward from all sides of the tunnel. There was no smoke and Ali would have found this perculiar in other circumstances but she was distracted by the miniature, artificial piece of hell that she would soon enter if she didn't do anything. Panic lanced its way up her back bone and she broke out in a frightened sweat.

The boy was still spinning haphazardly away from her grasp and towards the furnace which now only a couple of metres from them. She could leave him and save herself which would give her enough time to hack the incinerator or save him and most likely kill them both. Alison groaned internally and lunged for the boy, cursing herself. As her fingers curled around his collar her other hand was suddenly holding a shimmering sword. She stabbed downwards with all her strength, breaking through the tunnel wall cleanly. They came to a screeching halt, the sword ripping through the interior and providing an anchor. Grunting Alison dangled there, her muscle screaming abuse to her brain as the weight and pain began to slowly erode her thinking processes.

She tasted blood as her breathe hissed from gritted teeth. Her arms felt like they were tearing sinew from bone. All she could do was dangle there uselessly with the smell of burning cloth mixing with sweat. Alison was exhausted. The satchel became excruciatingly heavier like it was filled with stones instead of glass. She was going to die, knew it with certainty. She just wanted it to stop hurting. Alison looked down to the incinerator, to her killer. It was belching great bouts of red flame. None of it touched the boy but the soles of his shoes were slowly melting from the radiated heat. Stray rubbish continued to rain down on them and her hand was gradually slipping from her sword. The idiot boy was a lot heavier than he looked. Alison would have been crying but her eyes were like one of those ancient inland ocean that had dried up a millennia ago. Blinking instinctively the boys face came into view. He looked slightly uncomfortable but was completely unaware of the situation. She couldn’t let him die, it was her fault that he was here.

Alison was spent, she had nothing left or so she thought. Ali closed her eyes and drowned out the crushing pain and the heat and the debilitating weariness. She drew from the fading vestiges of her power like a lame horse running it’s last race. Alison reached out to the incinerator and began to hack. It felt like working on a maths problem with no solution. Sweat sleeked her body and her precarious grip was loosening. Her pinky flicking off the handle. Her head spun perilously and bile rose in the back of her throat. There was a loud click as the incinerator powered down. The morph metal surged ans flowed into it’s original form on her wrist and they dropped limply. They were weightless for the time it took to fill her lungs and then they hit the tunnel once more.

Alison was too tired to notice the unbelievable heat that Macy’s clothes protected her from or the exit of the tunnel. Alison slid downward, her back against the cooling metal. Her hair stuck to her damp forehead and neck. A mound of ash broke their fall. Ali barely registered the muffled thump as the boy fell down next to her. A little grey cloud puffed upwards and engulfed his tall frame. The tunnel entrance gaped above them but Ali no longer really saw it. They lay side by side as Alison concentrated on her breathing. I’m alive she thought and she would have smiled with relief or joy but she had already fainted.

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Excuse the mistake I had the flu when I wrote this. There will be more to come and I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading and comment or vote if you liked it.