The World Never Ends

Chapter 9

    It was so sudden that both Nikol and I were on our feet almost immediately. There was something extremely troubling about this, given they didn’t pull the alarm for our first test, and we had no prior knowledge, and staff was running wild through the building. We attempted to stop a staff member running by us, and they shrugged us off, screaming, “GET OFF ME, KID!” That was how we knew something was actually off. 

    We managed to get a staff member to stop and talk, and they were extremely quick about it. They told us there were more missiles flying straight at the capital. They told us we had about five minutes until detonation, or three until the government blows them up with anti-missiles. Even if the government destroyed them with anti-missiles, there’d still be damage to the capital, given we had discovered them too late to be able to do anything about the excess damage, but they needed to get rid of them like, now.

    At this point, I was beginning to suspect that this was yet another test, and that everything was going to be okay, and that we just had to play into their little game. So that’s what I did. Nikol dragged me to the extraction point. We were to be picked up to head to the capitol building for further instruction. They told us we were the only group going, so we best act good. Not many were ever privileged enough to be able to go inside of the capitol building, much less help out in the making of a defense. 

    I looked over to Nikol for confirmation on everything, and she nodded in approval.

    Then we loaded the Blackhawk.

-    -    -

    The capitol building was this stocky little building in the dead center of the capital. It resembled a bunker, but above ground. Not much was pour into it, other than obviously super- reinforced walls and such. I looked as if it could survive a direct hit from a nuke by itself. 

    We landed, and Nikol grabbed my hand as we walked towards the stocky white building, through sliding metal doors, and into the building. When we entered, there wasn’t much to even see, given it was basically just white; white walls, white doors evenly spaced down the entire hallway, labeled D-3, D-4, D-5, etc. all the way up to D-99. It was a long hallway, and it almost felt as if we were going slightly downhill, but I quickly shook that thought out of my head. There’s no way this building is built like that, I thought to myself. 

    We continued walking for what felt like an hour before we hit yet another door, only this one was marking what looked like the end of a hallway. Our guard opened the door and let us in, however, he didn’t follow.

Nikol jumped as the door shut, squeezing my hand hard, and I heard her mutter sorry under her breath, very lightly. 

The room was extremely dark. Visibility was maybe two feet, so Nikol and I shuffled lightly around to try to find a light switch.

I hit something, and I heard a very loud bang, followed with something hitting my foot. I muttered a curse under my breath, and apologized for scaring Nikol, and we went back to searching. 

Maybe ten minutes into searching (it was extremely hard to judge time here), Nikol hit a switch and we heard a sound similar to the sliding door opening when we entered the building. We immediately decided to look for the door which had opened, and in about three minutes, we found the door, and squeezing Nikol’s hand, we entered the door.