Intruder Alert

Chapter 6

Pidge looked up, she'd recognize that voice anywhere. "Lance?" she inched forward to get a better look, "is it really you?"

"Yes! Yes! It's me!" he sounded excited. Pidge let out a sigh of relief and crawled towards the bag that held their bayards. Pidge picked up the red one and placed it in the bag, she then grabbed hers and activated it. It lit up the vent with a green hue. She dug around in the bag trying to find the blue bayard.

She found it a few moments later and turned to hand it to Lance. He gratefully took it from her and attached it to his belt. He turned back to her and he voiced her thoughts.

"What now?"

A fan farther down the vent had kicked on sending a small breeze throughout the small corridor

She shoved the bag farther down the vent and turned back to Lance, "I need to get something," he nodded and she turned to lead the way. She had been careful to keep the light off of her. Who knows how Lance would act if he saw what had happened. What she had been forced to do.

A few moments later she was looking down into her room from the vent cover. Lance was still making his way around the corner. His broad shoulders didn't help much as he tried to maneuver through the vent.

By the time Lance made it to the vent covering, Pidge had already dropped to the floor of her room. A few minutes later Lance followed landing on his back on a pile of computer parts.

"Ow! Why the heck to do you have a pile of computer parts in the middle of your room?" he asked as he rolled off of them and onto the metal floor.

"Because," she turned around to face him. In the time it took for Lance to escape the vent she had managed to find a shirt, "I don't have anywhere else to put it." she chuckled, "and it makes a great landing spot for unwanted visitors."

"Speaking of unwanted visitors, what are we going to do about our unwanted visitors?"

"I-I hadn't thought that far. My only focus was to get as far away from them as possible," she fingered the shirt right below her collar bone absentmindedly.

Lance nodded and moved to sit on the bed. "Hey, are you okay?" Pidge shook her head as if she was waking up from a trance.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she smiled at him and pulled up a map of the castle on her computer. Lance knew something was up, but he only thought she was still trying to process what had happened some thirty minutes ago. Even he was still trying to understand how the alien creatures had managed to slip past the castle's defenses and security features.

An "of course they don't" escaped through Pidge's frustrated sigh. Lance looked over her shoulder at the map that was on her computer screen. He could recognize some of the rooms such as the bridge and the kitchen but the majority he was still unsure about.

"What?" he asked still looking at the map.

"The tunnels. King Alfor was smart and didn't put any of the tunnels on the map." she looked closer at the map.

Lance nearly fell off the bed when Pidge let out a triumphant "Yes!" and ran to the opposite wall in her room.

Pidge moved her hands around excitedly as she tried to find the trigger that opened the door to the tunnels. She found it a few moments later and listened to the click as she pressed down on the small panel.

"Uh, I thought you said the map didn't have any indication as to the location of the tunnels," Lance walked up to the tunnel entrance and looked down both ways.

"Yeah, that was before I remembered what the Allura said and I looked closer. Then I found it!" Pidge was jumping up and down.

"Found what?"

"In each room there was this random line that didn't go with anything. Then I started thinking what if that was where the panel was, and turns out I was right."

"That's nice but-" Lance was cut off as there was a knock at the door.

"Pidge? Are you there?" a gentle voice came from behind the door, "please let us in the creatures aren't far behind." the voice sounded scared.