Veneration of Dreams // Ransom Drysdale

three // driving (me nuts)

Lit by the orange hue of Katarina's staff issued flashlight, Whitegate's West Wing was no less spooky at night than day, a sentiment which the officer beside her appeared to share as they marched through the building. Signs of the fire marked every fraction of the structure, prompting her to feel the weight of guilt on her chest as she realised with every passing second that she could have stopped this. She could have stopped all of this, but there was no point dwelling on the past.

"This'll go a lot faster if we split up." Katarina said, turning the flashlight on her partner's face and dropping it sheepishly when he winced.

"Haven't you ever seen a horror movie?" The man replied and she exhaled in annoyance.

"Take the front, I'll go 'round back. I'll meet you in the courtyard."

Daniel nodded, releasing the tension in his shoulders with an audible huff as he walked into the distance. Katarina watched him leave, waiting until he was gone to put out her light and follow the concrete wall through the darkness. Less than a minute later, she pushed open the backdoor to the administration block, glanced over her shoulder and let it shut behind her. The lock was gone but the door held and that was good enough for her.

Still, her heart raced as she extracted a plastic ID from her back pocket and started up the first of three computers lined up on the main desk. Luckily for her they were all connected to the emergency power supply which was activated in advance of the manhunt. She didn't know what she would do if they weren't.

The radio on her belt crackled to life as the Windows screen loaded up and she typed in the general passcode with one hand while increasing the volume with the other.

"This is Dean. I'm with officer Williams, we've located prisoner five by building T. Requesting additional units."

"This is Matthew, proceed with caution, officer Revich and I are en route."

"Chang, respond-"

Katarina cut off the device. Her heartbeat quickened at the familiar voice coming in through the speaker and she glanced at Matthew's keycard in a moment of guilt before hastily plugging in his details. A page of data loaded up, complete with a search bar in which she input the date 27/02/2019. Ten months ago. Seeing the numbers on screen unnerved her but she grit her teeth and powered on, scrolling down the list of locations until she found footage from the meeting room. Camera 2. For a fraction of a second, she hesitated.

"Move!" Yelled a voice and before she could react, a figure tackled her to the floor. Katarina froze as fragments of the ceiling smashed into the main desk, reducing everything in sight to a smoking pile of rubble as the building collapsed from above. Pinned beneath a man's figure, she stared at the wreckage in disbelief then whipped her head in the opposite direction. Hugh fucking Drysdale.

"Get off me."

She wrenched her hand out of his grip, throwing herself onto her feet. The computer was gone, lost among the wreckage with the tape she had come so far to find and he, the man in the orange jumpsuit, was to blame. Or at least the closest she could get to a target that wasn't the ceiling caving in. Her eyes lit with fury as she turned to face him, fully aware that he saved her life but relentless as her hand went to her hip and fell through empty air where her gun used to be. Taking a shallow breath, Katarina raised her head.

Unfortunately, the real protocol for being held at gunpoint was less John Wick and more common sense.

"Hands," He said and she obliged, raising her palms. He immediately surveyed her person, fixing his gun on her chest before leaning down and swiping a scrap of plastic off the floor. He flung the tattered ID at her.