It was a total of six turns before we reached the blue door. My heart raced from running, and I whipped the beads of sweat dripping down my forehead. The corridor around us was absolutely still. The blue door's shadow that cast upon us blended me and Alvinne into the darkness, as if we were part of the brick hallways that twisted and turned into a maze-like underground passage.
I nudged her, my palms turning icy cold. "Um, what do we do now?" I still wasn't quite sure if going through the doctor's lounge was a good idea.
The girl answered my question by looking around one last time, and she pushed down the door handle.
The door creaked.
It swung open.
I turned to face Alvinne, who nodded, motioning for me to go forward. I hesitated when reaching the entrance, the room behind it looked to be welcoming me with a sly smile.
"Come on, we don't have much time to waste." Alvinned assured me with impatience and exasperation in her tone.
Sometimes, I really wondered where that girl got all her guts from.
I took a step into the room with Alvinne following my heels. Grabbing a small lamp, I held it in front of us. The room surrounding our presence now was simple, it was like the blood testing room, with just a desk, some chairs and an empty and dusty shelf. I wouldn't have guessed anyone had worked here in a hundred years. "Alvinne? Are you sure we are in the right place?"
She only shrugged, but I could sense her confidence slowly flowing out of her. "Just keep going."
Before long, I found myself in a position where a flight of stairs extended below us. I rubbed my eyes, not believing what I was seeing. That doctor must love exercising, to build hundreds of stairs in his domain for him to climb, I reasoned to myself.
I stretched out my leg, and lightly tapped on the first staircase with my foot, afraid that I might have been hallucinating. The stairs felt as solid as it could possibly be.
"Do you not even know how to descend a staircase?" Alvinne shook her head from side to side and hit her forehead with her hand. I've got to admit even if Alvinne was an aligist, her favourite language was still speaking The Master Art of Sarcasm.
As I climbed down the stairs, I looked around with alertness, trying to find an entrance to the outside world. After descending the hundreds of stairs, my legs shook from exhaustion. I wanted to collapse onto the floor and forget about everything. I leaned against the cool wall, my throat dry, my lips were parched.
"Here." Alvinne passed me a bottle of warm water. I would have preferred cold water, but it was better than nothing at all.
"Where did you get --" I started to speak but was interrupted.
"Just drink, save some energy."
We began to search the room, looking for anything. Anything at all. It was until Alvinne called out my name that a spark of hope burned inside me.
"Samael?! I think I might have found something!"
I rushed to where Alvinne was standing and examined the brick wall she was pointing to. At first, I felt nothing at all, but when Alvinne held the lamp closer to the wall, I saw it—the door frame of a hidden exit!
I tried to kick and push the door open, but it didn't move as easily as the blue door that we already encountered. Instead, every time I kicked, I heard a light jingle of a bell.
"Did you hear that?" I asked Alvinne.
She continued to stare at what she had been fixed upon for the last minute. Looking up at me, Alvinne pointed to a lock that chained the hidden wall. "You mean this?"
I put the lamp on the floor and scrutinised the lock. It had a six-digit number combination. We started our search again, but this time for any hints for the numbers. There was nothing. The wall was bare and the floor was solid, not the type where you could hide any treasure under the brick. I wanted to scream, the pain beginning to dilate through my body. Time was running out, and it was a matter of minutes before the doctor came back from his break.
"Did you find anything?" I shouted out to Alvinne, even though I knew the result already.
"No. I never knew we needed a bunch of numbers to escape." She answered solemnly.
I slapped the side of my calf and ordered myself to think harder. Then an idea flashed into my mind, it was worth trying. I dug my hand into my jeans pocket and fumbled it's way until I reached the note. Opening the piece of paper up, I stared at the numbers.
120709.
The numbers. The only hope.
I rushed to the hidden doorway and prayed under my breath as I turned the click to the right number that was written on the note. Pushing the button, I could feel my muscles clench and contract with nervousness. At that moment, a line of green light flashed around the room, and the hidden door began to slide open.
Alvinne glanced at me suspiciously. "How did you do that?"
I ran a hand through my tangled hair, and shrugged nonchalantly. "Oh, I'm not as dumb as you think."
She made a gagging sound before turning around and walked through the egress. The second my feet stepped into the new environment, light erupted from the ceiling, illuminating the whole room.
A mechanical voice rang. "Welcome, Doctor Issac."
I turned sharply behind me, feeling that this deadly doctor might be actually following us. There was nothing, just the shadow of the square room which we had exited before. Looking around at this room, it was definitely more suitable for a doctor's work place. With the machines purring a low hum, occasionally shooting out a red light followed by a beep, I felt a tickle of uneasiness climbing up my spine.
"How many rooms did this doctor actually build behind that blue entrance?" I asked no-one in particular at all. Though my question in fact was, how many rooms do we still need to go through before we find the "actual exit."
Neither of us knew the answer to that problem, of course, but I did know one thing. Time was running out.
However, my eyes caught on something other than the exit. A gigantic machine that stood in the middle of the rectangular room seemed to be made out of steel. There were two metal hands on the side of the apparatus, a bluish-silver light forming a thin line shot out from the palm of each. Where the lightning connected was a sort of undefined attraction of foamy light. It changed dimensions constantly, and the force in the light had a sense of a fresh future alongside a devastated past in it. I stared at it, intoxicated by the beauty, when the force shimmered and took another form, this time showing a bloodshed battle.
"What are you staring at?" Alvinne asked.
I disregarded her question and pointed at the machine. "What's that?"
Alvinne took a step forward and raised her eyebrows, eyeballing the sign underneath the device. "Don't you know how to read? It clearly says, Zberateľ, The Collector."
I didn't want to argue with an aglist, so I shrugged. "But what does it do?"
"Duh, it probably collects our magic, what else do you expect?"
I still doubted her claim about us all having super powers and shrugged again.
Alvinne snapped, "Then just start looking for the exit, will you?"
I did as she commanded, but the exchange left me wondering about the possibilities of her actually being right.
Without any preparation, she yelped.
I forced my attention away from The Collector and rushed hastily to where she stood with her hands on her mouth, and nothing could have prepared me for what I saw next.
Inside the transparent fridge-like rectangle box, two humans were chained with fetters of iron. They seemed to be screaming.
My heart skipped a beat as I looked at them again. One was a girl, and the other, a boy, who kept on kicking and pulling on the metal chains. They looked no older than fifteen and their tired, hopeless expression reflected me and Alvinne's.
I took a brief look at her behind me. "What do we do with them?"
Alvinne stared at me like I was insane. "What do we do with them?" she repeated, exaggerating each word. "Nothing! We are NOT wasting any time."
The girl with shoulder-length blonde hair stared at me with her pale blue eyes, and though I couldn't hear her outside of the translucent cage, I knew she pleaded for help. If that was how the doctor wanted the patients to die, either freezing them or starving them to death, it wouldn't have been the way I wanted to spend the last few days of my life. I wasn't ready to let two innocent people die because I left them behind, especially when I didn't even try to save them when I had the chance. At least not yet.
"No, I am not abandoning them here with the nurses and the doctor, who knows what they are going to do to them later on." I stared at Alvinne with a look of determination. Not paying attention to her response, I took out my knife and began slashing at the glassy, crystalline cage.
"Fine, I will go watch! But if we are caught, it's all your fault." Alvinne snapped, and turned to guard the hidden doorway.
I gritted my teeth, this glasslike material was harder to cut than I had expected it to be. My knife, however, was adjusting to the stabbing process rather quickly. It slowly glowed a golden light. On the thirtieth strike, the glass shattered, and my arms throbbed from all the thrashing. Panting, I looked up at the teenagers who were too shocked to speak. The girl stared at the broken glassware, then at me, and finally returned her gaze to the chains that bonded her limbs.
I cut the metal in half and freed her. After doing the same to the boy, we stared at each other.
"Th-thank you," whispered the new girl. Catching her breath, she explained, "We had been trapped in that thing for days already. We would be dead soon if you hadn't helped."
The other boy, a bit taller and more muscular than me, studied me with a look of interest. "You look like that doctor."
I signaled Alvinne for help, but she had her arms crossed and fired a stare that no doubt had meant, 'look what a mistake you've done.'
"What?" I asked.
The boy dismissed the question with a sideways flap of his hand. "Nah, nevermind. Anyways, I'm Leiz and that's Maybel."
"There is no time for introductions." Alvinne cut in sternly.
Maybel seemed to shiver, and quietly her voice quavered. "Um, guys? I think someone's coming."
She spoke with such uncertainty that it wasn't until the second time that I heard her warning and turned my attention to her with a jerk of my head.
"How do you know?" I asked.
An unmistakable, hurried trail of footsteps descended the staircases.
"Quick, hide!" I pulled the four of us under a lab table and held my breath. There was nothing to do. No matter how many times I thought 'It's going to be alright,' an echo of 'It's not going to be alright,' bounced back to me.
"¡Oh mi! Samael? Alvinne?¿Estás bien?" The frantic voice reverberated against the stone wall, and I felt a tinge of familiarity in the pronunciation. The footfalls ceased near the hidden doorway, like a mouse testing and looking out for a cat's trap. I believed Nurse Tatte or Nurse Margo would never have just waited there. Nurse Tatte would in all likelihood have dashed inside the experiment room with fire erupting from her nostrils. Only one possibility remained.
I elbowed Alvinne, and spoke for the first time after we heard the footsteps. "I think it might be Nurse Hanna."
Alvinne nodded. Maybel stared at us with her large blue eyes. "Who's that?"
I left out all the details and went straight to the point. "She is on our side-- like at least I think she is."
"I will go check." Leiz chimed in, and got up, and before I could say anything intelligent like 'Holy crap', he was nowhere to be seen.
I blinked and, by the next second, a shadow passed right before my eyes as Leiz set down between me and Maybel. Panting, he spoke, "There's a woman with short brown hair, and she looks way younger than the rest of the other nurses."
"That's Hanna, for sure." I assured them.
"Samael?" The worried voice was closer now.
I grabbed on to Alvinne's wrist and helped her up. Brushing off the dirt on my pants, I called out. "Nurse Hanna?"
The figure emerged from the corridor, and the unreserved face widened in surprise as we gripped each other in a bone-crushing hug. "¡Dios mío! I thought you were dead." Nurse Hanna exclaimed as she gave Alvinne a little squeeze on her shoulder. Nurse Hanna's uncombed hair was tucked into a messy bun, and her tattered lab clothes were stained with dirt. She looked fragile and fatigued under the light, whip marks streaking across her wounded face. It startled me to see her seize up Leiz and Maybel with a look of bitterness.
"Where did these two come from?" she questioned.
Before I could answer, a siren blared.
"They are coming." Maybel screamed. "The nurses are coming!"
Alvinne had her hand on her forehead, Leiz shot back and forth, and all I could do was freeze.
Nurse Hanna's expression tightened as she pulled us along. "Follow me, I know a way out."
Grimy tunnel water splashed ruthlessly under my shoes, mud climbed up my jeans, but the alarm that thundered over my head really made me panic. We tried to skitter as briskly as attainable without tripping and falling face-down to make friends with the soiled ground, though it was useless since water seemed to be mounting up my knees now. Even Leiz, with the speed of twenty Jesse Owens, had trouble lifting his feet up in the muddy water. I was sure a half-a-century old snail could beat us in a running contest trapped in this condition.
"This is not good." murmured Alvinne as she waddled her way past me.
I could hear voices somewhere behind us, but it was clear to me that they belonged to humans, which wasn't a good sign at all.
"Would we be faster if we swam?" Without waiting for a response, I sank my weight down and fidgted under the cover of the unpleasant stickiness of mud. The second I held my breath and wiggled my arms and legs, I knew it was a terrible choice. The water was too swampy, boggy, and dark for me to even see what was coming next before I bumped my head into something rough. I stood up whimpering, carefully massaging the round lump growing on my head, and groaned in agony. Coughing up the brown goo, I felt a hand grabbing onto my wrist and pulling me up in a not particularly gentle way.
"You are covered in rubbish." Leiz added as he tugged me along.
"Thanks for the observation." I muttered, my energy dropping away.
All of a sudden, Maybel shrieked an uncomfortable "Duck!" I stopped dead in my tracks, my body not allowing me to do what I wanted. The bricks shifted in the ceiling above my head. Cracking noises and metal clicking penetrated the dank atmosphere. Alvinne cursed under her breath and pulled the back of my shirt, knocking me down to greet the mud lake again.
Before I could even blink, the noises shut down, bricks seizing up, leaving us relieved.
"Do we stand up now?" Leiz tried to push himself from the viscous floor, stretching his legs.
"No, no, no. Stay down! I can still feel it." Maybel trembled and shook her head.
Nurse Hanna, who had been completely stern and quiet chimed in. " Si, stay down for now, just to be sure."
"Be sure of what?" I asked, having the urgency to stand up and massage my sore legs.
The minute my teeth and lips clamped shut, a sound louder than a nuclear bomb exploding shook the tunnel. A rain of arrows flew from all directions, the pointed edges sharpened and glinting in the shadows.
Before I realized what was going on, Leiz howled, and dropped into the mud. Alvinne cried out beside me and she too disappeared under the muck. Yelling, I fished in the murky water until I felt the shape of a body. My heart thumped against my chest as I scooped the figure up. Her face twitched in pain, hair matted with mud. The arrow wedged between her shoulder blade and collar bone. Alvinne's face turned pale, and I frantically tried to pull out the arrow. In one motion, she slapped my hand away. "Don't touch it! Are you stupid? I could bleed out if you pulled that out!"
"Ow!" Leiz screeched. I flung around to find myself standing in a pool of blood. I gently placed Alvinne on the side of the tunnel and turned my attention to Leiz. Blood covered Maybel's hands and was gushing down her forearm as she held him half in the water.
I rushed to where they were holding onto each other and gasped when I saw the deep,dfresh cut on the side of Leiz's stomach as his face contorted in torment. As Maybel began to lose consciousness, I ran to catch both of them, but too, felt uncontrollably gross. The cut was deep and could have been infected already, which was going to make everything worse.
"Can you still move your fingers?" I asked. Leiz wiggled his fingers, indicating a yes, but he winced in pain for contracting even such slight muscles.
The showering of arrows continued over my head, until I looked up and down at my perfectly healthy body, and wondered how I hadn't been hit by anything yet.
My head whirred with dizziness.
What I was seeing didn't make any sense.
A circle of red light that took the form of a shield surrounded the four of us. Actually, no. It's the five of us, but with the fifth kneeling half-way into the mud, her hands stretching towards the ceiling, as if holding up the entire tunnel. The crimson magic danced on her finger tips. Arrows broke into pieces as they hit the glowing shield.
"Nurse Hanna! What are you doing?" My head spun faster, unable to believe what I was making out.
"You have magic?" Alvinne chimed in. "You never told us about it before."
Nurse Hanna just nodded gravely, performing what probably took every last bit of her energy. "Si. La magia de la protección."
Suddenly, the tunnel filled with shouts, thomps, and footsteps. Nurse Hanna looked sharply at each one of us and urgently demanded. "You have to go. There are just two more turns to the left and you will reach the exit."
"Then what about you?" I panicked.
Nurse Hanna shook her head, and her raising arms trembled. "Go without me."
From where I was standing now, the voice of Nurse Tatte was audible.
Maybel pulled on the side of my shirt. "We have to go."
"No, no. I am not leaving anyone here!"
Nurse Hanna's eyes turned dim and sad. "Alvinne? Do you still have the book I gave you yesterday?"
Alvinne looked shocked but nodded. "Yes, it's in my bag."
"Buena. Keep it close."
The voices grew closer and closer by each second we wasted.
"Vamos. Go. Leave!" Nurse Hanna cried out.
Alvinne pulled my wrist nervously. "We have to go."
"No. I am not leaving without her!" I shouted, my voice dropping to a barely audible muffle.
Alvinne shook her head and using her good arm, she grabbed my wrist and refused to let go. I'd always known she was tough, but at that moment, she was downright brutal. I couldn't get away as she pulled me down the corridor, Nurse Hanna and the red shield growing smaller and smaller, until we made the turn and Hanna vanished from sight. Maybel pulled Leiz through the rising water, coming up fast behind us when I heard a yelp and everything in the corridor grew silent. I wanted to scream, but Alvinne slapped her hand across my mouth. The exit stood right in front of us. We either went through it and left Hanna, or died with her. I felt Alvinne's grip tightened around my wrist as she dragged me towards the source of light. My eyelids became heavy, struggling to stay awake, the last thing I heard before dizziness consumed my conscience was a blood-curdling laugh somewhere deep into the tunnel.