VOCOM

chapter XII

We stepped off the elevator and onto the one parallel to it. We had been on three so far, this one being our forth, and I was already tired of it. My legs ached to move and I was tired of simply standing and waiting to get higher and higher and away from the depths of Kortan. Quintley was magically silent, to my greatest relief.

But that relief was short-lived by the time the doors closed behind us. That stupid elevator music was actually working in this one, already making me want to stab myself in the eye with the pen in Quintley’s breast pocket.

To my worst nightmare, he started humming along. “I’ve heard this one before,” he paused, humming to the annoying tune. “Catchy, it’nit?”

I just stared at the wall, silent. I refused to answer that question or even acknowledge it.

“Gee, you really are quiet.” He pointed out.

I sighed in annoyance, closing my eyes and leaning against the back wall.

Humming.

The dinging tune of the cheery music.

More humming.

The soft motor running at the back.

Still humming.

The almost inaudible buzz of the sun-powered lights.

That damned humming!

I was about to scream when the ding of the elevator doors sounded and the black glass slid open. We were much closer to the surface- just at the bottom of the testing corridors now. For the most part, we’d have to travel manually, which was a long way to go.

I followed him, even though I knew the way, glad to be out of that elevator and its annoying music. But it still followed, hammering my ears, since Quintley was still humming to it, making the only noise besides our tromping feet on the metal catwalks and cement floors. I kept walking behind him through the various wreckage of rooms and corridors that were once pristine, white and crisp. Stupid crisp paint.

Going through several back hallways that only lab workers used, we went up several flights of stairs, pausing momentarily to catch our breath. I even ran across an abandoned Trans Shooter of the newer model, and let it clamp securely around my wrist. Now at least I didn’t feel so useless.

We were headed down yet more of the maze-like pathways, when his sudden arm across my chest halted me.

“Sh!” he warned before I could even tell what was going on.

I froze anyways, alert and ready for peril. He slammed me up against the wall behind us, slapping his hand over my mouth. I scowled and would have kicked his ass for that had a sound and sensor-activated sentry not walked by.

My eyes widened. I didn’t have a good experience with those things. They were robotic in every way, being like stiff blobs of metal on two sturdy but spindly legs. The small blue light that served as its sensor blinked and danced around the walls as it torpidly made its way across the adjacent corridor. Those things were just so slow in moving that they had been deployed in special nooks in certain places where they could reach all test subjects in a room at once, should anyone ‘misbehave’.

They were deadly, despite their ugly, docile appearance. I had been shot by one before. They were stocked with about five hundred forty-five-caliber bullets in each little automatic turret hidden within their stocky builds. They weren’t fun. It was only sheer luck that the bullets grazed me (because their aim was precise and dead-on), leaving me with about twenty-three long, thin and pale horizontal scars on my right forearm.