Countd0wn

Chapter 37: Running Out of Time

The halls were a blur to me as I carried Ivy against me, as me and Sparrow ran for our lives down the hallway. My trick with the light that Tobias' mind produced may have held those things back, but I wasn't taking my chances. I had no idea where we were going, but I knew there had to be some way out other than the elevator.

Every grey hall looked the same, except for the occasional dead guard or spatter of blood. Sometimes we would hear footsteps pattering down the hall, and wether or not it was a guard or a hypermorph, we hid. Thankfully, the flickering lights offered us plenty of cover, and I managed to take out any guards that got too close with my pistol. The hypermorphs, however, seemed to pass us right by.

We felt the building vibrate and shake above us, and even though the walls must have been a few meters thick, we could still hear the screams of random men, and the gunfire of those who were still alive. It felt like we were running through a large beehive, and the swarm was all around us.

After a few more minutes of running, we stopped to catch our breath. Or rather, I did, seeing as how Sparrow's body allowed her to breathe much better than I could. While I leaned against the wall, breathing in, she held Ivy in her hands and kept watch. I looked up at her. "We can't keep running. There has to be a way out."

Sparrow saw the desperation in my eyes, and looked at Ivy in her hands. Then, she looked like she was concentrating on something, then looked around at the hallway we were in. She handed Ivy to me, and seemed to zip out of sight then return in an instant. "I know where we are. Follow me. I can get us out."

We backtracked into another crossroads, then Sparrow took us down a different path. She apparently had managed to somehow memorize where we were, and had applied that to a mental map she had made of the place when she was being moved around before Gerrard invaded.

We finally stopped near an office room, that was sealed from the outside. There was a keypad that require a code, but we didn't need one. I handed Ivy to Sparrow and placed my hands on the door lock. I concentrated and felt my hands begin to heat up. Soon enough, the lock was nothing more than slag, and I managed to slide the door open.

Inside was what appeared to be some sort of command and control centre. Once we made it inside, we saw that there were dead bodies and blood everywhere. I was glad Ivy wasn't awake to see this. I was wondering how the morphs had managed to get in when the door was locked. I looked up at the ceiling and saw a large hole, similar to the one that the hypermorphs had made in the room that was outside of Tobias' chamber, and I answered my own question.

Sparrow walked over to one of the monitors that wasn't broken or covered in blood, and pressed one of the keys. Thankfully, it was already powered up and logged in, and had most likely been left alone in all the chaos. She maneuvered through the menus, until she found what she was looking for. "Here!"

She grabbed my shoulder and motioned to the screen. I looked and saw what appeared to be a security camera showing a room at the end of some sort of vault door, and a password bar that said "Emergency Bunker Unlock:" Sparrow turned to me. "This is what we needed. If we can figure out the code, we can open this and get out through another exit."

I stared at the screen, hardly beliveing what I was looking at. It certainly was a viable plan, but there were several holes in it. The biggest one being the fact we didn't know the code. I looked at Sparrow and saw hope in her eyes. It reminded me of Ivy. "How are we supposed to open it?"

Sparrow turned around and looked at the keyboard again, then cracked her knuckles, like she was stretching her hands. "Well, I've never really tried this before, but in theory, I could try every single possible combination of numbers super fast and see if I get it..."