Colony Three (PAUSED)

Vineaum

Acacia stared at the packet. Lillyvine? What was that? She shrugged and put the packet in her Exposure suit pocket. Something about the name scratched at the back of her mind.

She closed the other drawers she had opened and examined the rooms actual construction. The storage rooms were made of metal and ceramic; insulated metal plating on the walls and cold white ceramic on the floor.

A map, etched in pale plastic with black ink, detailed the compound. It sprawled underground, but it wasn't anything too diverse. Storage, storage, and more storage.

A splotch of red marked a tiny segment of hall, maybe a door or an exit ladder. She checked the yellow star, 'you are here,' and left the room without a glance back.

As she went down the connecting hallway, her hard sole boots clicking on the tile and metal floor, she thought she could hear voices. She stopped and strained to make sense of the echoes.

"Fasten the-"

"No! On the clip!"

"Here?"

She rushed down the hallway, poked her head out into the main room, saw it was clear and went in. The wheel of hallways surrounded her. She couldn't tell exactly where the voices were coming from, but it seemed like they were from the direction of the air lock. Their sound was distorted by the strange walls and the twisting hallways, and as she moved, the faint sounds dissolved into unintelligible noise.

She searched the other hallways, but they all seemed to be the same. She checked the plastic map in this room, and found that the red spot wasn't marked. In fact, the tunnel it was supposed to be down wasn't on the map at all. She checked the area where she thought it had been and faced the collection of doorways.

A light shining down one of the tunnels drew her attention.

She glanced inside to make sure it wasn't from the people the voices belonged to and headed inside.

***

The door was set halfway down the hallway, a red circle daunted on the window. A little light shone through, illuminating a small room inside. The closet like space was packed floor to ceiling with black tiles, most of them static inky black but a few painted with scenes from the compound. The paintings looked so real though...

She grabbed the door handle and pulled. The cold piece of plastic rattled in her hand but the door didn't open. She gritted her teeth and pulled out her Sear.

If there was one thing Father taught her, it was that force was the great negotiator. It almost always settled in your favor.

She hit the hinges and the door handle with a high beam, melting plastic and warping metal. A slight alarm sounded, a thin whistle. With a snicket, a metal sheet dropped down between her and the door.

The sheet reflected the Sear beam, melting a hole in the front of her suit. She flicked the beam off just as the coolant gel in her suit exploded.

White and blue foam coated the hallway, smothering the fire on her stomach and coating her face. She swiped it away with a clean hand and studied the damage to her suit.

Thanks to the gel, she wasn't a chunk of cooked meat, but her suit was wrecked. The icy Antarctic cold would kill her before she even got close to the base camp. The live-fibers of the suit stitched the outside of the charred hole together, but the suit couldn't repair the insulation.

She was stuck down here until the suit got fixed.

Or at least, until she starved. Whichever was quicker.