Starcatchers

Chapter 3: Five

There was one problem, Nova realised, with running for her life. It was that she hadn't the slightest clue where she was supposed to be running to.

The two of them moved with inhuman speed, but Dr. Vast was closing the gap with every glance she threw over her shoulder, and if they didn't find a way to lose him, soon, then.... Well, she didn't want to contemplate the consequences, just yet. Not while they still had a chance to avoid them.

"Who is this guy?!" Alpha shouted in that out-of-place regal accent of his.

"I don't know!" she called back, as he pulled her around a hospital food cart left in the middle of the corridor. "But I think he tried to kill me, earlier, and now he wants to finish the job! With both of us."

"We should get to the others," he blurted. "Tell them what's going on."

"Others?" Nova, in her desperate attempt to escape potential death, had momentarily forgotten that there was more of them. "Where are they?!"

He didn't respond for several steps, and she thought he mightn't have heard her over the rush of running away. But with a swallow, and a flicker of his eyes in her direction, he coughed out a reply she wasn't overjoyed to hear.

"Back the other way...."

Nova almost groaned. Could her life take any more turns for the worse? She didn't know who these 'others' were, but reaching them was not going to be an option, right now.

They barrelled through a set of double doors, nearly running straight into a group of doctors pushing an occupied hospital bed towards them.

"Hey!" one of the doctors shouted as they dodged around them. "You're not supposed to be in here!"

They kept on running.

Behind them, Nova glimpsed Dr. Vast leap right over the hospital bed and all of its surrounding staff, and none of them seemed to notice a thing.

How are we the only ones who can see him?! she thought desperately. A part of her still fancied the idea of all of this being some convoluted dream; Dr. Vast; Alpha; her glowing eyes; running for her life through the halls. But she'd already established how real everything was, and she wasn't going to second guess herself, now. Not while so much was at stake if she guessed wrong.

Her shoulder jarred painfully, then, as Alpha skidded to an abrupt halt, dragging her with him. She was about to shriek at him for stopping while their pursuer was so close behind them, until she realised why, exactly, he had stopped.

They were at a dead end.

A set of double doors stood before them, but it was clearly guarded by keycode access, and they certainly didn't have a key. What they did have, however, was a furious man made of constellations standing between them and their only way out of here.

Dr. Vast slowed to a halt, those sharp teeth of his bared in a sneer. He regarded them in the way Nova suspected a fox would regard a coop of chickens. There was hunger in those void-like eyes of his, and satisfaction curled around his dangerous mouth.

"Nowhere to run, little starcatchers?" he chuckled, his voice as dark as his demeanour. "Shame."

"What do you want?" Alpha replied in a pant, words audibly thick with terror. Nova couldn't even bring herself to speak, and she didn't realise how hard she clutched onto his hand until her own fingers started going numb.

"Our colony wants you–and The Horizon for which you all serve–gone," he stated with a growl. "I'm here to make sure that happens."

At their horrified, confounded expressions, Dr. Vast laughed. It was a cruel laugh, and it sent chills down Nova's spine.