"Adriana!" Rosaline yelled. "Stop!" But when she realized this wasn't going to work, she grabbed my hand and yanked me through the door.
We emerged into the main hallway. It was packed full of Chaos soldiers, which, usually, used to be a good thing, since it gave you peace of mind to be next to so many allies, but right now, they were indirectly hiding Adriana from us.
She had disappeared. We had no idea where she went, so we had to split up. Rosaline went left, and I went right.
This was bit of a relief to me, because I was going further into eh Chaos base, rather than closer to the exit. There was no way Adriana would be where I was searching. Still, for the sake of being through, I pushed through the soldiers as fast as I could. It merely sped my pace up to a speed walk, but it was more than nothing.
Unfortunately, though, shoving through a crowd wasn't the best way to make friends.
Most of the soldiers shouted at me in annoyance, or downright glared at me. I tried to state my motive as, "I'm in a very serious emergency. If you don't want to get pushed, just move out of the way."
However, nobody seemed convinced. Instead, they became somewhat angry at the second sentence but didn't want to waste their time and went on their way.
Unfortunately, there were people in the base who would take their anger physically on me. An angry muscular man that was a solid two feet taller than me grabbed me by the scruff of my shirt and hoisted me in the air like I was a bag of potato chips. By now, the hall had widened significantly. There was still a lot of traffic, but there was enough room for one to stand to the side and not impede the movements of others.
This was exactly where I was cornered by the man. I had no one to save me now. It was all up to me.
He wasn't squeezing my windpipe—yet—so I was free to talk. "What do you want?" I asked him gruffly.
He smirked at me like he knew he had all the power in this situation. "What emergency do you have that gives you the right to ruin other people's day?"
Coming from the person who was trying to threaten me.
I caught some movement in the corner of my eye. With my limited range of motion, I turned.
Adriana was shoving her way toward the cafeteria. However, she wasn't doing it in the violent way I was doing it. It made her pace significantly slower, but nobody got mad at her.
I pointed towards her. "I'm chasing a bad guy."
But by the time the man turned that way, Adriana slipped through into the cafeteria. When he turned back to me, he seemed even more convinced that he had caught a troublemaker. "Why, in the name of Lord Chaos, would there be a bad guy in this base packed full of Chaos soldiers?"
"You remember the lockdown?"
"Yes." He didn't seem to want to know more information.
But I pressed on. "That was because of a bad guy."
"Then why isn't there another lockdown in place right now?"
"Because there's a stupid guy holding me by the neck!" I exclaimed.
In retrospect, that probably wasn't the best way to get out of this situation unharmed. The man turned on me, really angry now. He began squeezing my windpipe, and the precious flow of oxygen to my brain immediately stopped. "How dare you!" he roared. "You're going to die now!"
"Wait!" I squeaked out. I did my best to pry his hands off my neck, but it just wasn't working. "I'm sorry!"
"Save it! I'm done listening." With that, the man doubled his force on my neck. Now I felt like I was a tube of toothpaste, and any second now, my head was going to go one way and my body the other. Dark spots formed in my vision as my body ran out of air.
By this time, however, I realized that the man was serious about killing me—or seriously injuring me.
The hallway began to thin out of traffic as almost everybody had made it to their stations. That left nobody for me to call for help. Though given their reactions a bit before, even if they were there, nobody wasn't going to risk their lives to save me.
My systems were failing. It hurt to think, and my peripheral vision turned a night black, which started to slowly creep up to the center.
I sharply kicked the man where the sun doesn't shine. I know, it was a very cheap move, but my life was in danger.
He immediately let go of me, howling in pain—but that was short-lived because he had to take a big gasp of air almost immediately; I had kicked the wind out of him too.
I staggered away from him, crashing into the few Chaos soldiers passing, but I didn't care. I gulped down deep breaths, happy that the oxygen flow to my brain had been returned. My vision slowly returned back to normal, but it still hurt to turn my neck. I soldiered on, though, and glared at the Chaos soldier who had tried to choke me. He was leaning on the wall, still breathless. "Don't try to mess with me again, do you hear? You'll get more than a temporary injury."
The man nodded frantically, too out of breath to speak. I turned and staggered into the cafeteria.
There was no point, but I did it anyhow. Adriana had probably escaped in the time I had been held up by that Chaos soldier. Still, even if she hadn't, there were too many ways she could've gone. The cafeteria had doors leading to many different hallways, which in turn, lead to every single location on this base. There was no way I could clear everything before Adriana made it to the exit.
I became aware of shouts echoing from the kitchen. I turned there.
The cooks were shouting at somebody I couldn't see, in a tone of urgency and confusion that made me think it wasn't one of them they were shouting at.
I staggered towards them. My hope rose as I came closer. Maybe, just maybe, it was Adriana. She might've been clogged up with all of the Chaos soldiers, unable to go on the pathway she wanted, and could only turn back after the hallways thinned out. It sure made sense, but I couldn't know if it was true if I didn't check out the disturbance.
I charged into the kitchen, only to see Adriana being stopped by some cooks from climbing a ladder at the far end. All the cooks wore a uniform that consisted of a white, double-breasted jacket, and a tall, even-whiter hat, so it wasn't hard to make out Adriana, who had a black uniform on.
The ladder in question was an access point to the roof. It was made out of thin metal that was only as thick as my fingers, and it was painted a bright red that physically hurt my eyes to look at. It was probably meant for the cooks to throw burning food away from the building before anything else caught on fire, but I wouldn't personally climb a spindly ladder up three stories with only one of my hands available, while the other was clutching a hot pan that could melt my skin.
Adriana seemed to want to use this as a fire escape; it was more dangerous, but there were no guards to stop her.
Adriana was in a deep argument with the cooks, but when I burst into the kitchen, she immediately spotted me. Her eyes widened in surprise. She quickly pushed the cooks aside, grabbed a hot, cast-iron pan and threw it at me, then proceeded to climb the ladder as fast as she could.
I easily ducked underneath the pan, and it clanged off the wall, taking off a large chunk of drywall with it.
The chiefs squawked in alarm at this. They yelled at Adriana to come back down this instant, but she didn't seem to listen.
However, my defensive movement caused me to get to the ladder a second later. I climbed up it quickly, hoping I could outpace Adriana . . .
My vision was covered with darkness when I climbed up onto the roof, which made it harder to see.
The roof was basically a flat desert of concrete, with nowhere to hide. There were no AC units to be up there, or satellite dishes because those were inventions of the modern world.
Which was why I was confused and terrified when I couldn't spot Adriana.
There were plenty of dark shadows everywhere, made by the trees that were close to the Chaos base blocking the moon's light, but any one of them could be Adriana lying on the ground. Once I made a cursory glance around, I slowly crept towards the edge of the roof.
The fall to the ground was a couple of stories down, which made me feel queasy; if I fell off I would probably break some important bones. However, dozens of obstacles had been introduced to make even more human-like shadows, like animals, logs, and even other guards. (They were easy to spot, though, as they all patrolled in groups. Furthermore, I was pretty sure that Adriana had come alone, so she couldn't be one of those groups.)
I saw something move in the corner of my eye. I turned there, looking deep into the forest.
However, it seemed as though I had been too slow since that object didn't move again. It probably wasn't Adriana. There was no way she could've made it deep into the forest—more than a mile away—when she was only a few seconds ahead. She would have to be—
For some reason I couldn't explain, I felt a chill travel down my spine. I tightened my fists, knowing they were going to be the only weapon I could muster in time, and spun around as fast as possible.
Adriana was standing behind me. "Hello, Perseus," she said. "Quite a nice night, isn't it?"
And then she shoved me off the roof.