Luce could only see the front of the first warehouse face on, there were no windows or doors to the side walls of the buildings which where set back on either side of the first, perhaps they were in a better state of repair.
The risk of heat stroke and dehydration were inevitable standing out in the blazing sun for much longer. Luce stood more of a chance - if anything at all awaited her - inside than standing there in such unbareable heat. She made her decision to inspect the buildings, curiously wondering what form of business felt the need to be so far out from civilisation.
She carefully scanned the windows of the first warehouse with its moss coated red brick facade. Other than the broken window's that Luce could see were vacant, at least three had been boarded up. Luce imagined cracks of light seeping through the boards into darkened rooms where people could peer unnoticed upon the Savannah before them. Watching. Waiting. There were no signs as to what the building was once used for, only a rectangular placard by the busted front door which was long ago faded by the sunlight.
No one came out of the building. She heard no sound other than her frantic heart beats echoing through the silence for all to hear.
Luce made her way towards the second building of identical height and structure. She wondered perhaps if they had been office blocks.
Movement caught Luce's eye in the short walk between the two buildings. Movement across a garden of tall exotic flowers and trees with lazily swooping branches and brilliant orange flora. She felt she had made an astronomical leap from Mars to Venus. The landscape felt as otherworldly as the barren Savannah, and it struck Luce as odd that such plants could grow here in this space full of life when only a few feet away anything that grew was dead.
There wasn't a breeze to disturb the plants, someone or something moved with in them. The foliage was so thick it was hard to see anything with in. Luce stood on tiptoes trying to glimpse any signs of movement.
She heard a swipping noise that sounded more electronical than natural, followed by a soft thud, the sound of a book being closed.
She walked around the botanical garden like a child peering through the window of a sweet shop. The garden looked as though it stretched for miles. Luce approached what seemed to be a pathway through the foliage, soft grass which appeared to have been trimmed. Luce considered walking through, until she looked at her surroundings properly and relaized she was staring at a mirage. It wasn't the type of tripping out of your brain mirage, the type she expected to see lost in the desert. It was a carefully, purposefully acriciterured mirage that filled Luce with a sense of wonder and amazement. It was beautifully genius. She had arrived at a pathway not between two gardens, but a pathway between one garden and a building. The building was made entirely from reflective mirrors, so it had appeared to be an extension of the jungle before it. She stepped tenitively on to the grass watching as her reflection warped in the mirror blending her image into the jungle behind her, like one of those carnival mirrors.
An invisible building.
The academy was real.
Luce made her way across the grassy path. The swipping sound she had heard earlier was in fact a sliding door that opened as she passed by. Had it remained closed she would have walk straight by without noticing.
She walked into a large open lobby with white marble floor, organic wooden furniture the type that was meant to be placed in gardens, lots of plants and large trees in mirrored pots, and a waterfall feature which ran from the top of the staircase down behind the reception desk to Luce's left. Luce appeared to be in a grand green house that thankfully had air conditioning. She could have kissed the ground by her feet.
She found a water tank by the side of the reception desk which she guzzled down six glasses of before discarding the paper cup in its respective recycling bin. There was no one manning the reception desk. No one around at all.
Standing in the centre of the lobby she gathered her surroundings. There werent any signs to direct her towards the dorms, or specific class rooms. Luce couldn't spot one sign other than the one by reception that read Please water the plants. There wasn't even a sign welcoming guests, or even of the Academy's name. Long wide corridors looking out over the garden stretched in either direction of the lobby, with a third corridor intersecting the building down its middle towards the back of the building, to Luce's right a large curving staircase with panelled glass led up to a second floor.
A door slammed suddenly from down the corridor between the stairs and reception. It was done with exuberant force, causing the offending door to bounce open again. Luce waited a moment to see if anyone would come back out to close it. When it became apparent no one would she made her way it that direction.
Standing at a door with a sign which read janitors closet, she could see stairs illuminated by blue LED strip lights along their edges leading down into a corridoor. Where was the mop bucket? The sweeping brush and wet floor signs? Had someone labelled the wrong door. The only sign so far that gave Luce any direction and it wasn't even right.
"Hello." She called. Even after drinking all that water her voice sounded like she'd smoked too many cigarettes. She cleared her throat and called a little louder, still, no one replied.
She headed down the stairs, a disorientating task to say the least. There was no hand rail, and the blue lights made her dizzy as she descended each step one at a time. She gathered herself at the bottom of the stairs looking along a corridoor lit with the same blue lights in circular domes along the ceiling. It was like stepping into a quarantined area being inspected for contamination, with those lights that showed up bodily fluids that the human eye couldn't see. It was all very clinical, it made Luce feel uneasy. At the end of the corridoor was a heavy metal door, from the screen of a science fiction movie, the ones that were used to hide the atomic world ending weapon from falling in to the wrong hands. What the hell was this janitor using to clean with? And did he really need such a complicated security system, the key card entry and touch pad for reading finger prints put the systems at incarceration to shame.
Luce turned back towards the stairs, she'd just reached the bottom of the staircase when an almighty crash shook the basement corridoor causing dust to cascade from the ceiling lights with the force of an earthquake. For a moment Luce was convinced that's exactly what it was as she dropped in to a crouching position.
Something hurled through the air behind her. She whirled around startled by the commotion, unsteadily falling back on to the lowest step. Tall and gangly limbs tumbled down on to the floor by her feet, thrown like a strike at a ten pin bowling game. He had travelled through the door with such force that the hinges had become disjointed, the door leaned at an obtuse angle, only its bottom half attached to the door frame.
There was a moment where Luce considered helping the man to his feet, that's what any normal person would do, but whatever had thrown him through the door was heading this way and all she could think was Run! Her feet remained stationary neither synced with her morals or her logic.
Unlike Luce the body of the man at her feet was still in tune with the rational part of his brain. He moved with exceptional speed for any ordinary person, let alone one who was surely injured to some extent. Regardless, he was up in one bound. A blur of wild auburn haire and brown tweed suit, more or less flew through the air between the stairs and the broken door, illuminated by the hazy blue light.
Luce couldn't see much through the doorway, there wasn't enough light.
She was rethinking the fact about red hair being rational, as he stood by the door attempting to hinge it back into place. She had heard adrenaline could make you do all kinds of crazy unrealistic crap, but that door looked incredably heavy and red head didn't have much time. Luce could hear footsteps now. Thunder echoed down the corridor.
"F@ck!" Red hair swore under his panting breaths. Surprisingly he wasn't struggling with the weight of the door, but he seemed to be having a problem aligning it against the hinge.
There must have been something crazy in that water tank, like gin or something. Luce found herself pacing across the corridoor. She wedged herself in the doorway, pushed the unhinged door and with a snap the it clicked back in to place.
The footsteps were close. Any closer and they could reach out and....
Smack!
Luce hit the wall with a brutal force, knocking the air from her lungs. Black spots danced across her vision.
There was a collision of bodies. Dashes of red and black, of tweed and dark denim. Luce slid across the wall towards the stairs where she stumbled upon a step. She leant back against the wall for support. Her lungs felt like they were on fire, ears filled with the sound of rushing blood, her head for the millionth time that day was pounding, but this was more intense, Luce thought it might literally explode.
"Get the hell off of me Kye!" The red head grimaced as he pushed his attacker back a few paces.
Hazel eyes pigmented with molten flecks, hot as lava, angry as hell, locked on to Luce. The meer look forced her scrambling up the next two steps. She'd distracted him. Confusion flooded his features, brows furrowed, his difinitive jaw falling slack pulling his etched lips in to a sharp gasp. In that moment of weakness red head screamed wild and carnal, swinging his leg up and into Kye's chest with enough force to send him sliding back in to the darkness.
"You need to calm the hell down bro!" Red head called mockingly as he sauntered forward and slammed the door shut.
The audible beep and sliding mechanics of the door locking system filled a static empty silence, that left Luce feeling void and empty, which was far from distressing compared to the following snarl consumed with antagonised fury. Luce felt its anguish sit deep and heavy in a dark place inside of her.
What the hell kind of place is this?
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Welcome to the academy folks! And thanks for joining us!
Please comment and vote if you enjoyed it! If you didn't comment anyway, writing is a learning curve, and with time I will only get better.
It seems like Luce's search for answers is throwing up more questions than she bargained for huh?
In chapter three we visit the dangerous mind of the red head in tweed. So hold on tight whilst we ride the hell out this crazy roller coaster of mess Luce has gotten herself in to.
Buckle your seat belts tight folks!