Revolution

- 10 -

I wake up screaming.

I clamp a hand over my mouth, biting my tongue hard and drawing blood.

I stare around wildly, eyes flicking from wall to wall. I'm splayed out at the bottom of the stairwell, but it's the real bottom, not just level one. My arm throbs. My arm and my chest and my head and what the fuck happened here?

An amber bar of light flickers above my head. It's one of those artificial lights, but it's a weird color. The walls are slate grey and covered with a layer of what I faintly recognize to be dust. So it's not used. That's good.

I reach out as far as I can, searching for bioelectrical signals, but I don't feel anything. There's no noise in the stairwells above me. A faint sliver of light banishes a rectangle of shadows next to me, and I lean over, looking up just in case.

Nothing.

I scramble to my feet. My boots make a weird scuffing noise when I stand, but I don't hear anything. The room is bathed with an orangish tint, and a quick glance around tells me I'm utterly alone. I can't decide if that's a good thing or not.

I try to steady my breathing. Reorient myself. This time, it doesn't work. I'm alone, left in the wake of destruction.

"Calm down, Paige," I whisper to myself. "You're fine. They're fine. You're not dead... yet. They haven't found you. Sure you might not know what the hell is going on, but what else is new." My optimistic self-talk is slowly turning cynical, so I shut my mouth altogether and focus on figuring out everything I can.

There are stairs to my right, small and metal and not at all like the pristine white I'm used to. Slowly, I set my hand on the rail and take them one at a time. They creak horribly. I flinch at every step, certain that someone is going to hear the racket I'm making and come down to kill me. No one does. I jump up the last few stairs to the landing, colored the same glittering bleach tone. There's a door with a small glass window. I stand on my toes to look through, and it's a metal hallway. Metal walls, metal floor, metal ceiling. Even the lights are encased in what looks like metal cages. I shiver. I am not going in there.

I walk up one more flight. These stairs are significantly better maintained, but I still roll my feet to avoid too much sound. Just because the stairway is abandoned now, doesn't mean someone can't walk in.

This level is labeled with a large "B" printed on the wall. Basement, maybe? That won't have an exit. I race up one more story, my heart beating faster in my chest.

The corner of the landing is covered in blood.

It looks like they tried a half-hearted attempt to clean it; there's a few unnatural swipes and smudges, but the distinct red tint is still there. I cover my mouth with my hand. It was not like that earlier. It looks like someone was shot, but there's no way to tell if it was fatal or not. I pray it wasn't.

I swallow a choke in my throat and turn to read the opposite wall, emblazoned with "01" on the white brick. This is where I need to be. If I'm right, this is the ground floor.

I crack open the heavy metal door and creep out into the hallway, almost forgetting to check for electrical signals until they're overpoweringly close. I plaster myself close to the door and use my fingertips to close it silently. It clicks. It's barely audible, but the heavy bootsteps coming from the other end of the hallway pause.

I lash out with renewed energy. Half a dozen images slide across my vision and I clench my jaw, focusing harder. The pound in my head gets worse but these guards are weak, and in seconds they're knocking each other out with swift, decisive punches. Their consciences slip from my grasp as they fall, and in mere seconds, it's silent. I sigh, slumping forward. That was harder than it should have been.