Dissonance - Book One

one

Kelly drags me through the maze of hallways. My feet unwillingly follow him, one foot after the other, moving farther away from my sister and closer to my unknown future. Lex is behind me, and the nameless Mod, who arrived with them, is in the rear. The alarm continues to blare and flashing red lights illuminate our path towards escape.

Launch commencing in T-minus 15 minutes.

"Come on," Kelly shouts, turning back to look at me while his feet never stop moving forward. "We're running out of time!"

I don't want to run. I want to curl up in a ball on the floor and cry. I want to sit next to Aveline and hold her head in my lap, stroking her hair and easing her transition from this world into whatever awaits her in the next. But Aveline wouldn't want that, she didn't want that. She wanted me to escape. She knew far more about what's happening right now than I do, and I have to trust in my sister that she is leading me in the right direction. It's a blind trust, a leap of faith, but if I don't take it then her life was lost for nothing. Then she is just another number to Environettix, one of the many people who tried to stand in their way and was destroyed in the process. I won't let them erase my sister's life like that. I owe her that much. I will remember her and what she did, because no one will ever have control over my memory, over me, again. Just the thought of what they have done, and everything she did for me, lights a fire within. I feel my feet lift higher as I run faster and faster towards my destiny. A smile crosses Kelly's face as he sees my renewed determination.

"That's the girl I remember," he says and speeds up to keep pace with me. "This way!" he shouts, ignoring the signs pointing towards the launching docks. "All boarding happens through entries A and B so we have to steer clear of those. They'll be looking for us."

Kelly continues to lead us through endless hallways. With every turn I expect to be met by armed soldiers, but the path remains clear. I let out a quick sigh of relief with each empty corridor, but the closer we get to our destination, the more alarmed I become by the lack of resistance. If they aren't trying to track us down it's either because they haven't caught up with us yet or because they're waiting for us to arrive. I just pray that they're waiting at the wrong location or none of us will make it out alive.

Finally, after what feels like forever, we reach a dead end with a large door. At the top of the door frame is a camera watching our every move. I lift my gun to shoot it, but Kelly's hand pushes the barrel down.

"Don't waste your bullets," he says. "They know full well we're here."

I nod in understanding and our eyes both move from the camera to two lights above the entrance, then down to a key pad on the right-hand side of the door. Kelly reaches for the door handle and tries to open it, but one of the lights at the top of the doorframe flashes red.

Access denied, a woman's voice speaks politely.

"Worth a try," he chuckles, in the typical ill-timed humorous way that only Kelly can get away with. "At least she's polite."

"We don't have time for tries!" Lex yells at him. "Or politeness." She strides over and yanks the lanyard from around his neck. The strap snaps and in her hand lies my sister's access card, splattered in her blood. Kelly catches my eye and gives me an empathetic look. I step closer and take the access card from Lex, wiping the blood away with the end of my shirt. Through the smeared blood I can see that it's not my sister's face on the ID card, but that of a woman I don't recognize. I look to Kelly for answers, but he's busy fumbling with a pocket on the side of his pants from which he removes a device with a long cord. He plugs one end into his device and the other into the port on the keypad.

"This will allow us to bypass the fingerprint and eye identification requirement without having them physically," he states, walking me through what he's doing. "That is, if it works."