When there was water, there were shriekers. Norah named them for the only aspect she knew about them: their screams.
She went back to the barricade and tried to loop her rope over one of the pipes that were sticking out. It caught. She smiled. She pulled. It stuck.
Norah adjusted her supplies and climbed up the wall. Every small step filled her with a happiness that she couldn’t justify. Every half-foot was like winning the lottery, and for the first time in days, she believed that she might actually make it up the wall and survive.
Still several feet from the top, her body was already soaked to the bone, her muscles twitched, and sweat poured down her face.
Norah stretched her fingers to brush the ceiling just as her body began to fall apart around her. The fingers of her left hand hooked over the ledge. Tears filled her eyes and, try as she might, she couldn’t lift herself up and over the edge.
“Norah Lee?”
The voice came from above her just as a bolt of lightning shattered her last nerve. She clung to the rope with all her might.
She looked up into the eyes of a man, a thing, with half his face enclosed in metal. He reached down to grab her and she jerked away from his hand. Norah fell back with a cry, hitting the cloudy water below with a deafening splash.
In the next instant, she grabbed the gun from her belt and aimed it at the creature she was sure was a hallucination.
She slid back until she was within her lab once more and shielded her body behind the wall.
“I have a gun. I know how to use it!” She screamed at the illusion.
“Don’t. Please, I’m here to save you.” Hands appeared through the opening, palms out. “Don’t shoot, I’m here to help.”
Her entire body shook. “That’s impossible, no one is near Axone,” her voice wavered. “How?” Was he the creature that killed her team? Didhemake those awful shrieks? “Who are you?” Despite her fever, she kept the gun leveled.
“My name is Stryker.” The rain picked up. “I intercepted your distress call.” The light beyond the clouds began to fade. “I tracked your signal.” Norah lowered her gun an inch. “We need to leave. Now.”
Her heart raced.
She wiped her nose against her shoulder. “You got my distress call?” she whispered, anxious, her tears coming back. “My distress call…”
“Yes. I’m going to come down there now, don’t shoot.”
Norah hiccupped, “Okay.” She didn’t lower her gun.If he comes down here I’ll have better aim. If he’s here to kill me like the others, I’ll go down fighting.
She really hoped he was telling her the truth but her finger remained on the trigger.
The sky was growing darker by the second and the dimly lit space that had been her home for days had become a living nightmare.
She had wanted to stay on Axone, she had wanted to continue her research, she had even dragged her feet in packing up her lab to prolong her time here. Now, she would do anything to get out and away from her cell. The place that had been her retreat was now a tourniquet around her heart. The pressure built. Her hands shook.
She heard a thump just before two feet, two legs appeared from the hole. They dropped down as a man who seemed too big to fit lowered himself through the crack.
A burst of lightning haloed him as rain cascaded down the powerful outline of his body, his arms gripped the edge of the broken ceiling.
Can I trust him?Norah had never felt so alone.He could rape me, torture me, kill me, and no one would know.She wasn’t alone. She had two guns.
A strong chest appeared, military grade with the fixtures of a dozen weapons strapped to it. Her fear grew with each second.
She didn’t know what scared her more: the situation she was in or placing a few seconds of hope on a stranger. The man landed in the hallway with a splash.
His eyes found her immediately and he raised empty hands, palms outward in submission. “See? That wasn’t so bad. If you would lower your gun–”
“No.”
“Okay, but if you insist on aiming it at me, it’s going to be rather difficult to get you out of here.” He stood there in the rain and didn’t make a move to come closer.
“Why are you here?” Norah hated that her voice shook.
