He flinches back, stumbling into the wall of buttons and levers. A bright silver flash of his hands move so fast they blur around me and I don’t understand what’s happening until I hear the thud of his gloves on the ground and his icy white fingers touch my face.
“You’re so warm,” he says, sucking in a quick breath.
“Tore,” I whisper with a smile, “open the door for me.”
One stark pale hand reaches away from me and grabs the lever on the console near the door. He presses in his code, TORE, and releases the lever back into its original position. The door slides open with a loud whoosh.
“Thank you,” I say breathlessly, reaching up on my tippy toes and planting a small peck of a kiss on the corner of his lips. “Don’t put that armor back on.” He draws in a sharp breath and staggers sideways, dropping to the floor.
I don’t stay to see if he’s okay. He’s stunned. These people have never been without that metal around their skin. They don’t understand touch or women. And that knowledge is my only weapon here.
My feet fly through the doorway, and canned, metallic air sweeps across my face. The hallways hum with whatever powers this ship, a constant stream of white noise that makes me want to tear at my ears.
I make it to the end of the walkway when the grates above my head vibrate and shudder. Within seconds darkness spills down as the lights flicker off around me. I crane my head to look around the corner, but there’s nothing but thick blackness and a strong smell of bitter disinfectant.
Through the darkness I slide my hands over the walls as I quietly jog my way through the maze of pathways. I have no clear view or any idea where I’m going but I know I can’t stay still.
Down another long walkway, this one carpeted with a metal grid that resonates with the sound of my footsteps, I stop dead in my tracks when I hear the first murmurs of shouting voices.
Red lights slash through the blackness overhead and blue lights pulsate along the edges of the grid under my feet. I follow the pulses of the light. They have to lead me toward somewhere big, somewhere so I can figure out how the hell to get off this metal canister.
My feet slip through another walkway and the voices become louder. My heart pounds in my throat, I need off this ship. It feels like the walls and the dark are closing in on me. The air seems thinner, hotter, and I can’t gulp enough in.
“Sir, the prisoner is gone,” I hear a voice say.
“That’s impossible!” Pious grounds out as I round the corner and see the chaos through the shadows.
“Sir, Tore—Unit 328 has malfunctioned.”
“Impossible!”
“See for yourself, sir,” the shadowy figure says, fingers and arms flying over a large keyboard. “His face armor has been corrupted.”
Above them a display of my small holding room opens like a 3-dimensional hologram. My face heats.They had cameras in my room?
