This is a rough draft. I'll come back and work on it later, maybe. But certain people were telling me it had been too long...
Avery was interrupted by the dark.
Without
a flashlight on hand, the empty halls turned ominous when the unappreciated
glow of light vanished. Avery immediately turned, wide eyed, to the man whom
she had nicknamed Trench in favor of his attire. His face was invisible, but she could feel
the anxious aura surrounding him. Groping for a tangible stronghold, her
fingers found his arm and tightened. Trench took an uneasy step forward, the
simple movement issuing an echo that resounded off the metal walls.
“Wait!”
Avery hissed. Trench turned, loosening her grip on his arm. Every move they
made echoed through the hallway. They couldn’t risk being caught. Not now. Not
when they were so close.
“What
else can we do? We’re stuck, Vi. Nowhere to go but forward.”
“We
could go back.” Avery gestured behind her, but her fingers slid over a smooth
surface. She gasped, before turning fully around, both palms examining the
surface.
“There’s
a wall.”
“What?”
“A
wall. It’s a wall, Trench. We’re stuck.”
“That’s
impossible.” Trench turned, examining the wall himself. “How could it
possibly…”
“Who
cares. All we need to worry about right now is finding your girlfriend. She
wasn’t back there, so we need to keep going.”
The
blackness seemed to darken. As the two made their way forward, the room seemed
to tighten, as if oxygen had been traded for the dark.
“I
think the hall goes pretty straight for a while. Careful, though. There may be
stairs or something at the end.” Colton remarked. Avery nodded, then, realizing
he couldn’t hear her, said, “sounds good.” Gliding her fingers over the smooth wall to
her left, Avery cautiously stepped forward. No past experiences had ever
prepared her for the utter darkness she was left in now. The only thing she
could do was hope there was a way into light again.
For
several minutes, the only sounds Avery heard was the pound of their feet
against a metal ground. Slowly, the floor began to slant downward. The
condition of metal slabs beneath their feet started to deteriorate. Once, Avery
tripped on a loose bolt. The slabs seemed to bend into each other. As Avery
reached down to feel one, she realized that a crack had splintered the middle
of it. The two halves had slanted upward to form an unnatural mound of metal.
Each metal plate seemed to be unequal to its neighbor, so they all formed an
uneven and difficult surface.
Without
warning, Avery’s hand disappeared into the wall. It seemed as if her hand had
simply gone through the wall. Avery gasped and yanked it out quickly. Reaching
up, she felt around to see if the opening was surrounded by a frame. Finding no
visible difference on the wall around the opening, she reached her hand inside,
tracing the walls behind the opening. They were wooden.
Her
fingers slid across a light switch. Groping below it, she felt something like
human skin. She had just enough time to scream before she was yanked inside.
