It was now or never. The more important people on the aircraft had already gone to sleep, and all that was left to keep watch were the newbies, and the janitors.
Matthias glided across the floor, not making a sound, as he opened the metal hatch.i followed suit, crossing my fingers that no one would be down there. We hopped through. Immediately, I saw someone, gathering supplies in the dark. He turned and saw us, jumping back.
"Stop, or I'll shoot!" Matthias held out his empty hand, pretending that he had a gun. I almost laughed, but then I real what the stranger was seeing. Obviously, in the dark, he couldn't see the gun. All he knew was that someone was threatening him.
The man backed up against the wall, his entire body tensing, staring into the sea of Matthias' blue eyes.
"Where is this aircraft headed?" He demanded. I hid behind his shoulders, peering cautiously at the stranger. He was tall, over six foot, with broad shoulders and a distinctive wide nose that I could see even in the dark. He didn't seem like the type to be scared by a teenager, so I turned and searched anxiously for the hatch, our only escape.
"The capital, of course."
Matthias nodded. "I suspected so," he whispered to me.
"We're out here looking for runaway, you see," the stranger continued. "We hear they like to cluster around the caves."
I tugged on Matthias' shirt. "I think I found it," I whispered.
"We captured two within the week. They were feisty ones."
He turned to look where I was pointing, a clearing writhing the sea of boxes, where a handle was clearly visible. But when he shifted, his hand was exposed to light from a crack in the aircraft's bottom.
"Say," said the stranger. "You don't even have a gun, do you?"
Run. Run, run run.
"Run."
The man lunged at us, and Matthias froze, nearly getting swept up in the storm, but I pulled him throught the hathc with me, and we fell into the soft soil below.
"Run. Hide!" I shouted. We had to get away from that ship. We needed to. Matthias found a small crater, that we jumped into, hiding our faces from the evil outside. And we were free.
