Lifeboat

22. Clarity

The voices outside the room had stopped.

"What do you mean by you've been here before? You know, before the time that you found me here?"

Dante's voice came out raspy and broken, no doubt from the lack of water he'd been whining about previously. A twinge of compassion threatened to snowball me with a wave of weakness, so I got down on my knees and summoned all my concentration on the smooth floor.

"There's no reason to be alarmed. My memory is returning, that's all."

He crouched down in front of me, even in the dark I knew where his body was. I could feel him, sense the tension he released, the warm, musky man smell around him. I'd only had a glimpse of the grey, cotton trousers and short-sleeved top he had been dressed in, its starchy material rustled with his movements.

"That's all? Well, what do you remember? Are you certain you've been here and not somewhere that reminds you of this?"

I let my hands do their job, searching and prying for the tiniest of chinks in the surface, my mind racing through scenarios of medics and treatments from my mind's eye.

"Yes, I've definitely been here."

"Care to elaborate? I mean, it's not as if we're going anywhere right now, so humour me, please."

I grinned at his sarcastic reaction, it settled my nerves to know that Dante had regained command of himself. Whatever drugs they'd pumped into him must be wearing off.

"The nurse was there, the room much the same, black walls, you know?"

My fingers continued their duty, my thoughts elsewhere. The memories threatened to consume me, overwhelm my conscious state and drag me down into a blithering mess of incoherent nonsense. I had to keep control of these images passing through my brain. Make sure they didn't overload my knowledge of what was right or wrong.

"Do you think you could help me?"

Dante offered a heavy silence. I waited. I had nowhere else to be. Eventually, he spoke, dry and low.
"I will do what I can. If you say there's a way out, I believe you. You are a strange person, Poll Tander. I don't think I have ever met anyone like you. Even nature appears to know you. That time we were caught in the dawn, you survived. I've only seen that before in my mother and myself. She understood the seasons, the animals and their patterns of existence. You reminded me of her. Why is that, when you're also so damn annoying?"

Finally, my skin caught on a tiny fleck of metal. I plucked at it, releasing the spring mechanism and the catch opened, revealing a dull, amber-coloured opening in the floor below us.

I almost squealed in delight, grasping out in the gloom to take a hold of his arm, making physical contact with the shadow before me.

"Got it!" The words squeaked their way free as I manoeuvred myself into position to sit on the edge of the newly revealed square-shaped trapdoor, my legs dangling into the strange glow underneath us.

"Wait." His voice held authority. His fingertips dug into the tender flesh of my wrist. "How do I know if I can trust you?"

Even in the darkness, I closed my eyes. Concentrating on my inner-self. The images became stronger, I saw the room, black obsidian walls, the nurse with the hypo, the drugs she administered. The result of vile, hostile anguish flooded my veins. They wanted to create a monster. That stare. That man with the stare. He had been standing behind the nurse, instructing her. He was behind it. If I could find him, I would know the full story.

"Poll? Are you asleep?"

"No, I'm right here. Are you ready?"

"What do you think?"

"Alright, then perhaps you should get on with it, go on, move, get yourself down there, now."

Dante's warm body lurched towards me then took a pause in activity, so that I knew he was close to the edge of the trapdoor at this point. An overwhelming urge to goad him into action took hold of me, I couldn't help myself.
"You know, it's perfectly acceptable to admit that you are scared. I would never think any less of you for being cautious."

"Shut your mouth, Tyke."

Perhaps I had overdone the sarcasm this time.

My eyes strained to make out his face as his dark form passed through the hole, blocking out the pale light. I heard the subtle scratch of his hospital-style clothes against the edges of the square exit as he dropped down into the next room. A grunt rose up, informing me that he had made a connection with the floor below. I hissed down to him, leaning far over the hole to see his upturned face, orange in the light. The whites of his eyes gleamed up surreally.

"Can you see anything?"

He shuffled his feet, turning his head around, then barked back sharp words at me, tinged with irritation.
"Not a thing. There's nothing here. Only a wall light. There's no way of knowing if we have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. I suppose that's too much of an ancient reference for you to comprehend. My guess is that we are royally screwed. It won't be long until they find us. We should have saved ourselves the bother and stayed where we were."

I rolled back to sit on my haunches while contemplating a satisfactory response. Dante, obviously under immense pressure, was proving to be unstable. This revelation unsettled me. I had come to rely on his steady nature, his backbone so to say. How could he have given up so quickly?

Lying flat upon the floor, I made a rest for my chin upon my folded elbows, the cool of the tiles seeping through my thin top.

His eyes blinked up at me, his expression difficult to gauge in the dim light.
"Are you staying up there?"

"No."

"So, come on then. You may as well join me in my misery."

"I don't think you've looked around properly."

An image of a rope ladder had sprung into my head. A thick one attached from the ceiling on a rail, nearly indistinguishable in colour from the room, pale orange.

"Oh really."

I watched him fold his arms across his body and lean his head to one side, his mouth gaping open as he stared up at me.

"Yes, really, try getting closer to the walls and feeling around. I guarantee you will find something."

It took him a moment to move, but he eventually gave in and stomped away under the trapdoor, muttering to himself.

He disappeared from view and I smiled, imagining the look of surprise on Dante's face when he found the rope.

"Anything?"

A clink of metallic motion rewarded my anticipation. Along with a swish and thump of something solid being brought across the room.

Dante came back into view, he stopped under the hole and glared up at me. In his right hand he had hold of a sturdy section of a rope ladder that stretched up to the ceiling beneath me. It was coloured the same as the orange light.

However, Dante didn't seem to be very happy with his discovery. He mumbled up at me.
"I suppose there's going to be no living with you after this."