Surviving Patorum

Chapter 18

The smell of hot and dry air fills my nostrils when the door closes. The dimly lit room is vast, bigger than four to five of my residences. Control tables line the walls, each with numerous glowing cerulean blue buttons and levers that decorate the walls like stars. There are bright screens over the control tables, and they show camera footage from the hallways outside the Control Room. Other screens have numeric data, graphs, and even blueprints on them, and my stomach drops because I suck at math, and I'm worried there will be some reason to use it.

I notice the biggest screen is showing live footage from the Hub. It's empty. Not even the guard I shot is outside the Control Room door, and I see the puddle of blood he seemed to have left behind. I make a mental note to use these cameras to my advantage. If Dally and I can see the guards coming before they arrive, that could save us precious time to get away.

On the other side of the Control Room is floor to ceiling mainframe computers that are blowing desert-like air into the space around us. I can already feel my back starting to drip under my jacket. The mainframe computers have many ports and disk entries, making them look more like a robot than a computer. They're the type of computer that stores anything from passwords to how to pump air through vent 1274.

Stores camera footage of a certain Air Purification hallway that houses the entrance to the bathroom...

These are the same computers that held the footage of the murderer.

Perhaps there's some way to figure out who deleted it.

Before I can step in the computer's direction, Dally blocks me by pawing at the bullet hole in my jacket. His dark eyes stare at it, a look of astonishment. His finger probes the spot, and I can feel the warm sensation of his skin on mine. "How?" He says.

"The reanimation serum allows me to heal myself." I blink at him.

"Did you know that before..." Dally's eyes drop. "Before they shot you?"

"Yeah," I nod. "I had no idea if I could heal from a gunshot, though." I look down at the floor and feel a tingle run through my body. It's just hitting me now that I could have died. All I knew was that minor cuts and scrapes could heal. But a whole bullet hole? I hadn't had the slightest clue. Honestly, I wasn't thinking. I just wanted to get in here so badly that I was willing to risk anything, even my life.

Maybe it's the fact that I have no future here in the compound that pushed me to risk everything. If those guards catch me, I'll be sent straight to the experiment table and will continually be poked and prodded at with tubes and needles. Even worse, they could actually kill me. They could decapitate me or remove my heart. They would do whatever it took to kill me. I would be known as the Traitor of the Year 2126.

Dally pats me on the shoulder, causing me to come out of my haze. "You had me shittin' bricks, man. You could have given me a heads-up before pulling that stunt."

I huff out a breath. "I guess I could have." He's right. I should have told him. I should have told him the second I saw him that I could fucking heal myself.

Dally's eyes flick down to the floor. Without looking up, he reaches out and pulls me into a hug. He squeezes hard. I can feel the fear he had for me in his hug. He holds me like he thought he'd lost me. It feels weird to hug him. I don't think we've ever hugged before. We've wrestled but never shown this kind of vulnerability. I squeeze him back, letting him know that everything's alright.

I'm the one ot pull back from the hug first. I look him in the eye and see a hint of wetness on his water line. He clears his throat while shifting the weight between his feet. "Don't worry about it." He says. "I just wish you told me. Getting shot could have been avoided."