Blood Obsidian

Issue 41

A brief sense of respite ... - Part 5

"Come to the satellite. We'll get together. Have a few laughs." Caitlyn pushed herself along the air duct, trying to remember whether she was claustrophobic or not. "I'd do it myself, but I'm too busy passive aggressively pointing out that I'm in a wheelchair because of you, only, like, every single second."

"I can hear you. I literally hear everything you're saying." Still up in the satellite, watching over her progress, Kyle sounded like he had that stupid grin on his face. "But, yes, if I wasn't out of commission, I would be doing it. You're doing great. Deep breaths."

This had to be the dumbest thing she had ever agreed to, and she had agreed to do some dumb things in her life. There, kind of, was no option when you had a friend like Alaina, who thought trying out new things involved doing incredibly stupid stunts that could either embarrass, injure, or, more often, both. Once again, she cursed herself for thinking about her former best friend.

Former. Rayna had made it perfectly clear that Alaina had decided to call an end to that friendship, all because Caitlyn had accidentally received the power to do something good in the world. It felt easier to look at it that way, rather than thinking she had dived, head first, into a situation far beyond her capabilities. Not that Rayna knew the true reason why Alaina had fallen out with Caitlyn. The fake video was only the breaking point.

The air duct groaned and clunked, rumbling noises coming with every movement. In the movies, the good guys managed to move through them with barely a sound, but the thin material wobbled and bounced whenever Caitlyn put weight on a surface. Those air ducts, in the movies, were also not quite so tight. If not for the way the suit could change and adapt to circumstances, she expected she would have got stuck right from the beginning.

"How much further?" She paused, grateful that the suit slicked away her sweat. "I've been at this for hours!"

"You've been in there for less than five minutes. Don't lie for sympathy." In the background, Kyle's wheelchair squeaked as he moved. She chose to believe he had made it squeak just to remind her he was in it. "Right, you should see a junction in ten feet. Take the left turn, go on for another twenty feet and Alden's office should be right below. See! Easy."

It wasn't easy! None of this was easy! And she had yet to get out of the place once she had fitted the thumb drive to Alden's personal computer. That should be even more fun! Finding the junction, Caitlyn had to make a complicated, gymnastic turn to move in the new direction, wishing she had spent more time in the school gym actually learning this stuff than complaining about it. She could swear she was about to get cramp.

Twenty more feet and she found a grill. Almost exactly twenty feet. She wondered if she could pretend that it was twenty-five feet, just to prick Kyle's smug ego, but she expected he knew exactly how far she had gone. The next part, she wasn't even certain she could do, even though they had practiced, up in the satellite.

More thumping and rumbling from the tortured air duct and Caitlyn had manoeuvred her hand into position and stopped. With her suit's enhanced hearing, she caught a conversation passing over a radio and, below, she could see the outline of a man. A big man in a suit. A really, really, big, muscular man that looked like he chewed girders for fun. Caitlyn didn't want to have to hurt him.

After tortuous seconds, the man touched his earpiece, the coiled cable curling around his neck and under the collar around his enormous neck, and moved away. A few more seconds and she heard the 'ping' of an elevator opening. The sound of the doors closing and then her own breaths that she had stopped taking while the mountainous man had stood beneath her.

"I hate this!" She placed her hand over the grill and instructed the suit to unfasten the screws that held the grid in place. "I hate you! I hate chilli fries! I hate ..."