The Ghost of an Empire

Chapter Six

My eyes snapped open. I shot up from where I had been sitting. My head turned both ways quickly. I was in an cave of sorts. A small one. Made out of some weird green cloud. There was a waterfall at one open end of the cave. I tried to walk over there, after feeling my forehead. There seemed to be a large bruise. It was hard to walk. I looked down at my foot. There was a weird band on my ankle. I sighed. It was a restraining band, so I couldn't walk fast, let alone run. I made it  to the open end of the cave. I looked out- and immediately stepped back. That was a long  way down. I looked towards the other end of the cave. There was a steel door on the far wall, with some natural stairs leading up to it. I went over there. I could here people talking through the door, but to my frustration, I couldn't hear what they were saying. I looked around the cave some more. Absolutely nothing. I sat down where I had woken up, deciding to wait for someone.

After maybe an hour, I  heard footsteps. Then, everything went dark. But I hadn't lost consciousness. This was chemical darkness. Someone had made it dark on purpose. Then, I could see again. The red-haired woman was standing in front of me. She frowned slightly at me, and put a plastic cup of water and a cheap, crappy square meal in front of me. Then, it went dark again. Now I noticed what she was doing. She had a darkness lamp, with a black light in it. Then she left. When it became light again, I noticed something strange, although I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

It wasn't until evening that I realized what was strange. I hadn't heard a door.

I immediately jumped up off of the floor and started feeling around the cave wall where I had heard the woman's footsteps go. Normally I would have just scanned the wall with my wristband, but they had ta- oh. Wait! I realized they hadn't taken my wristband. I guessed they hadn't known what it was. They probably hadn't expected me to have such advanced technology! Maybe they didn't even know I was a Government worker. But then, why had that woman kidnapped me?

I told myself to stop theorizing and focus on getting out of here. I tapped around on my wristband for a few seconds and selected the scanner function. I held the band up to the wall. It bleeped for a few seconds and then started analyzing the surface.

After a few minutes I recieved the analytics of the wall. I looked at the digital copy on my screen and saw that there was a hidden mechanism of some sort. I laid my hand on the part of the wall that looked most suspicious, and something happened! The thin outline of a door appeared in the strange natural material. I pushed it open slowly and peeked into the hallway beyond.

Like last time, thought I'd explain a few things:

A) In the Sayyora system they don't really go on holiday. This is why Eris says that "there was even a souvenir shop". This is a strange thing on Udara, Zjarr, Vesi and Yer. The planets mostly do their fun stuff at home, mostly because with their technology they can do way more at home. They don't really need to go somewhere else. 

B) Keep in mind that 99% of buildings are floating! Also, they are not all floating at the same level, just like clouds! And, the people of the Air planet favor glass, marble and the like. Airy materials! Just saying this to give you more of a view of what Udara looks like :) 

Hope you liked this chapter! A loooot of action is going to follow in the next chapters, sorry if this story has a bit of a slow pickup! 

-strangeamatic