Find Me a Cure

Chapter 6: A Game like Dominos

"Syncing failed. System corrupted. Syncing failed. System corrupted. Syncing failed. System..."

Through distorted vision, I was just about able to make out the hand that pulled the needle from my own hand. It was his.

Alarms blared out of the machine a following his decision, jolting me to action. As small as it was, it had the loudest speakers. Probably Beats by Dr Dre.

"Syncing failed. System corrupted. Synching failed. System corrupted..."

Oh my god, shut up.

The time showed 4am... And then I realised, it wasn't the alarms that awoke me. Swift as mercury, electrical impulses, sprinted up my neck. Remember how I felt the Titanic was balanced on top of my head? The best way to describe how I felt when the clock struck 4am was it felt like watching Titanic on rewind.

Spontaneously, my mind replayed some of Director's mumbled words from about two minutes ago. Something about 4am...

"4am...weakest...th fusion must...wears... ff."

The drug wears off at 4am!

Ha! I wasn't going to die today! But do you know who was going to die? Director who betrayed me! And Anne who betrayed me too! And the Front who also betrayed me! And Everest who I didn't trust in the first place to be betrayed by anyway...

But then it hit me. The only reason I was still standing was because he corrupted the process. But that made no sense. Why-

A hand grabbed my wrist and tugged me forward. Instinctively, I followed.

With a few pushes of a few buttons, Everest turned off the evil machine. And then all that was left was silence and my confused thoughts.

It was only a duration of a heartbeat before he threw the door of room TU001 open and we sprinted down the hallway at about fifty miles an hour or so. No hyperbole intended.

But why? There was no need for a 'we'. This was strictly an 'I' situation. I was the one they wanted to terminate. He was the one who was supposed to do the terminating. Things were happening quite so oppositely, if you ask me. Not that I'm complaining.

Being this perplexed of his motives was almost as bad as nearly dying. But since I first met this glacial Everest, it's been nothing but almost with him.

I almost beat him in our first dual in Director's office - before he, of course, cheated using that iniquitous drug. I almost choked the life out of him, when after I awoke from but ubiquitous drug the first time. And he almost killed me, the prospect was right at his fingertips. Then, why didn't he?

Now running through the hallways of what I thought of as home, I glanced at the iron grip on my wrist, that just a few seconds ago, had the power to end my life, but now turned out to be my liberation.

He's so weird.

It was when I saw some natural light and some green when I realised that we were heading towards the exit. We were getting out of the Front! Still didn't know why, but I went along with it.

What if he was planning to finish the deed outside? What, don't blame me for being suspicious, I nearly died some time ago.

Clearing all the cynical conspiracies out of my mind, I grasped the handle that belonged to one of several back doors of this building, ones that I'd been in and out of a million times, and pulled. It didn't budge.

"It's locked!"

Everest wrapped his hand around the handle just as I did and pushed. With a click, it opened.