Plutonian

Chapter 50

I follow Matt through the small door and my body immediately tenses when I'm met with nothing but darkness. I can't see anything and my arms and legs are wrought with tension, expecting Mike to assault me at any moment.

"Just keep walking straight," I hear Matt's voice.

"Where are we going?" I ask him, wondering if I have made the right decision by following Rosie's boyfriend into this passage of nothingness.

I hear the sound of a door hinge groaning as it is turned and soon the narrow passage we are in lights up.

The sudden burst of light nearly blinds me and I have to squint to see Matt standing by the door.

He takes two miniature looking cups that are filled with a dark brown liquid and hands me one once I've reached him.

"Drink this. It will keep you warm and alive."

He gulps down the liquid in his hands but I hold on to mine in hesitation. Should I just drink it and walk inside?

Who knows what he will do to me there?

"Hurry up, we only have five minutes," I hear a female voice complain and I peer into the light to see Josephine, Jade, Ron, Joon and two other faces from the party.

The breath is nearly knocked out of me as I see them standing in what looks like a freezer with large pieces of meat hanging by the ceiling.

"This is the only secure place for us to meet because the dark hallway has no cameras and the temperature in this meat freezer can kill someone in under fifteen minutes. Therefore no cameras needed in here either, " Matt explains to me. "This liquid prolongs the effects of hypothermia and we are able to talk freely without freezing to death."

Noticing Josephine's distress, I quickly gulp down the sour liquid and walk inside.

Matt shuts the door behind us and all their gazes immediately fall on me.

"What is this?" I ask cautiously and Josephine answers without missing a beat.

"Since we are running out of time, I'm going to get straight to the point. Aria, we need your help. The group of us here don't want to carry on with our miserable lives on this planet anymore, we've always wanted to go back to Earth and it was only about a year ago that we started having hope."

Her words shock me and I wonder if I am hearing things. I have never heard these familiar words uttered before aside from in my own head. 

Joon walks to the back of the freezer and gestures for me to follow. I walk past Josephine and Jade and stop next to Joon to see what he is pointing at.

At first glance the floor under the thick slab of hanging meat looks the same as it does all over- a thick layer of ice. But when I look closer I notice a small irregularity painted over the rough surface like someone has written over it.

I bend down and study the pattern and nearly fall back in surprise when I realize that it is a message.

The girl will speak to masses. They will make her lie but her actions can be more influential than her words. It is a chance to shift the tide.  S

The words are so obscure and small, I have to place my head right under the meat to read them. Once I have finished reading, I cover my hand over my mouth and my head starts to spin.

What the hell is going on? Who wrote this? Did one of them write it to spook me out? 

"Wh--at is this?" I stammer.

"We think the girl mentioned in this message is you. Are you supposed to give a speech to a group of people anytime soon?" Joon asks me and I resist the urge to place a hand over the frozen wall to keep steady.