• “Doctor Talon? Are you here?” A feminine voice seeps through the door. I recognize it, it is Anna, my assistant. I gesture to Sammy to go hide to the side of the door, which she does without objection. I get up, walking to the door.
  • “Yes, I’m here Anna.” I unlock then open the door. A warm smiles appears on Anna’s face when she sees me.
  • “Doctor! We are all waiting for today’s morning meeting, you’re already fifteen minutes late.” She adds, showing a bit of worry.
  • “Oh, the meeting, yes. I…” I stop midsentence, thinking for a bit. The easiest way to access that ventilation shaft would be have the lab empty…
  • “I am truly sorry. I received a last minute mail from the structure’s maintenance team. They need to investigate issues with some pipes in our laboratory, and thus it needs to be empty.” “Good enough…” I think.
  • “Oh, what are we supposed to do today then?” Anna replies, a bit confused.
  • “For now, just relax. The maintenance shouldnt take more than an hour. Tell everyone to come back to the lab at 10 o’clock, okay?” I give her a tender smile to reassure her, which works.
  • “Understood Doctor!” she answers with a nod before continuing. “I cant wait for our diner together this evening, Victor.” Her tone switch from her usual professional to a warmer and softer voice.
  • “Y-Yes, me too my dear.” My heart pinches. “I’m sorry Anna…” echoes in my mind. She turns around and start walking toward the laboratory.
  • “See you later, doctor.” I dare not to answer.

I close the door, locking it once again. I bury my face in hands for a bit. “It’s a matter of survival”, I think, trying to rationalize the sudden pain of realizing I will most likely never see Anna again. Sammy walks closer to me, a smirk on her face.

  • “I didnt know Anna and you are a thing, doctor,” she says, childishly.
  • “Fuck off, Sammy,” I reply instinctively without even thinking. I quickly add: “S-Sorry.” It only makes her giggle. She places a hand on my shoulder.
  • “Hey, if we get out of here alive, I don’t mind give you a reward, doctor.” She adds, a smirk spread across her face. I suddenly brush her hand off, stepping back, disgusted.
  • “I’m ace. Don’t be gross,” I answer in a stern and monotone voice. Sammy is surprised, with a slight blush appearing on her cheeks.

I turn around before she could say anything, and siff through the drawers of my desk. I retreive a few important documents for travel, and the most important personal belonging that I put into a simple backpack. Once done, I put the bag on my back and head toward the door.

  • “Let’s go,” I say to Sammy who was waiting.

We get out of my office and walk toward the lab. We stop at a corner after seeing the last members of my team leaving the room. Once clear, we enter and head straight for the storage closet. I open the door, and let Sammy step through first as I take a last look at the laboratory I spent the last six years of my life in. Suddenly, an alarm rings across the whole facility.

  • “They are on to us, let’s move!” Sammy yells next to me, grasping my wrist. Suddenly, the voice of our Archpriestess replaces the alarm.
  • “Doctor Victor Talon. She is dragging you down with her. You wont be held accountable for anything if you bring her to your security team.” Noha Silver says, her voice distorted by the speaker system.

Sammy looks up to me, with a worried face. “I could just bring her to security, and I could keep my life,” I think. It echoes in my head for a bit. I could keep my work here, my colleagues, and stay with Anna. But then, why do I hesitate? I stare at Sammy, feeling guilty, as her lips moves as to beg for my help. An unknown force pulls on my heart, toward her. Could it be her divine blood having an effect me on?

  • “Victor! Please, we need to go! She’s trying to antagonize me!” Sammy shouts, pulling on my arm strongly, bringing me in the storage closet. The door closes behind me.
  • “What does that divine blood do, then?” I asks calmly, with a monotone voice.
  • “H-Huh? It’s not the time for questions, doctor,” she adds.
  • “If you are a creation of the Order, why are you employed here? Why do you have your own room, which is usually reserved for the Order’s elite? What makes you so special that I should forgo my life for you?” I reply immediately, in the same tone.
  • “It… gives me direct access to the Akashic Plane,” she finally replies, hesitating and relunctant, but she continues, “they call it the divine realm, where the angels roam free. It’s torture for me. They made me that way so that I can help them create a false god, ignoring all of the pain and suffering and horrors I have to experience to do so. We, as humanity, are playing with the very fabric of reality AND divinity, it’s madness…” She ends her sentence with a tear rolling down her cheek.

I stare at her for a moment as her knees falls to the ground, her hands still holding to my wrist. “So she saw the plane,” I think, “the realm of the divine, of pure and perfect knowledge. Yet, she describes them as a horror?” That last thought remains longer than usual in my mind. The last word, seeping in my reason like a black sludge seeping through the interstices of my brain, instilling a light but profund dread in me. I shake my head, trying to snap my mind off away from that train of thought. I turn around before starting to move a few boxes around, revealing the ventilation grate.

  • “You… are going to help me?” Sammy says behind me in a tiny voice.
  • “On the condition that you will tell me everything that you know later,” I reply quickly before tugging on the grate and snapping it off the wall.
  • “Y-Yes, understood. Thank you.”

She quickly crawls through the vent. I follow her quickly after and put the grate back on. After a short distance, we reach a large round shaft. In the middle of it, a maintenance catwalk leads away through a maintenance tunel. Above us, a large fan rotates slowly, bringing the air from below upward. We both get out of the vent to stand on the catwalk. Sammy regained her composure, and starts talking quietly.

  • “If I remember the map correctly, we should follow the maintenance tunel, it will lead us to an exit,” she says confidently.
  • “Alright, let’s go.”

We move quietly through the tunel, as sound reverberates very easily through the ventilation system. We walk for a few minutes before getting startled by the alarm system resuming it loud noises. “At least, nobody will hear us walk.” We keep walking, faster, and reach the exit after only fifteen minutes. We stand in front of a heavy door, with no handle, closed by a big lock, going through two heavy piece of steel soldered to the wall and door.

  • “So, we can’t get out from here, great…” I say after letting out of a sigh of desperation. Sammy gets the handgun out from under her sweater, before throwing a smirk at me.
  • “Why do you think I brought this bad boy?” She replies.
  • “Despite the alarms, everyone in the building will hear it if you shoot!” I quickly adds as I grab her wrist to stop her.
  • “Who cares? Once that door is open, we’re free,” she jerks her hand around to free it from my grasp.

She removes the safety of the gun with her free hand, and put the tip of the barrel directly against the steel bar of the lock going between the steal plates. Her hand shakes slightly, clearly showing she never used a gun before. She pulls on the trigger. The loud gunshot echoes deafenly through the maintenance tunel. Once the loud sound has passed, Sammy opens her eyes, looking at the result: the bar is broken in half. She puts the safety back on and stash the gun in her jean’s pocket. She jerks and tugs on the lock and the bar until half of it falls down.

  • “Yes!” She exclams loudly. She quickly opens the door.

On the other side of the door, a catwalk extands both side, exposed to the morning sun above a lake of dark misty water. To the right, the lake quickly gives away to beach of black sand. A calm fresh breeze slides along the upright wall of the structure. Sammy suddenly grabs my hand and pulls me along as she starts running.

  • “We’re free!” She says.
  • “C-Calm down! We still need to get away from here,” I reply quietly. We suddenly stops above the water, twenty meter away from the land.
  • “I hope you know how to swim, Victor.” Sammy quickly adds, as if I didnt say anything previously. She jumps over the guard rail and plundge for the water below. I stare at her, baffled.
  • “You fucking moron…” I say under my breath as I slowly climb the guard rail before following her.

We quickly swims to the shore, soaked to the bone from the cold lake. The sun and late spring breeze helps us warm up quickly as we run away from the structure. Once behind the tree line, we slow down and take a moment to wring out as much water as possible from our cloths, before walking away. We spend a while walking in a single direction. We end up completely surrounded by trees as noon approaches. Sammy has a wide smile on her face, as she enjoy the scenery and fresh air. But, I break the silence.

  • “Sammy, where are we going now?”
  • “Hm? Well, away from the structure,” she replies confidently.
  • “Is there anything that way tho? The only city I know around is where I live, which is around two hours away in car on the highway,” I adds, with a worried tone.
  • “There should be something that way.” She says, fully confident.
  • “Something? Could you be more specific?” I reply, my hand landing on her shoulder to stop her.
  • “Yes, a small town. Once we get to the fields we’ll see it clearly.” She reassures me with a small smile. I sigh, resuming our walk.
  • “I really hope that you are right.” She giggles slightly at my sentence.
  • “I’ve been planning this for quite a while now, trust me Victor.” She finishes as she start walking right by my side.

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