A Time Traveller’s Fable - Chapter 4
The Escape
A Time Traveller’s Fable - A novel by Pete Brennan
Chapter 4 - The Escape
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After all the commotion with James’ seizure which had awoken the entire floor, Lily had no problem falling back to sleep. Her day had been several hours longer than anyone else's and she was particularly feeling it tonight. She had not even bothered to change out of her clothes and passed out on top of her bedsheets, still wearing her jeans, jacket and even her shoes.
As she slept, she was visited by the same dream that haunted her every night for the last five years. The same dream she got lost in every time her concentration drifted whilst awake. The dream where she relives the day that she last saw her father. The twenty four hour period that culminated in the Liberator’s siege on the government in the capital. The day that the world she could barely remember ended.
The smell of breakfast. Bacon and eggs. The dizzy feeling after her father picked her up and twirled her around the living room. That stupid piece of toast clasped between his teeth. The tears that fell down his cheek as he turned and stepped up onto that bus. Her mother, unconsolable on the porch bench as Lily tried to cheer her up regardless. The pack of cards she always carried. ‘Wanna see a Magic trick? Cheer you up?’
Lily snapped into lucidity with a deep gasp and jolt of fear that she couldn't explain. She had goosebumps all over her body. It was dark and silent in her room save her heavy breathing. She discovered she was drenched through with a cold sweat and her head was foggy. ‘Fucking dream’, she muttered as she swung her legs around and planted her feet on the cold floor. She stared at that ugly carpet and thought about how much more she hated it every time she saw it. It weirdly oriented her back into reality, the banality of that hideous sight.
She stood up and walked into her tiny bathroom which contained just a small porcelain basin, a toilet and a pathetic shower that could only ever produce a trickling stream of luke-warm water. The entire room was barely big enough for a person to turn around in and you had to practically climb into the shower to close the bathroom door behind you.
After Lily used the bathroom, she filled a plastic cup with water and swallowed the whole thing with one gulp, gasping with satisfaction. She had no idea why she had felt quite so thirsty but guessed it was because she was so dehydrated on account of the inexplicable cold sweats she had awoken in. She found that odd. She never had had the sweats as bad as this before and almost never woke in the middle of the night. The dream was the same as any other night, but normally the building’s wake up tannoy woke her at 6:30am. But it was still almost entirely pitch black in her room, save what little moonlight could filter its way down to the side of the building and into her window.
She walked out of the room, passed her bed and entered her laughably small kitchen. She glanced at the digital clock that was the only remaining function of her electric oven. Food was only ever eaten and prepared in the cafeteria and thus, all such appliances had been disabled in all the children’s rooms to avoid accidents. The clock display informed her that it was little before two in the morning. Fuck, she was gonna feel like shit at school the whole day, she thought.
She poured herself another cup of water at the kitchen sink and started to walk back to her bed when she heard a faint shuffle or scraping sound coming from the hallway outside her room. She walked over to her door and pressed her ear to the wood. The concrete fitted with carpet allows her to step almost silently, a fact that would be handy if she could get out of her room to sneak out at night.
With her ear to the door and her eyes closed, she tried to make out what was happening on the other side, but she heard nothing. She shrugged and turned away from the door and started to walk back to her bed. After a few steps she started to take a sip of water when, in a split second, there was a flash of light and colour and a loud crash as her door burst open. Lily was unceremoniously knocked down onto the ugly carpet, the plastic cup and the water therein flying off and splashing in front of her as she tumbled.
Before she could even begin to make sense of what had just happened there was another flash of colourful light. A blurry figure seemed to dart around the room at incomprehensible speed before stopping dead 6 feet in front of her. Lily realised the figure had been a man as he stood in front of her. He was imposing and tall, Lily estimated well over six feet. He was evidently strong, athletic and wore combat attire that only made him seem even more intimidating.
He stared at her with the most unsettling smile Lily had ever seen. Creepy and predatorial. Like he was a sports hunter who enjoyed the thrill of chasing down his prey. She recognised him from her days commuting through the town but did not know his name.
He worked with the ‘town security force’, a sort of superhuman police force who seemed to be beholden to no-one and in service of no-one but themselves. She’d seen him around town but had never known his ability. Now she knew he was a ‘Velocitor’, someone capable of running at nonsensical speeds, and she wished she had never found out.
Within a fraction of a second he moved again and with another fluid blur of movement he was on top of her, pressing his knee on her back and a gun into the back of her head.
‘Don't you move’, he said in a calm but firm tone. ‘You’re under arrest’.
Lily offered only expletives in return as several more security officers filtered in through her doorway. Some had assault rifles and some just had their hands raised, emitted various shades of energy or pulsing waves depending on the nature of their individual abilities. The dean followed them with a nervous expression and after him the doctor walked in holding an enormous syringe.
Lily saw this and realised what was happening. They knew! They found out she cheated on the test and worked out she can time travel. They're gonna kill me, she thought. They're gonna drug me, lock me up and do experiments on me. Then kill me.
Lily felt herself tensing up as the doctor walked towards her holding the enormous needle that in normal circumstances she would have thought it was ridiculous. Like something in a cartoon or an action movie. But these were not normal circumstances and Lily was panicking badly.
I gotta get outta here, she thought. She tried desperately to compose herself and her thoughts. She had to calm down if she was going to do anything at all about her perilous situation. She tried to regulate her breathing, something several different child psychologists had tried to help her do when addressing her ‘late blooming’. She had listened intently to all the mental exercises these professionals had taught her as she wanted to use them to boost the power that she had always kept secret from them.
Lily got control of her frantic breathing, relaxed her muscles as best she could with the man restraining her and the approaching doctor less than a few steps away and closed her eyes. She focussed her thoughts and searched her recent past; searching her freshest memories for clear images to latch onto. Searching for circles, or any solid imagery at all.
She found some. Sitting at school, writing Ricky’s answers on her own test paper. No good. Those were too far back. Walking home. No good. Sitting in her room, dinner, doing homework. None of them worked. They were several hours ago. Half a day in fact. She had never managed a jump that big. She hated the fact but the only memory clear enough in her head and recent enough for her powers to access was in the last 5 mins but that was the unavoidable truth. She was stuck in this situation and she was gonna have to fight her way out of it. Her only advantage was she knew what they were going to do before they did it. Time to go to work.
Lily concentrated on the moment she had awoken from her nightmare. Her head had been cloudy, still was in fact, but the memory was vivid nonetheless. She focused on that moment. Her heavy breathing. Her cold sweat. That sense of dread. She pushed all other thoughts out of her mind. Just that moment and in an instant she was there again.
She still felt the cop’s knee on her back; felt his gun in the back of her head but none of it was real anymore. It never happened. But she felt the phantom of dread and fear all over her body all the same. In reality, her body was 5 minutes or so younger than her mind. It had just jerked into lucidity and was coming to terms with being awoken. But her 5 minute older mind knew what it needed from this ever so slightly younger body. She got up in a flash, working as fast as she could but trying to avoid making any noise. They were probably on this floor already, maybe even outside her door, just waiting to breach.
She rushed across her room and grabbed her backpack. She was glad she had not unpacked anything from it after school the day before. She moved her notepad out of the way until she found her empty water bottle. She took this out and went into the bathroom, wedged it under the basin tap and turned it on. She picked up a large bottle of shower gel which she had always been convinced was just the same liquid soap the orphanage used for washing dishes, clothes, floors, everything. No matter, she thought. Should still work. It has to work.
She went into the main room and poured all of the shower gel on the carpet stretching out from the doorway to the bathroom on the opposite side of the room. The soap was thick and sludgy. She hurried back into the bathroom to find the water bottle overflowing in the sink, turned off the faucet and walked out with the bottle. She drenched the area with the shower gel completely then sealed the bottle and put it in her backpack and slung it over her shoulders.
Lily heard a familiar noise coming from the hallway faintly through the door. They are here.
She carefully moved around the wet carpet and went into the bathroom. She picked up the porcelain lid off the cistern of her toilet and hid in the shower. She listened into her bedroom for what felt like forever. Come on you son of a bitch.
The door burst open with the same flash of light as the first time but on this occasion, no sooner had the blurry figure come into view then it slid uncontrollable along the soapy carpet into the bathroom. The man smashed hard into Lily's toilet and cracked his head on the concrete wall hard. Dazed for a brief moment he turned to see Lily swinging the toilet lid and hitting him on the side of the head, knocking him out.
Lily grabbed his gun from the holster and turned to leave. She could hear the other cops coming across the hallway. She realised no matter how far she gets this unconscious asshole in her bathroom will catch up to her in no time. She walked back in and shot him once through his left leg.
The gunshot prompted all manner of shouting and screaming on the third floor. Kids awoke suddenly and could be heard crying. Radio messages were being relayed. Coded orders being shouted over the cacophony. Good, Lily thought. Let me hear you. She started running. Backpack on both shoulders. Gun in hand.
She ran out into the hallway and immediately turned left, away from the elevators and stairway and just before the other officers turned the corner. Luckily for her, they had not been able to keep up with the speedster and were lagging behind just enough for her to escape her room. Lily could never have known, but that particular ‘Velocitor’, the one passed out in her bathroom with a bullet hole in his leg, had a long history of rushing in on his own without backup. The hubris that came with his seemingly god-like power, combined with the profound level of impatience that such speed naturally nurtures, had finally found him out.
She made it to the end where the corridor corners right and into a longer hallway. She ran until she found the janitor's equipment cupboard and quickly hid inside.
She knew the cupboard would be unlocked as the janitor could walk through walls so never really thought about locks, much less remembered to use them. In fact, he almost always left the key on the shelf inside. Sure enough, there was the key next to a dusty old cardboard box full of cleaning rags. She pocketed the key and using the little light seeping in through the crease of the door she traced a circle slowly with her finger on the dust accumulating on the old box of rags. She hid for a minute, listening. When it was quiet she exited the cupboard and continued to walk clockwise around the floor, hoping to circle back to the stairway.
Suddenly, in front of her on the far side of the hall, two cops turned the corner and spotted her. ‘Halt’, they shouted as they sighted their guns on Lily.
‘Shit’, said Lily as she blinked and jumped back to tracing that circle in dust in the cupboard. ‘Let's try that again’.
This time she locked the door with the janitor’s key and waited a little longer until the men who had spotted her on her previous attempt walked past her. They were sweeping the hallway looking for her, trying every door including the cupboard Lily hid in. When they were satisfied it was firmly secure they cleared it and continued on their sweep.
Lily waited until she was sure they were around the corner and after drawing a fresh circle in the dust, quietly unlocked the cupboard and attempted to get to the stairs again. It took her several attempts and several ‘savepoints’ in different hiding spots she knew around the building but she eventually made it downstairs to the ground floor kitchen. Trial and error. Corner by corner.
Lily estimated the whole thing had taken her a couple of ‘her’ hours but by everyone else’s time only minutes had passed since the gunshot she had fired into the ‘Velocitor’s’ leg. They were still organising and accessing the situation. She was nearly gone.
She stowed the gun in her backpack and snuck out the kitchen window into the alley behind the orphanage and ran off into the dark.
