Abduction
Author: Miyoshi Akachi
Original post:
Entry for the YC119 Pod and Planet Fiction Contest in the Eighty Thousand Suns in New Eden - Very Short Fiction category.
Darkness.
She wasn't ready for it. She scrambled to get a hold of one of the shelves as she felt the station shuddering and vibrating once again. What was happening? She felt panic raising into her, a dark tide growing silent, as dark as the absence of light around her.
She knelt and crawled as she tried to reach for the light she knew was there... somewhere between the other tools. It must be there... it must be there...
Her hands gripped it tightly and after a pair of empty flicks, a soft warm beam of light appeared. She breathed as the light give her a bit more courage, just as she heard a far away explosion. Or at least something that sounded like that. An explosion...?!
Something was not right, it wasn't at all! Her hearth sank. She felt running footsteps outside, she felt people hurriedly running and stumbling, why everyone was so... hurried?
She stumbled outside, not many lights blinked into the darkness. Someone hit her and she nearly lost her grip on the light as she fell on the ground. W-why?
Someone was shouting, panic was spreading. It couldn't be that... it could not!
She stumbled on the ground as she reached for the walls, holding to the sleek metal as she tried to keep her breath under control. Her knee was starting to burn as her fingers came up tinged of black on black, a wetness slowly dripping, warm but at the same time cold... she must have hit the ground bad. With a groan she pulled herself up, luckily it was holding her weight.
Explosions echoed closer now and with them, the warm hair carried the sound of battle. Side arms and shouts. A battle? On the station?
What was happening?
She had to go to the safe as she was instructed.
She started to run but the more she did, the more her knee burned with fiery pain. Soon she had to slow down, trying to limp forward only to realize she was lost...
In the darkness, she had lost track of where she was. Breath died into her throat as she gasped for air. This must be only a technical blackout, it must be...
Screams and cries in the darkness. And... more echoed over it. The barking of beasts. The barking of the slavers hound.
She shivered hard as the barking made her stop dead in her track. It was happening, her worse fears were growing into a nightmare of reality.
N-no... n-no... she stumbled forward and someone hit against her, throwing her into the dark once again, the light arching into the air and soon shattering against a far away wall, leaving her in the darkness of an unfolding nightmare.
She tried to stand up but she could only get on her knees, head spinning wildly. She had to go to the safe... there was hope. She crawled forward and after a few painfully slow moments the spinning slowed down enough.
Holding to the walls she kept moving forward. The barking echoed painfully into her ears, the cries growing less and less as the sound of heavy boots grow bigger and bigger.
They were coming for her.
The end was in sight.
She could feel the foul breath of the slavers hounds on her back, raising her hairs up.
The nightmare was only beginning and she knew it.
She stumbled forward and felt something hitting her head, something cold and hard as metal.
She fell heavily on the floor, ears rigging as the floor connected with her. She groaned, a hand grasping for a hold while her lungs asked for air. A warm touch caressed her lips, her tongue met it and she nearly threw up as she realized it was her own blood.
Her hand gripped the ground and she pulled herself forward one more time. They were coming for her! Closer! Faster!
They were there, she could hear them, she could feel them.
Her mind was wrapped in the black coils of panic.
Electricity arched through her body as one last loud scream danced into the hollow halls growing alive into the darkness.
Only then, there was peace.
The peace of an awaiting nightmare.