...And Into The Fire

                            By:

                         Fox Cutter

    Chapter 3

I sat in one of the many hundreds of metal tunnels that made
up the ducting for the Hall. 'This is not where I expected
to end up when they told me I was appointed as the Council
Head.' I thought to myself as I rubbed by right shoulder.

Over the past hour of crawling and wondering through the
ducting, the feeling had slowly come back to my right
shoulder and arm, and it hurt. I suspected that I might have
broken it when I hit the door.

After the pain had gotten so bad I had to stop and try to do
something for it. Sadly though, during one of my sharp
turns, I had snagged a piece of metal on my pants and ripped
out my pocket, and had lost the aspirin I always try to
carey with me.

Rubbing it was all I could do to help the pain, and it was
working a bit. I was also slowly curling the fingers of my
paw, or at least it felt like I was. It was so dark I could
not see anything, even with my night vision.

Resting my head against the wall, I listened, swiveling my
years back and fourth, trying to here any kind of noise.

I knew that the duct systems, being as large as it was,
always was being worked on some place. At any hour of the
day there was always a crew working on the system, some
place.

My hope was to try and fine one of those teams, then follow
them out, as I was sure they would be looking for me as well
as fixing the system. There was only one problem with this
plan. There was at least five-hundred miles of ducting in
the Marble Hall, and only a small section was being worked
on at any given time.

I was counting on the fact that the system was so quite that
the sounds would echo enough for me to pick them up. I had
already heard a few, but echoes have a tendency to echo the
wrong way, and I usual followed that wrong way.

Faintly, in the distance I heard a low pounding, it sounded
like metal hitting metal.

Slowly I moved along the tunnel in the direction it seemed
to be coming from. I keep moving, crawling along slowly,
favoring my left arm. I made a few twists and turns, and the
pounding stated to get louder.

I made one final turn, and found myself on the edge of the
cliff. Before me was a huge vertical shaft, going down in
the darkness, and going up to a faint light source about two
hundred feet up.

The light looked like it was coming from some kind of
catwalk, and the pounding was clearly come from there too.

Now, the question was how was I suppose to get up there?

* * *

I watched, in what could be best described as abject horror,
as the teleport curtain faded out into the dark wood of the
small entry way.

With a side glance I saw a close to the same look on Oria's
face, her eyes opened wide, her mouth hanging open a bit.

Slowly I walked into the aclove, bent down, and open the
control box for the curtain.

It was empty. The only thing left was a few dangling wires.
If Grasion had removed a fuse, or broken some wires, I could
have fixed it. Even if one side of the curtain was shorted
out, the other side could support it.

But he had ripped out the inter control panel for the
system, there was no way I could repair it, or even try to.

Slamming the cover closed, I leaned back against the other
wall, and put my face in my hands, pushing my glasses up
onto my head.

I felt Oria place her paw on my shoulder. "Fox?"

I dropped my hands and looked up at her. "I'm sorry for
dragging you into this. I should have told you before, got
you to safety. Sent you along with Ken."

She squeezed my shoulder a bit. "Why didn't you?"

I sighed. "I don't know why I didn't tell you sooner. I
still don't know why I didn't tell you in the first place."

Sitting down next to me, she took her paw off my shoulder,
and dropped it onto my leg. "Didn't you trust me?"

I looked down. "Well, after the bliss thing. Not fully, no."

I felt her squeeze down on my leg, and slight pin pricks
from her claws as they came out, and pushed through my jeans
and against my skin. "Really? I hurt you that much?"

I nodded. "Not that much, but with you in debt to the
Hammerheads... well, I feared what they may find if they
called it in."

She nodded, her claws retracing, still squeezing my leg. "I
don't know what to say about this."

I looked back up at her, right into her green slitted eyes.
"Don't say anything, not yet. There is a lot to do, will
have time to talk about all this later."

She blinked, "What things to do, we're trapped here."

"Yes and no. It is a long walk to anyplace close, but Prid
was chosen for the abundance of folds it possessed. We're
bound to run into one sooner or later."

Releasing her grip on my leg, she folded her paws on her
lap. "How long do you think it will take?"

I shrugged. "Hours, days, maybe we'll have to go all of the
six-hundred miles. I don't know if there is even a fold
around here, and Prid is to large to have ripples."

She nodded. "I see."

I closed my eyes, and started to think. "Worse case
scenario, we have to walk the whole way. Let's see, now I
know I can walk a bit over 7 miles in three hours. More
accurately twelve kilometers."

"How do you know that?" She asked.

I opened my eyes, fishing out my spell-checker from my
pocket. "Bloomsday." She gave me a strange look, but I keep
on thinking.

Turning the spell-checker to the calculator mode, I punched
in 600, and using the built in conversions, made it into
kilometers.

"Six-hundred miles is nine-hundred sixty-six kilometers,
rounded up. Divide that by 12." I punched in the needed
number. "That's Eighty point five three hour blocks. Now
assuming we can walk at least 9 hours a day." I punched a
few more buttons. "That's approximately 26 days. And we will
be walking," a few more buttons pressed. "22 miles a day."

I looked over at her. "Think you can handle that?"

She looked down at her feet, then back up at me. "Will we be
able to eat as we go, or carry food with us?"

I shrugged. "I believe Prid has plants from the original
forty worlds that sponsored it's Terraforming. We can eat
some of them, but I think we had better bring along one of
the scanner PADDs with us, and load it with the multi-verse
flora and fauna database. I think I have a copy around here
somewhere."

Oria looked at me, and gave me this little smile that spread
her cat lip a tad, it was kinda cute, and had a bit of
come-hither look about it. "Foxer, we can do this."

I blinked. She hadn't called me Foxer in a long time, but it
made me feel better. "Thanks Oria." I said.

And she was right, we could do this. We had to...

* * *

'Damn!' I though to myself, moving back around a corner.
After wondering the halls for a time, I had decided to go
back to my apartment, only to find a trio of guards
ransacking it.

I ran my disguised paws through my hair. I had been using
the Matrix for a time now, but I was to clumsy with to make
myself look convincing as a centaur.

I turned around, and wonder back down the hall. I felt lost
and afraid. I had to do something, anything. I had to try at
stop the Hammerheads, even if I was the only one of are four
left alive. I had to try.

Wringing my paws a bit, I keep moving the the halls. I had
already tried to get to Fox, but I had found all his
communication lines down, and his teleport curtain smashed
to bits. Someone really did a job on it, making sure it was
totally unusable.

I couldn't think of anywhere to go, I didn't know anyone in
the city around the Marble Hall, and I doubted the doors out
would be open.

There was no other way then the ten exits to get out of the
Hall, it was completely self contained, even with a large
hydroponics garden and gravity generators. It could survive
even if they rest of the world was destroyed.

Everyone in the Hall was trapped hard, and under the control
of the Hammerheads. I didn't know if the rest of Prid was in
there control, or even knew about what happened. But I was
sure that soon they would be.

Turning a corner I smashed the side of my sudo-flank into
the sharp edge of the corner. Getting fed up with the whole
disguise I nearly yelled, "Matrix off," into the controller.

The light flashed into my eyes, and I found myself me again.
Grumbling to myself I walked down the hall a bit until I
found a utility room. Pulling out a few pieces of small
metal, I used one of the skills my Grandfather had insisted
on teaching me. Picking locks.

It only took a couple minutes to pop open the lock, it
wasn't a very complex one. Sliding inside the room I gently
closed the door behind me, and locked it again.

Flipping on the light, I found myself in a large room, about
sixty feet long, and twenty wide. Both walls where covered
with think and thin piping, as well as meters of all sorts.
The far wall was entirely made up of the dull grey metal of
the air duct system for the Hall.

Leaning against the door, I slid down to the floor, being
careful of my tail. I though over my options of thinks I
could do. I knew that there was no hope of getting a portal
controller, not only did I not know how to use one, but I
didn't have the implants so I could live through it, and I
had no idea where to get the temps I would also need.

I had no options. I was trapped in the Hall, no way to get
out, I didn't even know if my friends where alive or dead. I
slowly put my head in my paws and started to cry.