Earth 2788 Read Free Page B

9 and 10 for the first time. They were dark, but occasionally their
lights would blink as they relayed a portal signal for an incoming medical
emergency, sending a newborn Handicapped baby directly to a Hospital Earth
Infant Crash Unit.
    I glanced at
Issette’s face, saw she was on the verge of tears, and stood up. “We’d better
go now.”
    We walked back
to the door hidden behind the food dispensers. I’d just entered the code into
the lock plate, and was opening the door, when I heard a sudden shout.
    “Hey! Where are
you going?”
    I looked round,
and saw a security guard heading towards us. I grabbed Issette’s hand, dragged
her through the door with me, and kicked it closed behind us. Hopefully, the
guard wouldn’t know the code to open the door and …
    There was a
series of clicks from the lock plate, and I saw the door start opening again. I
groaned, turned, and ran down the corridor, tugging Issette along with me. The
ceiling glows overhead were automatically turning on for us, just as they’d
done earlier, but now we were moving too fast for them. We were running on the
edge of darkness, with the pool of light always a pace or two behind us. I
could hear the sound of heavy footsteps chasing after us, and noisy, irregular
gasps for breath from Issette. Was she breathing like that because of the
physical effort of running, or because she was about to panic?
    There was a dark
shadow on the wall to my left. A side corridor! I turned and skidded into it,
towing Issette with me. I was hoping that we could hide while the guard ran past
us, but of course the glows overhead started turning on, signalling our
location.
    “Nuke it!” I
cursed my own stupidity and ran on, taking another couple of random turns. We’d
been moving faster than the guard to start with, but now I was horribly aware
the footsteps behind us were getting steadily closer. Our best chance would be
to split up, because a single guard could only chase one of us, but I couldn’t
leave Issette on her own in the darkness.
    I was expecting
to be grabbed from behind at any moment, when the sound of footsteps suddenly
stopped. I risked turning my head for a second, and saw the guard standing still,
leaning against the wall and panting for breath.
    “He’s given up!”
I said.
    We ran on down
another couple of corridors, before stopping to rest and get our breath back. I
was rejoicing in our escape, when Issette spoke in a shaky voice.
    “Is it far to
the way out?”
    There was a sick
feeling in my stomach as I tried to remember all the turnings we’d taken during
the chase. We must be far away from the route we’d used to get to the
Off-world. I tried to keep my voice calm and confident as I answered her.
    “There are
several ways out. Let me check the plans on my lookup to work out which is
closest.”
    I tapped my
lookup, and stared at the maze of corridors. We’d taken a right turn, run past
two more turnings, taken a left, and then … No, according to the plan, the left
turn we’d taken didn’t exist. Either I’d forgotten something, or I’d missed
seeing some side turnings in the darkness. I couldn’t work out where we were,
or even which direction we should be going. There was a numbered door nearby,
but that didn’t help because there were no numbers on my plan.
    I daren’t tell
Issette that we were lost. If we kept going straight on, then we must get
somewhere eventually. If we didn’t … Well, we could use our lookups to call for
help, but we’d be in an awful lot of trouble.
    “We go this way,”
I said.
    I led the way
down the corridor to the next junction and went straight on. At the next two
junctions, we went straight on again, but at the third we had to turn left or
right. I’d just decided to go right, when there was a cry of delight from
Issette. I turned to look at her, and saw she was pointing to a faded sign on
the wall. A fire exit sign!
    We followed the
sign down the corridor to the left, found another sign