THE EPOCH CHRONICLES | ✔

sixteen

"THIS IS a bad idea," Luca whispered, just as Amelia peeked her head around a corner. An empty glass hall beckoned to her, and she turned back to her friends, whom she had only moments before encouraged them from their hiding places.

They had a mission; albeit a suicidal one.

And that was to help the marines.

After all, they couldn't just sit in the mess hall with the other non-marines, inhaling staling food smells and sweating in the heat, all the while cowering and thinking about what could happen as explosions echoed up and down the corridors. The time for uncertainty, Amelia had already decided, was over.

Time to know whether or not they were going to live or die, or whether they had the guts to face a few guns rather than dinosaurs (though Amelia was certain she would've chosen the latter. Dinosaurs had weaknesses. Fully-charged weapons did not.)

Amelia pressed a finger to her lips, the movement relatively calm, though her dark and flashing eyes communicated how much she wanted Luca to shut up; maybe permanently. He got the message, though he still looked unhappy at trekking towards the danger instead of away from it.

Thankfully, Tina had had her back — and the technician had grudgingly agreed that yes, their consciences would not survive if the marines didn't either.

Beckoning them forward, Amelia took off down the corridor, rushing past the dorms and and Dr Royson's clinic. It felt good to do something of her own accord, not timetabled into a calendar of 'do's' and 'dont's', and she relished it. It wouldn't last very long.

They covered a hundred meters of white tile within a few seconds, though they were all trying to calm their panting by the time they reached the elevator. The facility was eerily quiet, a contrast from the explosions and distant gunfire from minutes before. Amelia doubted that that was a good thing.

Maybe that was what made the elevator's slight 'ding' as it reached ground floor so obvious.

Within mere heartbeats, Tina, Luca, and Amelia were dashing within glass cubicles (thankfully automatically unlocked once the alarms began), ducking beneath the lectors' desks and the seats of the Learners. Amelia wasted a few precious seconds thinking about where the lecturers would be hiding, before the elevator's doors slid open.

Amelia moved to scramble behind a solid white table, and her view of whoever stepped out the elevator was blocked by the projector screen that crossed the glass. She didn't dare peek her head out to see, or even breathe. She ignored her heart's fluttering in her rib cage, and focused on hearing whatever she could.

Footsteps over the ground. A slight hissing of pressurized air, and then the clacking of a safety guard turned off. A bead of sweat slid across Amelia's face, and she didn't feel so heroic anymore.

What the dank was I thinking? That I could win Zoey over by dying? Her thoughts turned bitter, and the darker ones started creeping back.

Panic rising — Stay quiet, stay quiet — Amelia shut down that train of thought, just as black boots appeared in the corner of her vision. Her blood turned to ice, and the need to breathe vanished. Her lungs were too locked in fear to inhale, and her thoughts too scrambled to do anything other than watch.

The desk she sat beneath, her back pressing against its wide, singular leg, was posed horizontally in front of the glass classroom. Behind her was her saving grace — the projector screen that covered the entire glass wall, which otherwise would've allowed her a clear view to the elevator, but also a view of her for the occupants.

The said invaders were walking down the corridor, revealed by glass. If they glanced back through their tinted visors, they would see her through the wall. Amelia prayed they wouldn't.