wwyd if there was an alien invasion? ii
(This is the second part of the "wwyd if there was an alien invasion?" serial. If you want to read from the start here is part one. Check this page of contents for the whole chronology.)
Hours later, I woke up on a long worn wooden table. The air was damp, the sky deep violet behind the black window grills and dusty stained glass. I slowly sat up and looked around the room. This was a fruitless endeavour, as the sun is such a bum he wouldn't get up to help a brother out at 4:17 in the morning - but I saw various dark precise shapes littered about, which were thankfully stationary. They had to be creations by somebody, but by who? And of what?
After a while, I sighed in relief and determined that I had not, indeed, been raped by a walking fish. I began to take off the cumbersome hazmat suit that I'd been suffocating in, grateful to breathe fresh air again.
To my left, I heard faint footsteps that started to echo louder through the hallway outside. Who could it be? I silently got off the table and hid under it, looking to the lone door in the room in trepidation. I heard shuffling and clacking behind the door, then that sound a lock makes when a key is being turned inside it1 and a soft click. The door creaked open.
I squinted as light streamed into the room, from a flashlight held by a slender hand. A cloaked woman with blond hair stepped in. The shadows under her eyes and cheeks made her face look unnaturally haggard. She stared straight ahead for a good while, ignoring the poor bastard crouched under the nearby table, waiting with bated breath for her next move.
"Get up." A soft utterance escaped her lips. Without thinking I rose, cranium making heavy contact with hundred-year-old sturdy wood. I stumbled from the impact and caught myself on all fours, mouth kissing the cold rough cobblestone. I clutched my head in agony and brief embarrassment with my left hand and held onto that damned wooden table for balance with my right, slowly but surely rising to stand before the mysterious woman.
"You look for the madman, no?" Her cold, steely eyes stared straight through me like I was a ghost.
"I figured he was the man for the job. Only he could kill a conehead." I whispered, rubbing the top of my head.
"With this?" She lifted her right arm, revealing the glowing space cube I was pursuing, wrapped in red cloth.
"Yeah. That's the alien's space cube. It powers-"
"You should tell him, not me." She turned around and left the room without saying another word.
It was clear she was leading me to 'the madman'. I stepped out of the room as well to the sight of a spiraling staircase. The room I was in was built inside the spiral staircase. Ahead, I could see the faint light and the shadow of that woman fading away into the dawn. I quickly walked down the staircase, determined not to lose sight of her. The cascading steps went on and on. The madman had set up a lab deep underground, away from even the vaguest facsimile of human civilization.
Finally I reached the end of the staircase. I saw the woman waiting for me by a blue door. I heard noises of machinery whizzing and hissing in the room. The woman hands me the wrapped space cube. "Here, it's yours."
"Well, if you didn't save my life this cube would be gone. And you know the guy better anyway, so why don't you-"
"I have no use for it." She thrusts it into my arms and hurriedly knocks on the door. "If this was meant as a gift, find something else."
Brushing off my surprise, I held the cloth the cube was wrapped in and followed her into the madman's laboratory.
-to be continued-
if any of you readers know how to describe this sound, send me a message with the comments tab.↩