Michelle Maddox - Countdown

curled around my legs, swirling and moving like a snake.

"Kira!" Rogan yelled.

Gareth was right. It wasn't painful. In fact, it didn't hurt at all. I was surprised that the gas didn't even have much of a scent when it finally reached my nostrils. I clamped my hands over my mouth and nose, but I knew that wouldn't do any good. Not for long. I turned to the glass, to Rogan.

"What do I do now?" My voice was strained with panic.

He pulled hard against his restraints but it did nothing. His expression was frantic. "I don't know. Dammit! I don't know!"

The camera swiveled to take in both sides of the room.

"Gareth!" Rogan roared. "I'm going to kill you!"

But there was no reply. There was nothing. Gareth had promised to give us some privacy-other than the fifteen thousand subscribers who were tuned in to watch my death scene, of course.

I tried to hold my breath, but after thirty seconds I realized that breathing wasn't really a choice. Unfortunately.

I inhaled some of the gas, which still had no discernible odor. Maybe it was just a ruse. Maybe this was just something to get an entertaining reaction out of us and make the subscribers happy after we'd cheated them out of a good Level-Six ending by escaping.

But no. The more I breathed, the weaker I started to feel. My head began to swim. I gasped. Instead of pounding hard and fast with fear like it had been before, my heart began to pump slower and slower.

A tear slipped down my face-I wasn't sure if it was from self-pity or the gas itself, which had now filled the room completely. It was see-through, casting a slightly whitish fogginess to the already white room. I found that I couldn't stay standing, and my legs crumpled beneath me, bringing me down onto my knees hard enough to cause a bruise. I dragged myself closer to the window and put my hands up on the cold, smooth glass.

Rogan stared at me. He'd moved close to the barrier, and I could see his breath fogging up the glass. He continued to struggle hard against his bindings, even though it had done nothing but made his face gleam with more perspiration from the effort. His expression was now a mixture of rage and grief.

"I want you to know," I managed, gasping now for each breath I took, "I still think that you were wrong earlier."

"About what?"

"I'm glad I got off the shuttle. I… I'm glad for any time we've spent together, Rogan."

"Kira-" His voice broke. "No, don't give up!"

"Just… just promise me that you won't stop fighting." I blinked and the tears splashed down my already wet cheeks. "Don't let them change you into a monster like him. You're too good for that. There's… there's still hope…."

My hand slipped off the glass. I was now breathing shallowly through my mouth in quick little gasps. The world in front of me was beginning to fade to gray, darker and darker, to the pitch-black that I feared the most.

Would I see my family? Would I go to heaven when I died?

Be brave, I told myself.

But I wasn't brave. I was afraid. So afraid.

It didn't hurt. That seemed to make it even scarier. At least pain reminded me that I was still alive.

"No, Kira … please … don't leave me! Don't go. Please! I love you!" His voice broke for real this time. He was crying.

Ilove you, too, I wanted to say. I wanted to let him know how much I loved him, how much I believed in him. How much I'd miss him.

But I didn't have the energy to speak. My mouth moved wordlessly as I slid the rest of the way down the glass and felt the cold, hard floor against my head.

Ilove you, Rogan. Only you. Forever.

"No!" he yelled, and the grief in his voice was now a living, pain-filled thing.

Just before the world turned to complete, impenetrable black I heard something. It seemed so far away-as if I were at the end of a very long and empty hallway.

A door opened. Then I felt hands under my arms and the sensation of being dragged. I could hear the squeak as my heavy boots slid across the floor. Then a door closed. It was still so far away I didn't know what was going on. I was still fading. Fading …

And then I felt the unmistakable feeling of a hand slapping me across the face. Several times. Hard.

"Wake up, Kira. Wake up!"

My eyelids fluttered and I opened my eyes slowly, feeling the stinging on my left cheek. I tried to wet my dry, cracking lips with the tip of my tongue. The world came slowly back into focus.

Colin stared down at me with a fearful expression.

"We don't have much time," he said. "Can you move?"

More eyelid fluttering on my part. I swallowed. And then I realized that the air I was now breathing was clear of the poisonous gas. I began taking deep, greedy gulps of it. I drank at the air, filling my lungs with mouthfuls until my head cleared even more.

Out of the comer of my eye I saw his hand raise.

"Slap me again," I said, "and it'll be the last thing you ever do."

He gave me a tentative smile. "I'm glad you're feeling better."

"You should know that as soon as I've recovered I am going to kill you."

He frowned. "But… but I saved you."

I kept trying to breathe normally. 'Thank you for saving me."

He smiled. "You're very welcome."

"However, you do know that we wouldn't have even been in that room if it wasn't for you, right? So please forgive me for not offering to buy a round of drinks."

Colin licked his lips and shuffled his feet nervously. "I told Gareth to let you go. He didn't listen to me. The man is evil."

"You think?" I would have rolled my eyes, but I still didn't have the energy. "Help me up."

He got to his feet and helped me stand. My ankle still hurt like a son of a bitch from spraining it.

"Gareth had a meeting. I disabled the camera without him knowing. I couldn't do anything about the gas, so I had to come and get you manually."

"I can't believe you sold us out. For what? A stupid job?"

His expression twisted into one of shame, and he suddenly looked a great deal older than his twenty-one years. "If I'd known he was going to hurt you I never would have agreed to any of this."

"But it was okay to hurt Rogan?"

His jaw clenched. "My sister was one of the murder victims at the university four years ago. She was the only family I had in the world. I wanted Rogan to suffer for that."

"But he's innocent. Gareth even admitted it in there."

His eyes filled with tears. "I was wrong."

"I'm sorry about your sister." My heart swelled a little. I didn't even know he'd had a sister. He'd never mentioned her. Then again, I'd never told him about what happened to my family, to my sister.

I guess we had more in common than I thought we did.

I looked at his name tag, which read, COLIN PALMER-PROGRAMMER.

Funny. I'd never known his last name before, either. Never realized that until right now. I guess I'd always been too wrapped up in my own problems to allow myself to really get to know somebody else.

My eyes narrowed as I studied his name tag.

It was red.

Joe said that we'd need somebody with a red name tag to get into the room with the server.

"How long do we have before somebody finds out I escaped?" I asked.

"Not long." He looked worried now. "The subscribers will start contacting us now that the feed cut out. Apparently they've been having a ton of problems with the game recently. Gareth will be notified, and he'll know what I did. We'd better go right now."

I felt a fleeting feeling of compassion for Colin. He'd had a lousy life. I guess I couldn't blame him for latching onto something that seemed like an incredible opportunity with a huge future, working with computers, the one thing he really loved in life.

Lucky for me-and just in time-he realized that he wasn't a monster like Gareth.