Michelle Maddox - Countdown

"We need to get Rogan," I said firmly.

Colin nodded, and I watched as he removed the red card from his name tag holder and swiped it in the computerized lock on the right side of the white door.

The door swung open. Rogan turned to look at us and his eyes, shiny with tears, widened.

"Kira!" he exclaimed.

I felt a happy lurch in my chest as I went directly to him and threw my arms around him. But there wasn't any time for further celebrations. In fact, any celebrations could wait until we knew if we were going to live longer than five more minutes. All Colin had done was buy us a little more time.

Hopefully it would be all we needed.

Colin pressed a hidden panel on the wall and a keyboard was exposed. After he touched a couple of numbers Rogan's metal cuffs snapped open and fell to the floor, as mine had earlier. Rogan stood and pulled me to him, crushing me tightly against his chest.

"I thought I'd lost you," he murmured into my hair, and then captured my face in his hands, staring down at me for a moment before leaning over to kiss me.

The kiss was enough to give me the strength to keep going.

At that moment the thought of stopping Gareth paled in comparison to Rogan's kiss. That was what I was fighting for. More of his lips. More of him.

"Come on." I grabbed his hand, and the three of us exited the room.

"Are you okay?" Rogan asked gruffly.

"Not really." I swallowed and hobbled along quickly on my injured ankle. "I guess sucking in poisonous gas until you're almost dead isn't something you can just shake off."

Colin didn't say anything. Now that Rogan had joined us he seemed to be a little more afraid. Whether it was because of Rogan's reputation or the fact that he'd almost killed me and was afraid that Rogan would kill him in return, I didn't know. I'd have to give it even odds.

"We need to find Gareth's subbasement office," Rogan said gruffly. "Do you know where that is?"

"I haven't been here long enough to completely know my way around."

"We already took the elevator down past ground level. Is this the subbasement?" I asked. "Or is there more?"

'There's another floor beneath this one," Colin said. "They mentioned it when I took my orientation tour. I'm supposed to start working down there soon." He sighed. "I guess that's not going to happen anymore."

"Can we get to it via the regular elevators?" Rogan asked.

He shook his head. "No, but there's a flight of stairs. Yeah, right there." He pointed at a plain white door in front of us that wasn't marked.

Scurrying down the hallway heading toward the unmarked door, I felt the oddest sense of deja vu. Then I realized what was causing the feeling. It was from watching Colin play his networked game of "Anarchy." It felt like we were in the game right now, trying to find our way through, trying to save the day from the bad guys without getting ourselves killed.

I suddenly remembered how that game had ended earlier today for Colin.

Colin reached for the unmarked door.

"Wait!" I began, but he'd already turned the handle.

There was a man on the other side. I recognized him as one of the White Coats who'd brought us from the car to the white room. He was the one who'd hit Rogan in the back of the head with the butt of his gun.

The gun he still held.

His eyes widened with surprise when he saw us standing there.

Colin held up his hands. "Uh … hi, there. Um … Gareth asked me to take these two downstairs for the next level of The Countdown"

"Nice try," the man said. "But there aren't any more levels. And I just got word that they'd escaped with your help."

He raised his gun and shot Colin in the chest.

As he swiveled to aim again at me, Rogan sprang at him, grabbing his arms. There was a blur of fists and legs. Rogan hit him across the jaw, then spun around and kicked him in the stomach. They both fell to the floor. Rogan grabbed the man's arm and pressed his knee down on his forearm until I heard the sickly snap of a bone breaking. The man screamed out in pain, but Rogan had the gun in his hand now, and he pointed it at the man's head.

Rogan, breathing hard, then turned to look at me.

I'd caught Colin as he began to fall, and helped him down to the ground. He was breathing erratically, holding a hand to his chest, which oozed blood.

"I… I guess … I didn't pass the final.. job interview," he managed.

"Colin …" The tears flowed down my cheeks again. "I'm so sorry."

He shook his head. "No … no, I'm sorry. I love you, Kira. I always have. Don't… don't hate me."

"How could I hate you? You rescued me. Thank you." I kissed his forehead.

His lips curled into a small smile and then his eyes glazed over.

I let out a shuddery moan. He was dead. He'd died in my arms trying to help us.

I looked at Rogan, whose attention had diverted from the White Coat to me.

"Rogan!" I yelled. "Behind you!"

The man used his good arm to try to grab the gun away from Rogan. Rogan was able to kick at him. I thought for sure he would shoot the man, but instead he lashed out and struck him in the head with the gun, which knocked him out cold.

Rogan gave me a dark look, his chest heaving from the exertion. "I'm very sorry about your friend."

I nodded, blinking back tears, and moved Colin's still body to the side of the hallway. I took a moment to close his eyes, and I held my hand against the side of his face.

"So am I," I said.

Then I reached to Colin one last time and grabbed the red access card out of his name tag.

Rogan had a gun and I had an access card. And together we thundered down the stairs to the subbasement.

Having psi abilities is a very strange thing. I'd watched loads of shows over the years, especially when I was much younger, about psychics. They were pretty cool. Some of them made it seem like they had superpowers, being able to lift things with their minds. Being able to manipulate the thoughts of other people.

That would really help right now.

Unfortunately, my powers-if you want to call them that-weren't quite that cool. In fact, my being a psi, low-level or any level, didn't help us out at all at the moment.

Too bad.

I touched the front of my shirt to make sure I could still feel the outline of the minidisk in my bra, and I could. The subbasement looked a great deal like the other levels of this building All white. All bland and clinical, with that antiseptic smell permeating the air like a superclean perfume.

Only down here, every other ceiling light was out or flickering, casting a spooky amount of light on the hallway we briskly walked down. It felt like a horror movie, like somebody might reach out at any moment and grab our ankles and pull us into another room and devour us. But maybe I was just being paranoid.

After all, it had been a really bad day so far.

"Maybe they changed it," Rogan said. "The room. Maybe it doesn't have Gareth's name on it anymore."

"Maybe," I said. "And maybe Joe was lying. He could have made the whole thing up."

"Yeah, and maybe that disk only has pictures of his last vacation on it."

I didn't like this game of maybe we were playing. I gave Rogan a look.

He glanced at me. "Sorry. I know we need to be positive."

"Screw being positive. I just want to find the room."

"They know we escaped."

I swallowed. "Yeah. They do."

"We don't have much time. They'll shut this place down, lock all the exits to find us. Maybe we should leave now, while we still have half a chance."

"After we went to all this work to get in here?" I said. "Why would we want to miss out on the fun? How much time do we have before they find us?"

"Why?"

"I feel a sense of loss if I'm not working to a countdown. Sue me."