Part 9
Elected Hurricane Stage 4. ETA 30 minutes
Kate sprinted up the ladder to the hatch and unlocked it. It wasn't hard, just slow and tedious, since no one could actually lock a hatch during an emergency period. It meant lower her body to undo Triss tightening.
Once up Kate saw no Griff at all. Had she not understood the girl's words?
Kate rushed up the next ladder. The hatch was as loose as sandals.
No way that piece of shit would have stopped changing the locking system up every level. No way.
It was Griff.
He must have been told to go down. He must have! He was trying to catch up to them!
He had to make it.
And it was her job to make sure he made it. Kate could not even go back. She had to get to Griff and didn't have implants to call for help.
Her screen! She reached for her screen only to find nothing. Had she dropped it? Had they picked her pockets? Mother would be absolutely furious!
Not that it mattered because if she didn't get a hold of Griff she'd be murdered by Mother. Griff needed to be okay! Her heart thudded against her chest so hard it made her physically struggle until she slipped, dropping a dozen steps until her arm clanged on the ladder and she hooked it in and gripped her wrist.
She dangled, only focusing on holding onto her wrist so she didn't slip, she was high enough to ensure she, at the absolute best, sprained her ankles, but really she'd shatter them. There was no good landing.
"Griff!" Kate screamed. "Griff!"
She prayed he'd come down. She prayed they could hole up before the hurricane hit.
But instead all she got was the eerie silence that came from being stuck between two air tight locks.
Kate collected her breath and kept climbing.
It started slow, her arm screaming from the sharp burn of pain that out lined her arms and one shin.
The specific burn became a full on inferno, like the boosters of a rocket, turning white as she burst into an even faster sprint. Giff was too far up.
There was a distant wail of a horn. The sound in that room distorted and weird. Kate screamed as she sped up, her arms, shoulders and hands were producing their own inferno. But she pushed on.
Opening the final hatch was a nightmare, her hands and arms weren't enough and so she had to bunch up on the top step and press her spine against the hatch before lifting, she forced it up a crack and everything changed. The steel hatch flipped right open!
And an enormous force nearly ripped her off the stairs, but she was saved by the gods indecision on whether the wind would shove her down the hole or pull her up and out, tossing her into the open air like debris.
To call the force ripping and pushing upon her 'wind' was an understatement akin to a lie.
She wasn't bombarded, no she was being beaten, any and all burning on her body completely forgotten. Her entire being was being punched and pulled inside out.
She'd been in fights, hell, she had cousins. Thanks to them, she'd been in many many, many fights. She'd been in extreme weather. But there had never been a situation where there was nothing she could do about anything.
And yet pushing wasn't even a question, because she would step deeper into that hell no matter what.
"Griff!" She screamed, the sound was sucked out of her lips and thrown into the nothingness.
Sound meant nothing. Could she even look for Griff? Her head rose out of the hole and she rose into the maelstrom.