Chapter 4: Ice

I kept the sound of my footsteps hitting the floor down to an extremely light tapping. It was quite difficult because of the material that the floor was made of, but it was still possible to be quiet enough without arousing suspicion.

Out of my good eye, I could see black outfits flitting by like shadows.

Rocket grunts.

And if they saw us, the whole place would be under lockdown. We were extremely fortunate to have some of those shards of glass in the cell that me and Silv were in.

I winced as pain whipped up my leg. Silver looked over sympathetically, a gentle look on his face. He understood. He was in worse condition than I was.

After a few more seconds of looking around for any unwanted intruders watching, we began again. Everything hurt so bad. My legs could barely support my weight. I winced again, biting back a small cry.

Silver nodded and I followed, but I definitely couldn't go fast.

I wished that we got out of here, that the two of us would recover, for everything.

But wishing couldn't help me get out.

I trudged on, but suddenly stopped as I knelt to the ground, not being able to bear all this pain and fatigue.

"Gold….?" The redhead in front of me glanced at me, concern clearly shown in his namesake silver eyes.

"Ugh….." I whispered, my body bending over in pain.

"We're right now on the tenth floor. And we're underground. At this rate, we'll be back to square one," Silver informed, kneeling down lightly to take my hand, which was shaking.

"S-Silv…...At this rate, you get out of here. It'll be better for you to make it rather for me. I'm…..useless. I'm….trash….." I sobbed softly, feeling so humble after thinking of myself as one of the best out there.

"You're not useless. You're not trash. You're precious. You aren't here in this world just to treat yourself as crap, because you're not." A gloved hand rested on my disheveled raven-black hair.

And then, red lights flashed.

My eyes slowly flicked up to Silver's face. His expression was unreadable, in a way, cloudy.

"ALERT! CODE BLACK! REPEAT, CODE BLACK! BEGIN EVACUATION PROCEDURE IMMEDIATELY! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!" Some voice resounded.

"S-Silv? What's code black?" I attempted to steady myself.

"Gold…." Silver paused, as if he didn't want to say something bad was going to occur. But he continued, "Gold, code black is…."

And I turned rigid at the next words that were said.

"Right now, we're standing on a ticking time bomb."

Silver's P.O.V.

"We have to get out of here. Now. Or we'll be dead." I felt my survival instincts kick in, reflexes rising in my very being.

"Not in this state," Gold wheezed, his usually bright golden eyes filled with happiness now a dull luster.

"We're gonna get out of here. Now." Against what my mind was screaming at me, I swiftly scooped up Gold's weak frame in my arms, my eyes darting around for a potential exit.

"Silv…." Gold looked up at me, his eyes half-shut. "We're…ten floors…..underground…How….much….time?"

My memories began to flood back like a tsunami. My eyes widened as I managed to stutter out, "Fourteen minutes exactly."

"And….our Pokemon…aren't here…..aren't…..able…..to….help…us…." The amber-eyed guy in my arms weakly said.

What he said was true. The difference between making it out of this suicide trap and dying in the fiery explosion that would ensue is my memory of the floors. And whatever Gold could come up with. But the latter was going to be pretty difficult to happen.

Fourteen minutes.

Our lives hung in the balance.

Figured out how to do the horizontal line split! Finally! Okay, I was writing this chapter as I was listening to Bad Apple by Touhou. For people who haven't listened to it, just go and listen to it right now. That's where a lot of the inspiration for this chapter came from!