CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: NOW MY FEET WON'T TOUCH THE GROUND

9

Unceasing gunfire, desperate cries, deafening explosions, collapsing structures, roaring engines, booming alarms, the smell of burnt flesh in the air and a metallic taste in my mouth.

Feels just like home.

As strange as this thought may appear at first, it's true. Tiny pieces of memory are all I have left from my childhood on Lorien, and for some reason, a disturbingly large amount of those are impressions of fear and anguish. Over the course of all the years I've spent running and hiding from the Mogadorians, the terrifying sensations I felt during the invasion seem to have grown more and more important in my mind, replacing the rest of my childhood memories on Lorien. One night weighs more than the entire other years I lived my home planet.

Which is probably why the Mogadorian attack on our prison right now reminds me so much of Lorien.

Lorien, where it all began. All the pain, all the misery, all the hatred. Back at the Mogadorian invasion. Back in the destroyed streets of my hometown, running around aimlessly alongside my Cêpan, trying to shake off the hordes of Mogs chasing us.

Back when I had to leave everything I loved behind.

Back on Lorien.

I sigh. This time it's different, though. This time I won't run. This time I'm prepared. This time I'll…

"Hurry the hell up, Nine, they're close by already," Six interrupts my little self-motivating pep-talk. "Seriously now, how hard can it be to just climb out of here?"

"Harder than it looks," I shout down – or up, from my point of view – at Six. "But I'm pretty sure I can make it this time."

"Oh, wow, what a relief!" Six replies, and even with the raging uproar of the Mogadorian attack around us, I can clearly hear the scoffing sarcasm in her voice. "You know, Nine, the fact that you said you were 'pretty sure' the past eight times already kind of makes me doubt that you'll make this time."

I grumble something unintelligible, but deep down I know Six is right.

Climbing through this hole in the ceiling has proven itself way more difficult than I had imagined. With my legacy to manipulate gravity, tasks like this usually are as easy as pie. I can just jump off the ground and land on the ceiling, and it's done.

The problem right now, though, is that the ceiling is not exactly solid after whatever bomb created that big hole hit the building. The second my feet touch the ceiling's surface, cracks develop all along the plain, bright marble, making the entire ceiling crumble under my weight. Guess when this place was built, they didn't make it so that people would be able to walk on the ceiling. Ignorant constructors.

The last couple of my attempts went horribly wrong. I keep either landing in already loose spots of the ceiling and instantly dropping down to the ground again, along with huge chunks of marble, or I make a wrong step while walking upside down and end up losing the ground – or the ceiling – under my feet. The closest I got to the hole was still way too far, and I only keep making things worse. Each time I fall, the entire ceiling gets more cracks and threatens to collapse right on top of our heads.

It's a huge risk, but it's the only way for Six and me to get out of here.

A crackling sound to my feet makes me stop dead in my tracks, and I immediately drop to my knees. A few loose chunks of marble crumble away and drop to the floor, where they shatter into thousands of little pieces.

I gulp. That was close. I need to start watching what I'm doing. The last few times I fell, I miraculously didn't get any serious injuries, just some small bruises, which is quite remarkable, considering that it's a thirty to forty feet drop. The real danger is not me falling off the ceiling, though. It's the ceiling falling on me. If all this marble comes crashing down on us, I don't think I'll be quite as lucky. Another wrong step, and I might end up burying both Six and myself under tons of marble.

With wary movements, I slowly get up from crawling on all fours until I groggily stand as close to upright as I dare to.

I allow myself to take a short breather. Upright and upside down. So far, so good.

"Come on, Nine, we don't have all day," Six shouts up at me again. I sigh.

"Have you ever seen the movie 'Ice Age'?" I yell back down at her.

"Ice what?" she says, and I shake my head in disbelief.

"Ice Age. Come on, what have you been doing all your childhood long?"

"Trying not to die," she answers, and I shrug that off as a bad excuse.

"Anyway, in the movie there's like this huge area completely covered in ice," I explain to her while slowly working my way towards the big hole in the ceiling. "And then there's this squirrel-thing… I think it's a squirrel. Yeah, definitely some sort of ancient prehistoric squirrel. Umm, anyway, this little squirrel is trying to hide this nut in the ground, but then he makes a wrong step and then there's this huge crack in the ice, and…"

"Great story, Nine," Six cuts me off with an annoyed undertone. "If you could shut up and focus now, that would be even better."

I sigh resignedly and get back to carefully plodding along the ceiling. Trying to teach Six about culture is just hopeless.

I'm really close to the hole already. Ten more feet maybe, probably even less. I can already see the heavily clouded but still somehow blue sky through it, feel the fresh, cold wind on my cheeks. Freedom is literally just a few steps away.

And just as I actually begin to believe we might actually finally get out of here, it happens again.

Distracted by the sudden chance of success, I don't really watch where I put my foot and end up stepping right in a part of the ceiling that is completely fractured with cracks. It immediately gives in under my weight and breaks away from the rest of the ceiling, and before I know it, I'm falling towards the ground at full speed.

With loud smacking noise, I hit the floor. I don't move as small chunks of marble rain down on top of me.

I hear a loud cry from Six and look up just in time to see her dodge a big boulder by leaping sideways. She rolls off and gets to her feet immediately, checking if there are any more pieces of marble trying to crush her. But the rest of the ceiling stays as it is, deciding not to collapse on top of us this time.

I slowly get up, brushing the dust off my shirt and rubbing my head. I really have no idea how I didn't break every bone in my body, considering how many times I already fell down from up there today. Quite impressive, if I do say so myself.

Six lets out a loud sigh and trots over to me, kicking small bits of marble out of her way.

"You know, if you so desperately want to die, I'm fine with that," she says. "But don't get me killed in the process."

"You might want to take a few steps back next time. Oh, and yeah, I'm fine by the way," I answer defiantly.

"Don't you get it? It's not going to work out this way. All you've done so far is make things worse," she says motioning up to the crumbling ceiling.

"Well, at least I've done something," I mutter and immediately earn a fierce glare from Six.

"Oh, I'm so sorry I don't have antigravity powers. Guess that's my fault," she says.

"No, but both of us being trapped in here definitely is," I reply.

"And how could that possibly be my fault?" she asks with an annoyed undertone.

"You got me to follow you into the park and then we both got captured, end of the story," I say. Six looks at me for a second, then she just gives me a short smile.

"So full of yourself," she mutters, shaking her head.

I open my mouth to answer, but Six raises her hands, motioning me to stop.

"Listen, if you have to defend your honour, you can do that later," she says in a bittersweet voice. "Right now, we have other things to worry about."

I bite my lip, almost blurting out with some witty response, but I manage to hold back. Once again, I realize she's right.

"Do you hear that?" Six continues, pointing behind me in the direction the sounds of the fight are coming from. "They're getting closer."

I listen to the gunshots and the explosions for a second. Just as Six said, they have grown louder than earlier. The Mogadorians can't be very far away from our prison cell now. I don't know why they seem to prefer fighting their way through to us instead of just entering through that hole in the ceiling, but it won't really matter when they get here. We have no weapons, we don't know how many Mogs are out there, and we have neither slept nor eaten in days. Those stunts I pulled off on the ceiling have exhausted me more than I want to admit, and I honestly don't believe I can fight in this condition. Six looks a bit better – in a figurative sense I mean, nothing else. Our captivity doesn't seem to have weighed her down quite as much, but she still isn't going to be able to deal with a large amount of Mogs.

No, our only option is to get out of here before our enemies reach this cell.

Hey there fellahs!

First of all, I wanted to thank everyone who reviewed on that last chapter and told me I should carry on with the slow pace, you can't imagine how relieved I was to see you guys actually didn't get bothered by that at all. This issue had been on my mind for a long time and I'm really glad that you don't have a problem with my writing =)

This is a sort of mini update, I'll explain later on why :)

Now to the review-answering part:

ZazzyZ: Thanks ;)

ArcticBlue: Thank you so much for the huge compliment, really glad you liked my experiments. Gave me a huge confidence boost :)

PD106: Clever, clever ;) It's really cool you liked Nivi, she was kind of my biggest concern in this story

Mysteryfanaticno1: thanks, I thought about that twist for quite a while :)

lordpujan: Thanks, I'll try :)

I-wish-I-could-be-Number-Five: Thanks a ton, glad you could relate. You're an even better writer =)

Iris Skydancer: Thanks for all your comments, but I'm going to be honest, I have no idea what half of them are supposed to mean :/ I am probably not going to create a red haired girl number Zero, sorry to disappoint.

Thats it :)

Now to the bad-news part:

The reason why I haven't been updating for roughly a week, even though I promised I would post more often, is that my laptop randomly had a meltdown of some sort, and I didn't have access to another one until today.

This really sets me behind on the story, though, since everything I've written down so far was on that hard drive that got completely lost with my laptop. All my notes on the plot and on characters and their past, along with various dialogues and ideas and also the complete final chapter I had already fully written down – anything I haven't posted online up to now, really is now gone.

It's frustrating, but we'll carry on anyways. You guys aren't going to get rid of me so easily :)

It just means that future updates might take a little longer, as I'm trying to rebuild everything I had before.

Next thing is that I'm away for a week on a class trip to Venice, which means I won't have time to write or post for a while :/

Be that as it may, back to the story. This is a kind of mini update, cause I wanted to get out something before I'm gone. You may have noticed that I decided to also add titles to the chapters, which I forgot to mention last chapter. I actually intended to name this chapter 'Agent Orange', but realized that was quite distasteful, so I changed it into 'Now my feet won't touch the ground'.

So, that's it for today and the next week. Have a great time until next chapter, and thanks a lot for reading my story =)