Raiyev Part 16
#16 of Raiyev
"I can't leave without Brad," Raiyev pleaded desperately to the diminutive Dr. Frost as she fumbled with the thin glass plate that opened one of the walls to Raiyev's cell. She stared at him a moment, a certain hasty panic in her eyes.
"You have to go, Raiyev!" she hissed at him. "I don't need to know everything that's going on here to know that you're in grave danger as long as you stay here," she panted, having spoken in a rush of whispered breath. She paused to think as she stared at him, and their eyes met.
"Here," she said, looking suddenly resolute and proffering the glass plate to Raiyev. "I'll stay here and continue looking for Brad. You take this in case you need it to open any more doors or walls or something."
Raiyev silently took the plate and nodded his head slowly. He started for the corridor, and trying to think of something sort of thank you to say to his former boss, he turned back to her. "Please be careful," he said, the words feeling dry and awkward in his muzzle.
"YOU be careful," Frost replied firmly, and she watched him as he cautiously stepped out into the corridor, looking up and down its length, and vanished from sight.
Raiyev kept looking around frantically, making sure that no one saw him. After turning around a few corners and still not meeting anyone, he started to feel ill at ease from the lack of activity. Surely there must have been someone along by now, so where was everyone? Maybe it was mealtime and everyone was sitting down to dinner? Raiyev couldn't remember his last proper meal, and there was no telling what time it was wherever he was; he felt his stomach give what sounded like a roaring rumble, and he looked around to make sure no one was coming.
As he gazed all around, he began to finally take in his surroundings. It all looked so sterile and mechanical--not too dissimilar from what he was used to seeing at EarthTech Labs. There was one windowless door further down the corridor on his left, and he eyed it carefully, as if expecting something or someone to pop out from it at any moment.
Next to the door, he saw a rack of what appeared to be long, misshapen metal poles. He took a few steps closer and saw that there was a small trigger on each pole, and though he didn't see any sort of ammunition lying around, it was clear that these were some sort of gun. He picked one up slowly and silently, examining it carefully for a moment, then rested the barrel on his shoulder, the butt in his paw, and started off again, having no clue in which direction he should be headed.
As he made a couple more turns, that ill and ominous feeling within him built up even more, and as he peeked around the next corner, he drew his head back quickly and flattened himself against the wall. He had seen them, two of them--two humans. In the quick glimpse, he thought they looked absolutely horrific, like some sort of furless, contorted monkey. They only stood about shoulder-high to him, or so he thought--it was a bit difficult to gauge as they were farther down the corridor, and he only saw them for a split second--and they were walking upright and wearing clothes no different than a common furson. They had disgustingly flat faces--no muzzle at all, it looked like--and the only fur he saw was on the tops of their heads.
He waited for them to pass, heard them muttering in some language he didn't understand, and just as he began to pray that he wasn't spotted, he heard a loud cry from behind him, down at the other end of the corridor he was in. The jig was up, and without giving it a second thought, he aimed the gun he was holding at the human now running toward him and pulled the trigger.
There was a near-blinding streak of red light and a heavy booming rush of wind, and Raiyev watched as the human was flung back a good twenty feet or so and knocked unconscious. Raiyev stood frozen to the spot, his heart racing, his eyes fixed on the human now lying sprawled on the floor, either unconscious or dead. Raiyev waited for her (at least it looked like it might be female to Raiyev) to get up, but she didn't.
As Raiyev heard more voices approaching him, he had a sudden revelation: if that human's cry hadn't raised the alarm around him, the noise made by the blast of that gun certainly did. And sure enough, a gaggle of more humans was now hurrying towards him from all available directions.
Without pausing to think, Raiyev simply made a run for it, darting down corridor after long corridor--this place seemed to be made of nothing but corridors--pushing down humans as he ran into them, firing the gun over his back every now and again, not looking back to see if he hit anyone. The yells and cries still followed him, but every once in a while, when he fired the gun over his back, he'd hear a loud scream, terrified and painful. He didn't care, though--all he wanted or knew was that he had to get out of whatever this evil place was as fast as he could.
He dashed around corners, blazed through rooms full of things he didn't have time to look at. The manufactured realm of the humans passed by him in a blur that started to be dotted with stars as he felt his legs protesting in pain from running for what felt like hours. He zoomed through a large hall with long tables in rows--possibly a cafeteria of some sort, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he was briefly reminded of the scene in the cafeteria of EarthTech Labs when Dr. Paxton had died.
Around a few more corners, a few more blasts of the gun, a few more screams behind him in some twisted tongue, and he finally saw it--bright daylight streaming in from two glass double doors. He ordered his legs to make a final dash, putting on a sudden burst of energy as his heart lept for joy at the sight of freedom--
Raiyev took a tumbling fall as something wrapped itself around his ankles, and the gun flew from his fingertips. He scrambled around, trying to free himself from his captor, and he looked into the face of a particularly ugly human. He was wearing glasses, had the least amount of fur of any of them--just a few patches of white on his head--and his face (if you could call it a face) was sagging and wrinkly. Raiyev paused in horror at the gruesome sight for a moment, then came back to his senses and kicked hard at the human that was now attempting to bind him.
In a splatter of blood where Raiyev hindpaw made contact with the human's nose, the giant raccoon scrambled to his feet and dashed outside, grabbing the gun and firing it one last time at the human before bursting outside into the free open air, taking it in. Wherever he was, the climate was fortunately like his own. He looked back to where the doors that he had just escaped from were, and found to his horror that there was nothing there--just a hill of green grass, covered in patches of shrubbery.
Raiyev's eyes darted around, looking to see where the building was that he had just escaped. Surely, it was somewhere, wasn't it? He had just been in it! But as he looked around, all he saw was that he was at the foot of some small mountain, with no building in sight. And then it dawned on him--it was underground, and well hidden. So well hidden, in fact, that there was no way of knowing that there was even so much as a doorknob there. There was no road or even a dirt path leading up to the place, and so there was nothing for Raiyev to follow, no route to take to find his home.
He looked around, and was faced with a small clearing surrounded by dense forest, and looking back up at the mountain, he decided he should start off to get as far away from this place as possible; he didn't want to stick around and chance being caught again. The air smelled a bit familiar, Raiyev thought as he entered the forest, though he couldn't quite put a finger on what it reminded him of. He walked for hours, having no idea where he was or how to get home--or even if he was still on his home planet--but he had to find a way home. This planet was so much like Earth that he was sure that he still had to be on the same planet, at least. The trees were about the size and shape that he remembered trees to be before he was captured, the insects looked like Earthen insects...this must still be Earth, he affirmed.
The sun started to go down, and Raiyev sat down for a while, resting his back against a large tree and closing his eyes. When he opened them again, it was much darker; night had already fallen, and Raiyev cursed himself for having dozed off. But in a moment he was up again and searching, albeit somewhat wearily, for some sign of direction to his home.
And then he found it. Almost without realizing it, Raiyev walked into another open clearing, this one much larger than the one he had started out it, and recognized it at once, even in the pale moonlight: It was the place Brad had taken him to so that he could hide from the rest of the world for a while. The familiar lake was close to him, and way in the distance on the other side of the clearing, Raiyev could just make out the dirt road that led back to the main road. His spirits brightened, and despite his weariness and the darkness of night, he made off for the road, knowing now that he had finally found a way home.