Darkside
Here I'm hopping this piece of improvisation is still on time for this contest:
In any case, I like the world it opened, so here it is!
It was at this moment that Tiago knew he was in trouble. Just after coming out of the spaceship, two figures clad in grey grabbed him and dragged him towards a prison cell while covering his head with something, all the way groaning in an incomprehensible way. Not nice was his first thought, feeling his body tired and cold, followed by a sudden realization: his father could be in worse position!.
He got up and watched around him. Smooth stone and metal everywhere, except for a faint glow in place of the front wall, a Forcewall surely, and that made escaping far more difficult.
He had come here, to the dark side of the moon, following his father, a man he admired trough all his 10 years of age even though he never knew exactly what the man did for a living. Some sciency-space stuff his father used to say just before disappearing from the face of the earth (literally and figuratively) for weeks, leaving his son staring at the moon until late at night.
Sad, but endurable, at least until he heard his parents speaking when they though he was asleep.
I might have to stay for good this time, things are getting difficult in there…
But Dear, they can’t force a parent to get away from his family just like that!
They can and they will, I’ve gotten too deep into this for them to just leave me alone... I will go in two days, sorry…
They were bad, those moon people, and if his father was being forced by them to do something against his will, well, someone had to free him right?. Some tears escaped from Tiago’s eyes, but he brushed them off quickly. So what if the moon wasn’t as pretty as in the stories his parents told him?, he was big enough to not cry for that, and he had to concentrate and find a way to get away from his cell and escape with his dad.
So… what to do?. He didn’t have magic powers, or a key, but he remembered some technical stuff about forcewalls from a time he was so bored that he actually read some engineering books. Not that he understood much, but maybe… He searched inside his pant’s hidden pockets, trying to see if the grey men took away his special trinket. They didn’t.
A relieved sight got away from his lips. Now he only had to find some faulty connection to touch with the thin crystal shard that he called his lucky charm. Greenish blue and surprisingly strong, he knew because of the engineering book that it was called Enthralium, and that it was a very good energy isolator.
But his surge of hope was somewhat short lived. That place was so polished and smooth that he could almost see his reflection everywhere, and so a couple of hours passed until some lights turned on in a corner. From there, a panel opened and a metal tray came out with some food, the dehydrated kind that space travelers tend to carry with themselves. Well, he was indeed getting hungry, and now there was a place he could try to sabotage.
Some “Beef Stew” later, and he was probing the miniscule cracks from the wall the food tray came from. He also heard some distant noises, like a mix between screams and moaning, but there was no one around, no one watching him. That was relieving in some way (he could be at peace trying to escape), but also worrying, because, wasn’t this supposed to be a very busy observatory?, there was bound to be someone walking around. But there wasn’t.
His fingers hurt, and even started to bleed a little, but his patience and the Enthralium proved useful and he managed to open up enough of the metal panel to put his fingers behind it and pull back. It wasn’t easy, but he was surprised that he actually could move it so much (seems they trusted too much in how “smooth” it seemed to be), leaving a clear view of things to cut and pierce with his trinket.
Another scream/moan in the distance, and this time a chill ran down his back, it felt familiar somehow… no time to lose then!. The interior design wasn’t as perfectly fit as the exterior one, so he could find, in the back of that space, something that seemed like a circuit board. This was the moment, one deep breath, and he shoved the Enthralium into the circuits. For an instant nothing seemed to happen, but soon smoke and sparks came out, and with that, the lights and the forcewall started blinking.
Tiago knew that wouldn’t last, so he pulled out his lucky crystal and went out of his cell before the forcewall recovered. Outside it was cold, and dark, very dark, it seems that the were some cells all across the left side of the hallway he was in now, either empty or with something he couldn’t see clearly inside. His mind was racing, Where should I go now?. He remembered coming from the right, so to the left he went.
Walking quietly but with hurry, he started to feel something in that long hallway: eeriness. At the end, some 60ft away, a greenish light was shining, and this time the weird screams could be heard: they were voices, crying. He got closer, just a little bit before stopping when some figures appeared dragging something. He pushed himself against the wall in an effort to not be seen. The figures started saying something: the same hoarse groaning… and his father's voice.
She ended up being more resistant than I thought, that may prove to be useful… throw her in her cell
-groaning noises-
Yes, I will take care of the boy now… his father said with a sight.
TAN TAN TAAAAAN... intentionally drastic cliffhanger here... what is Tiago's dad doing in the dark side of the moon?, surely not looking through a telescope...
Enjoyed this. I hope you keep submitting to the contest!