Chapter 25: Point of No Return (Part 1)

Milo woke trying to breathe.

His ribs burned against the door. He forced an arm up to the handle and pushed. Cool air rushed over him, and he buckled to his knees on the boards.

He rubbed the buzzing out of one hand and put it to his eyes. He’d gone back into the gap to watch the flail. Imagined footsteps outside the door to frighten himself awake, for the heart to beat faster and for his mind to race.

However...

Only a singular phrase flared in his mind.

...I actually fell asleep.

The last thing he remembered was the sunset on the day after Aldous’ speech. Now sunlight lay across the floor. He had also sworn he would not drift off into something as trivial as sleep.

Milo looked for the flail, but it had shrunk to a dot beyond the walls, out where the fields began.

It was the day of the Turning.

Shit, I knew something like this would happen!

He scrambled back to the brick and snatched the hook out of the narrow gap. Straightening up to bolt out of the labyrinth, witnesses be damned, set his lungs burning harder.

He was wheezing.

After clamping a hand onto his chest to massage it lightly, he made for the doors and opened them one by one.

Aldous could be fighting already. For all Milo knew, the man was on his way back this very moment, to find the whole academy coughing anyway.

There was also no telling how many hours Milo had spent squeezed between the door and the brick. Judging off the pain... a lot.

He eased the next one open with a palm flat on the wood.

Doors would only groan from now on.

He reached the corridor and plunged down the stairs onto the first floor. The jump bought him another wave of fresh air, though he spent none of it on slowing down.

With his ankle no longer hurting, he raced past the notebooks and hairbrushes, chest burning with every breath.

At the bathroom sink, he dropped the hook and switched the tap on.

That damn idiot was right!

Five tormenting seconds of the pipe knocking went by before the water hissed down into his cupped hands. He splashed his face and drank what was left. The chlorine aftertaste stung his mouth.

In the mirror, his face was swollen and the bruises looked worse.

Please don’t be permanent.

Making up for the last two days, he hydrated himself with three handfuls of disinfected school tap water.

He scooped his weapon off the ground and went for the stalls, bladder pressing down on his crotch.

Two days without water, and now he had some to spare for the toilet.

If only it absorbed it back into his system in the emergency of not drinking at all, instead of wasting it!

Fuck off.

He knocked the ventilation grille down with his hook and squeezed into the duct behind it. Legs kicking air, he hauled himself up and in, the sheet metal popping under his weight.

All that kicking nearly shook the iron hook loose; he pinched it between his feet and flicked it back into his hands.

He went forward on his elbows, the metal chilling his palms and every seam snagging his sleeves. The first floor’s run was short, its outlet opening on the building’s outer wall.

Which put the drop inside the academy’s gates.

Once he climbed out, though, the housing put him one leap from the top of the gate.

The plan was genius for exactly one stretch of the passage.

A fork?!

Both branches ran toward the outer wall. Pick wrong, and he’d have to come back feet first.

Milo squinted down both ways, knocked on the panels, and was met with the same hollow ring.

A faint draft cooled the sweat on his left cheek. Whether it was real or imagined, he could not tell, but it was his only cue.

He went left, knees and elbows drumming on the metal.

At last, faint light seeped in from the far end.

Please, please... be the outside, not some room.

The air came fresher the closer he got.

A dozen thuds later, he reached the grille, the outer world striped behind it and far too bright for his sunlight-deprived eyes.

He set the hook’s tip to the slats and drove it through.

The grille gave. As he angled the hook to pull it inside, the panel tipped out and fell.

Shit!

Milo whipped his head out of the opening and stared down.

The grille lay in the grass with no one near it.

He rolled onto his back and pushed himself out.

The whole fixture tilted under his weight as he grabbed the plating overhead, hauling himself onto the vent housing.

At the top, he faced the gate.

It was a good four meters away. Lower than the ventilation’s mouth.

Milo dipped low, preparing for the jump, his legs shaking harder the lower he got.

Worst case, the grass is soft.

With no more time lost, he sprang toward the gate.

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "Point of No Return (Part 2: Finale)" ... ⤵︎ [!]