She called to him quietly.
“Lt. Surge” He did not respond. She called again, this time slightly louder and with more confidence in her voice. “Lt. Surge!”
This time he responded and turned his head to face her. “Yes, my dear Miss Pond.”
“How much longer is this going to take?” she asked. “This place is giving me the creeps.” She moaned in fear.
“Not long left. Nearly there now.” He replied in a calm and steady voice. The boat closed in on the ship while slicing through the fog resting on the raging sea. The man threw a rope and started climbing up the bow of the ship. The scared girl followed him with more care. They both threw themselves on the deck of the ship. The women coughed and retched whilst the man got right up and started looking for a way to the lower decks.
“Why did you bring me here anyway?” she said with a puzzled expression
“Because you are the best hacker of military computers and I need you to break the lock down on this quarantined ship. That is all you need to know at the moment.”
“You could have just asked instead of kidnapping me,” she said with caution.
“You would have said no,” he snapped.
“You are probably right,” she muttered under her breath.
He looked at his map then pointed to a door, labelled ‘stairs’. She brought out her small laptop and, using a wire, plugged it in to a socket at the side of the door. There was a gleaming red light on the side of the door. When she connected her laptop to the door the lights turned green and the door lunged open.
The man peered inside the staircase and saw the cobweb- ridden steps. He drew his gun and descended with caution. The woman followed the man down the stairs tightly gripping her laptop as she brought it closer to her chest.
When they got to the bottom of what seemed to be a perpetual staircase they saw words written on the dusty wall. The man brushed off the dust to reveal the message underneath
“Leave! You are not safe, no one is safe!” They both shuddered with fear because they realised that the message was written in blood.
“What is going on here…..? Why are we here? TELL ME!” She shrieked at the man whose face was as white as a ghost.
“I guess you need to know now. This ship went missing a year ago. In the armoury it has prototype weaponry worth a fortune on the black market and I came here to steal it.”
She bombarded him with questions. “If this ship is missing, how do you know where it is?! Where is the crew?”
He responded quickly to each question “Last year I picked up a distress signal originating from this ship but it took me a year to track its exact position. I have no idea where the crew are; I presume they are dead.” He took a deep breath, and then he walked down the corridor to his left. She followed him keeping as close as possible. He looked over his shoulder, his face frozen with horror. She looked a round and saw the lights going out one by one rapidly coming towards them. He hands her a spare pistol and shouted “RUN, JUST RUN!”
She sprinted down the corridor. She heard the sound gun shots whistling behind her; she turned a round and saw Lt. Surge being devoured by the approaching darkness. She froze in fear. Then she turned and dashed to the end of the corridor…… it was a dead end. She fired blindly into the belching dusk. She heard a blood-curdling wail then the shadows drew back and the lights came back on.
She was relieved for a moment but then she saw the lights further down the corridor start to go out again. She did not know what it was. She did not know what it would do to her. But she did know it was coming for her and this time there was no where to run and no help to come.
