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I rolled over to lie on my back; eyes closed, fighting to get air. After a minute or so I was feeling better, if beaten up, and I noticed things sounded different. There was no echo. No sound of hard, flat surfaces. The light outside my eyelids was too bright, although not as bright as when we had first encountered Central Control, and seemed to have a green tint.
There were smells, too. I was used to either the oily grime of home, or the dusty dryness of the tunnels. These were as overwhelming as the flavour tubes, and there seemed to be hundreds of them. I sneezed and rubbed at my nose
My heart started to race again. I opened my eyes, looking straight up, and saw a canopy distant of green stuff. I sat up. Names hovered on the tip of my tongue, then I could name ‘trees’ and ‘plants’, but that was as much detail as I had. I was sitting on a fairly ordinary looking path, but even that had green stuff coming through it in some places,. I jumped to my feet and started looking around. I couldn’t see the door. Something cold seemed to form next to my racing heart. Was I lost?
‘Pitr,’ I yelled. ‘Pitr? Where are you?’
‘Over here,’ came a voice from behind me. I whirled around and saw Pitr. He looked awestruck and uncomfortable as he held aside some of the green stuff which was draped over the door. I couldn't tell if it was naturally like that or if someone was trying to hide the door. My heart slowed down a bit, and I at least had the wit to pick up the bag I had managed to keep from the girl before I walked back inside.
‘Are you all right?’ Pitr asked as soon as the doors were shut behind us.
‘I’ll live,’ I said, trying to pass the whole thing off as minor. In truth, my ribs really hurt, and where I had been kicked in my side was sore too. My left knee felt stiff, so I must have landed on it at some point, and the same for my left elbow and shoulder. When I touched my shoulder, I found my tunic was torn. My hand came away with blood on it, and I held it up to Pitr. We had walked back to the main platform by now and he sat me on one of the benches.
‘Let me take a look,’ he volunteered. He started to poke and prod, and I made a few half-hearted ‘ouch’ noises to impress on him how sore it was.
‘It’s only a graze,’ he reported. ‘Could do with cleaning, but it doesn’t look bad.’
‘Hey, whose pack did I save?’
Pitr opened our one remaining pack and started to dig around. He pulled out the Medical Kit and said ‘Mine, I guess. There are no flavour things in here.’
I was annoyed, but at least we still had one and there wasn’t anything we couldn’t do without in the other. I flinched away when Pitr wiped my shoulder with a moist pad from the kit. It really stung, but Pitr gave me a look that said he thought I was being a baby. ‘Do you want me to clean this?’ he asked.
I nodded and let him get on with it, keeping my protest down to a hiss as whatever was on the pad stung again. Thinking about it, it was no worse than some of the fluids the Healer used at home.
‘So do we carry on?’ Pitr asked.
‘Why not?’ I asked, truly surprised. ‘All we lost is a bag. We still have the drones and the crystals.’
‘Just thought I’d ask,’ said Pitr. ‘I mean, now we know there are other people out there.’
I shrugged, then wished I hadn’t as my shoulder complained. ‘Doesn’t really change anything. We stock up with extra food bricks and go easy on the water.’
‘OK,’ said Pitr, and he took the pack with him as he went up the food dispenser at the other end of the platform. While he was gone I let my memory run through as much of what Noah had told me as I could recall. There was not much to go on, but I got something. When Pitr got back, we decided that we might as well get started, and we walked out of the Terminal.
Pitr slowed to a stop almost as soon as he walked out of the curtain that hid the last door. ‘What is this place?’ he asked, as much to himself as to me. I thought about playing as ignorant as he, but figured it wasn’t fair and that I might as well share what I knew even if he didn’t like where I got the knowledge from.
‘I think Noah showed it to me, but he showed me it as somewhere where people came to relax and have fun. I think this is it, but it was sort of neater, tidier. The tall things are called ‘trees’, and the stuff on the ground is called ‘plants’. There’s some different stuff on the ground called ‘grass’ but I don’t think I’ve seen any yet.’
‘So which way do we go?’
My drone was already out so I held it up and said ‘Show me.’
The red line shot out, but it was thin and difficult to see. Perhaps the light was too bright. As soon as I thought that a green line appeared on the path, with arrows pointing in the direction we needed to go.
‘What’s wrong?’ Pitr asked.
I thought for a second. Pitr was still a bit raw from the no-mental-speak thing and might get a mood on, but if I lied to him and got caught out later? ‘The drone just showed me something else it can do. Come on, this way.’
Pitr grunted and started walking.
Both of us gawped at all the sights and jumped at every sound. Not that there were many noises. Most were the breeze moving the green stuff around. The breeze was weird. I mean, we had draughts back home, especially around the bigger air vents, but these came from nowhere. Before too long the novelty of it all wore off and we got back to walking.
Then four men stepped out of the plant wall to our left and stood in a line across the path, blocking us. We stopped, and looked over our shoulders in time to see four more closing off the path behind.
Each of the men was taller than me and had the same build as Jedd. They were dressed in similar clothes to the girl, mostly made of stuff that looked like it might have been plants; a sleeveless tabard over the shoulders covered the body and short trews, both with lacings to shape them and hold them in place. They all had long, shaggy hair and they all looked angry. What really worried me, though, were the big knives they carried. We had small work knives at home, but these were long thin strips of metal, with something wound around at the end to give a hand grip. I decided I didn’t want to argue with them or try to run. My legs felt weak and my knees wanted to shake.
‘What do we do now?’ whispered Pitr.
‘Exactly what they say,’ I replied.