Sunday 10 June 2012

Crescent, Chapter 5 - Headquarters...

       After Beam had left, Philip concentrated on lowering himself back onto the bed. After a few minutes of hard concentration he managed to flop back onto the hospital bed, the springs adjusting to the new weight, and almost instantly a woman of about twenty five, dressed in a lab coat and jeans and a T-shirt came in. Her auburn hair was tied back of her pale face and her brown eyes shimmered with warmth but she looked formal and business like as well. She had turned the beeping machines off and undid the straps tying him down.
       "It seems you have control, come with me." she had said and led him through the doors into a wood panelled corridor. She had shown him a bathroom, handed him a blue T-shirt, some jeans and a pair of trainers and left so he could change out of his tattered school uniform. A few minutes later he had gone back into the corridor, shoving the uniform in his school bag that she had handed him, and followed her round a maze of corridors at a brisk pace. After a few minutes of walking, she turned onto a corridor with no windows of doors, just oil and pastel paintings in frames. She placed a hand on a wood panel at the side of the corridor, it looked the same as the others to Philip, and the outline of her hand glowed blue on its surface. A speaker opened in the wood by her hand.
       "Authorisation code: Alpha-two-three-oh-four. Clearance number: Two-oh-two-five-six-nine. Name: Shimmer." she said clearly. The hand printed flashed green and faded. Shimmer removed her hand from the wall and a doorway to a mirrored lift opened. She gestured for him to go first so he stepped into the lift.
       The lift had two buttons. One was black, which Shimmer pressed, and the other was red with a key slot in it. The lift started going down, slowly at first but soon picking up pace. When it past below ground level, the mirrors faded into windows.
       What Philip could see out of the windows was a metal room, the size of a large cinema. The lift was on one of the walls of what looked like an oversized NASA headquarters, only bigger and with more technology that was up-to-date too. On the right of the still descending lift and on the front wall was what looked like a large cinema screen which showed a main video of a news network but will smaller images around the edges, they seemed to be monitoring networks from across the world. Leading up to the screen but on a downwards slope were about a hundred rows of computers, people sat at these computers; tapping the touch screens of the computers and the keyboards and, occasionally, dragging something from the screen onto a tablet and going to show someone else. The back of the cavern held a raised balcony which Philip could not see underneath but he suspected it was doors as there were three glass doors at the back of the balcony and one across the room from the lift and by the stairs. The front of the balcony faced the screen had a slightly curved chrome table on it which had nothing on it.
       The lift stopped and Shimmer led him out. Philip was still looking round when Shimmer stopped by the table, placed a finger on it and waited.
       After about a minute, the door by the stairs banged open and a very angry looking girl of about Philip's age of fourteen stormed in.
       "Why," she screeched "Did you touch my console?!!" she pointed at Shimmer, her teeth bared. Her black hair was streaked with luminous green, her eyes were like pools of of ink, glittering too, and her chest heaved, sucking in air as if she had just ran a marathon.
       "To get your attention, Pixel." Shimmer said, removing her finger from the table.
       "Don't touch my console." Pixel snarled, standing in front of the table fondly.
       Shimmer sighed. "Pixel, this is Falcon. Did Beam mention which room he was training him in?" she asked.
       Pixel looked at Philip with glittering, searching eyes. He held out his hand to shake. "Beam said you're the one to thank for getting my mum that day job." he said.
       She looked at his hand cautiously then shook it. "Yeah, that's me. It didn't take much. The guy only had two firewalls and a nano virus." she laughed and Philip noticed she had a Hayfield accent. She let go of his hand and went to the table. Philip looked at Shimmer. 
       Nano virus? his expression asked.
       Shimmer shrugged.
       Pixel placed her hands over the table, a few centimetres above it. "Nope, he didn't mention it but I can find it." She spread her fingers and placed her hands on the table. "Let's get this party started, shall we?"




Lynxia x

4 comments:

  1. ditto nix... DITTO NIX... DITTO NIX

    Really good descriptions:)

    I WORKED OUT WHAT POWERS PIXEL HAS (kinda). I AM SO SMART!

    Constructive critism? Not really for this particular chapter, but: remember, readers are stupid and don't pay attention to things very much. They aren't good at remekbering things like names. Don't expect them to pick up on clues that aren't really obvious. Like, the Orano-whatever guy in Patchwork, nobody remembered him. (See what I mean about names?)

    Anyways . . . ditto nix... DITTO NIX... DITTO NIX

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