Posted by Bowen Cates on 4/14/2008, 3:36 pm
24.207.121.197
Chapter 29: In Which Various Colours of Chess Pieces Are Mentioned.
“Everyone ge’ back!” Deidre screamed as she aimed the ionizer at the ceiling just above the tank. This was not so much a warning to her foes, but rather to her friends. Without so much as another word, she pulled the trigger.
A beam of green light shot out from the weapon and the next thing Theodore knew, he was crammed against the glass siding of his prison, head completely submerged and eyes tightly shut.
He was scared out of his wits; he knew the water was still rising and that the metal from the ceiling would only serve to make it deeper so that even if he did try to swim up, he had no way of telling where the surface would be.
And what about Holmes? Where would he find the energy to swim? What if the debris was blocking their way out? Theodore could feel himself going blue, his lungs begging, pleading, screaming for air, protesting with all their might.
Theodore could swim, but not well, and he had never liked being under the water.
A million thoughts and situations were all jostling for attention inside his oxygen-starved brain. How long had he been down here? And what about Holmes’ head wound? It wouldn’t clot in the water.
Theodore wanted to scream himself now, he couldn’t take it any more, his brain was choking, he needed air, he had to get out, but he couldn’t, he felt weak, he tried to move but couldn’t, he opened his eyes a slit only to find that his surroundings were faded and dim.
He couldn’t see Holmes.
This was it, this was it.
He was going to die.
After all this he was going to -
A hand grabbed his arm and Theodore felt the strange sensation of being lifted upwards through the water without moving.
The surface was getting closer and closer now, and the pressure was abating, even through the freezing liquid and his damaged sight, Theodore could still make out the occasional warm spark from exposed wires or maybe dying registration panels for the environmental systems that Theodore could only assume would be incorporated into the vents in laboratories like these.
Suddenly his head was above water, he gasped as the same pair of hands pulled him out onto the extendable platform used to load the subject into the tank from above.
Now the hands had arms attached to them, wrapping themselves around Theodore’s chest under his arms, dragging him further out of the water and laying him down gently.
Opening his eyes Theodore could make out the silhouette of 1800 Holmes beside him, on his knees, coughing, gasping for breath and looking as though he were about to collapse again.
Theodore propped himself up as quickly as he could without making himself too dizzy - he didn’t want to fall, preferring to admire the twenty foot drop from the platform rather then the air - then clambered to his feet.
“Mr. Holmes!”
The detective’s entire body was shaking and his head was bleeding slightly again. “Mr.…Mr. Trent…go,” he was having trouble getting his point across while coughing in between every word or two “Not much…time…Deidre and…you both, go!”
“I will Mr. Holmes, just give yourself a minute to-” it was at that moment that the detective could hold himself up no longer and he fell to the ground, the metal vibrating around him. Theodore grabbed him and quickly turned him over on his side as the Victorian coughed more water out onto the metal beneath him.
“I’ll…be along in…a…moment…please…go” aside from the fact that Holmes could hardly breathe, talk or move Theodore found the fact that his nobility was still intact a good sign. “Please.”
Theodore knew he was right, he had to go, he had work to do and no doubt Homes had chosen him and Deidre to go through the vent because they were the only ones small enough, and even they would barely fit.
“Okay Mr. Holmes, I won’t let you down.” Theodore assured him, waiting one moment longer as the sight returned fully to his eyes.
As he looked around for something to lower himself down on besides the ladder - the remains of which he now noticed hanging forebodingly from its bolts, the majority of it melted into an impossibility of repair, probably by Silvers - he could have sworn he heard his companion whisper, between coughs “you never have.”
However, this was no time to stop and stare, and so, grabbing a bunch of dead exposed wires from the ceiling above, Theodore began the perilous process of lowering himself down into the midst of the chaos below.
He had quiet a nice view, a lot of green beams were bouncing off the walls and there were a few people shouting to aim for the platform, he swung the wire a bit, remembering that it was much harder to hit a moving target then an idle one.
He could see the group laid out like the pieces of a giant chessboard, black was retreating to the door from where they had come, jumping over a few downed guards as they raced to their destination.
He was getting closer but he had to hurry, otherwise white, who were madly trying to get their prisoners back under their control, would have to be shut out before Theodore could get to the door.
Actually, come to think of it, Theodore wasn’t sure who was black and who was white, after all, white was supposed to move first, and he really had no idea how you could tell who had started it when all the stages of the game were being tossed about in countless combinations through different time periods.
He gulped, drawing his mind back to the situation at hand and trying not to think of his friend above him.
Inch by inch he made his way down, The water he was drenched in was making the wire hard to hold on to as the legs of his trousers soaked it before he grabbed each segment.
However, it was not that long before he would be on the ground, he would have quite a jump at the end but it wouldn’t be too bad.
Greg was gone, and so was 2103 Holmes, but Theodore knew better then to think they had been able to manage that feat themselves. Lestrade, whose leg was just disappearing behind the door of the newly established garrison, was no doubt in charge of him, and Wiggins of Greg, unless of course, Hargreaves, who was also nowhere to be seen, had taken control of the injured.
Theodore landed on his shoulder in a corner of the lab and scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain and the resultant puddle of water as he tried to sneak around a few computer consoles.
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