Summary: Lila takes matters into her own hands.

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Author’s note: Chapters of Omnigirl can now be downloaded from my book shop for free. This is the last chapter I’m posting in full to my blog.

Future blog posts will be previews of the new chapters that I’m making available for download as I finish them.

I intend to keep this story available for free until I’m feeling ready to publish it more officially (e.g. to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc…).

Once back in my room, I picked up a flashlight, the pen sized digital camera, and my laptop. Then I went to the garage and waited for Cheryl and the others to leave. I watched as they all piled into the car and left.

When they were out of sight, I used Levi’s keys to open the door of one of the cars and started my trip back to the Greenhouse Laboratories, hopefully, for the last time.

This time I parked behind a large tree, just before the fork in the road. I had no way of getting through the gate, but I wasn’t about to go down that dark road again. I decided to wait for someone else to come up to the gate and open it for me. I hid behind some thick bushes on the side of the gate. In a few minutes, a car came cruising down the road. An old man lowered the car window, stuck his hand on the scanner and was admitted. As the car slowly rolled through the gate, I snuck in behind it.

I re-found the underground entrance that was hidden under a group of bushes. I wished Linzie was there to help me open the doors this time, but I had to do this by myself. I struggled with the doors, one by one. After they were wide open, I walked into the dark hallway. I walked quickly, trying to ignore the shadows on the walls and the spider webs that tried to block my way. I came to the security room. The doors to that room were heavy as well, and after pulling them open with effort, I stepped inside.

Everything looked as they did the other night, except now the elevator was missing its doors. The camera images flashed on the screens, pictures of people walking in full body suits carrying strange test tubes. If only I could get a closer shot of what was in them or what the people are doing. I patted the camera in my pocket. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I climbed through the vent that Lydia and Linzie went through the night before. It was kind of cramped, and I had to crawl on my knees, but it wasn’t that bad. A steady flow of air went through it, but it wasn’t enough to cool me off. Sweat rolled down my back. After I get the pictures, I’m going back to get that DVD, I thought.

I opened the vent above my head. I crawled up and out onto the floor of an upper story storage closet. It held mops, brooms, and some head to toe suits like I saw the people wearing on the monitor in the security room. There was a ladder that went up to another vent in the ceiling. Linzie and Lydia must have left it there.

I climbed up into the ceiling and began to crawl. The metal was cold on my bare knees. Soon I came to the vent above the secret room. People worked in white bodysuits, carrying beakers and looking into microscopes. I took out my digital camera and tried taking pictures, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to get faces. I wanted to see what they were really doing, but I couldn’t get it, even in zoom. I slipped the camera back into my jacket pocket and began crawling back into the closet, disappointed. If only I could somehow sneak in and get some pictures.

Maybe I could just walk in. There are so many people they might not notice….no, I would probably get caught. Just walking in wasn’t going to work. When climbing down the ladder, I brushed past some suits, causing a crazy idea to come into my head. It was crazy, but great—and it might work.

I stepped out into the hallway and cautiously closed the door. People walked past without paying me too much attention. The suit made noise like paper rubbing together as I walked down the clean hallway. I wasn’t expecting it to be so noisy. I hoped the headpiece covered enough of my face. It showed my eyes, but hid my mouth and a part of my nose.

I came to Room 10. My heart beat wildly, causing me to twitch. I hesitated at opening the door. There was no time left to hesitate. I opened it.

Inside were scientists working in lab coats and typing on computers. I walked past them, keeping my eyes on the specimen shelf on the other side of the room. I brushed past a man with a clipboard and walked through the middle of a group discussion with deliberate steps. I came up to the shelf. Okay, where’s the door? I began tapping on it in various places. Then I tried looking behind it.

“You forgot how to get in again?”

Oh, no. It’s over.

I turned to see Dr. Roberts behind me, wearing a similar bodysuit. “See, you just push this.” He moved one of the plant samples over, and the shelf slid to the side, revealing a door. He put his hand on the scanner next to it, and the door opened.

“See Dr. Redman, it’s as easy as that.”

Why was he calling me that? I looked down at my suit. It had a nametag on it that said “Redman.”

He thinks I’m someone else.

As I followed him into the room, I hoped that Dr. Redman wouldn’t suddenly show up looking for their suit.

Room 10 was big, but this room was even bigger. Everything looked like it did from above, but now I could get a closer look. People walked around in the noisy suits, holding handheld computers and exchanging info. It was easy to blend in.

I walked over to a lab bench where a woman was working. She was dissecting something under a microscope and checking out how her subject was looking on a monitor.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m examining this aphidoidea,” she said.

“Why?”

“It’s phase four testing.” she said without looking up. “We need to make sure they have optimal environmental resistance before introducing the antidote.”

I stepped back from the lab bench, quite shaken. I had suspected it all along, but I wasn’t ready to hear it. She turned her chair around to me.

“Dr. Redman, are you okay?”

I nodded and slowly backed away, almost bumping into another person. I apologized and walked over to a wall with a black and white poster of the aphid life cycle. I looked around, making sure I wasn’t being watched, and took out my mini-camera. After taking shots of the poster, I slid it up my sleeve and turned to look for Dr. Roberts. I spotted him standing over on the other side of the room, talking to some other people. I decided to go find out who they were. I walked briskly, taking quick snap-shots as I went.

I stopped about twenty feet behind Dr. Roberts. He was holding a test tube with two little red colored bugs in it that I’ve never seen before. They tried to climb up the side of the glass, but they kept sliding back down.

“This is the cure to the aphid problem,” said Dr. Roberts while handing the tube to the much larger person across from him. I took pictures of that.

“This is wonderful,” said a familiar voice. I moved around, trying to read the nametag. It definitely had to be a woman.

“I’ll tell my daughter to come pick it up around six-thirty tomorrow.” My blood froze in my veins. I knew who it was. I know I knew who it was, but I had to make sure. She shifted a little to the side. Her tag plainly said “Rinehart.” I shuddered. I knew she said that she would make Dr. Sterling pay the day she quit, but I never imagined that it would be like this. I zoomed in to get a close up of her suit. Then Dr. Roberts turned in my direction. I quickly hid the camera up my sleeve again.

“Dr. Redman!”

I shyly walked up to him.

“This is perfect,” went on Ms. Rinehart excitedly. “I will reveal the solution to the famine hours after Emperor Sterling is removed. Dr. Roberts, you will be rewarded greatly for this.”

I can’t imagine what would have happened if Ms. Rinehart recognized me in that suit. As they talked, I wished that I had a tape recorder, but then I saw the vent above me. No need for a tape recorder. It’s all on DVD. Then I noticed that the camera was right over Dr. Roberts’s special lab bench. There should be some very good footage.

Out of nowhere, Dr. Roberts turned around and handed me the tube with the insects that would save Avila.

“Here,” he said. “Put these in the special chamber we made for them.” I couldn’t respond from the shock. He had just handed me what I had spent my whole visit here looking for. A way to stop the crop damage and the food shortage.

“Dr. Redman, are you okay?”

I came crashing back to earth. I nodded.

“Then stop standing there and put them away.”

I turned around and walked away.

“He’s been acting very strangely lately,” he said to Ms. Rinehart. Once I was out of eyeshot, I unzipped the suit and slipped the tube into one of my pockets.“You guys will be safe in here,” I whispered consolingly to the bugs.

They crawled around in the test tube, unaware of how important they really were. I exited the room with Avila’s hope in my pocket, and no one noticed.

I triumphantly drove through the tunnel leading from the laboratories to the palace. As I watched the blue lights fly past my window, I felt totally psyched. I couldn’t believe that Dr. Roberts just handed the antidote to me. Now I have everything I needed: the pictures, the cure, and the—oh, snap.

I was so excited about getting the insects that I forgot about the DVD. I pulled the car over to the side of the dark tunnel and took out my laptop. I thought that maybe I could somehow download the footage through the Internet by breaking into the computer.

I’m not much of a hacker at all. There was no way for me to get into the security room’s computer. The closest I got was coming to a screen asking for a password. I couldn’t figure out the password. Feeling defeated, I closed the laptop and started the car again. I headed back to the Avila Greenhouse Labs.

I faced the problem of the gate once again. I parked the car at the fork of the road and walked up to it. It was 9 PM, supposedly closing time for the laboratories. No one was going to come through anytime soon. I rested my hand on the scanner, and it read my fingerprints. In a few seconds it flashed “access denied.” I’m sure Cheryl isn’t the only one that has to come here. I tried again, but I got the same results. I looked around for a moment, not sure of what to do. Then I decided to get the scanner where it hurts. I kicked it as hard as I could. It didn’t break, but it flashed madly. After the little light show, the gate slowly opened.

I began to walk through the gate, thinking that I had won the fight against the scanner, but then the alarm went off. It whooped across the grounds. I ran through the gate, without thinking of going back. I pulled open the doors to the underground hallway with amazing ease. I dashed down the concrete corridor with shadows rushing past and my flashlight blazing ahead of me. I had to get to the security room before they got there. I forced open the doors and ran inside to the computer. The elevator was no longer in its doorway. Instead was the sound of its spinning cable. They would be down here in a matter of seconds. I looked at the DVD drives. I couldn’t remember which one the DVD I wanted was in. They were coming.

I set my laptop on the floor, hecticly pushed the button of the third drive and took out the DVD.

“This is the second time the alarms have gone off this week,” I heard a voice in the elevator say.

They would see me running out the door since they were so close. I looked around urgently for a place to hide. I spotted another large vent, this time in the floor under the computer. I pulled the grill from over the opening and slid in. The elevator came to a thump, and I heard voices fill the room.

“Do you see anything strange on the cameras?”

“No.”

“The computer hints the break in was around the gate.”

“Yeah. It doesn’t look like anyone’s down here. Let’s go take a look.” I heard quick footsteps and the iron door opening and closing. It sounded like they were gone, but I was too scared to leave the vent. It was the only really safe place. I decided to review the DVD on my laptop while I was there.

Fortunately, I had picked the right one. The camera had recorded everything from the genetic research Dr. Roberts did in the morning to when he debriefed the cure for the crop damage with his colleagues after lunch. It also captured Cheryl’s visit to the lab this morning and the conversation I saw between him and Ms. Rinehart—all of it with clear audio. Amazing how much happens in one day.

I closed my laptop, leaving the DVD inside of it and listened to my surroundings. No one seemed to be coming back. I cautiously removed the cover and crawled out. I pushed open the door to the security room and ran down the passageway as fast as I could.

I finally came to the doors that led to the outside. I pushed on the rusty iron doors, but they didn’t move. Maybe I’m not pushing hard enough. I tried again. The doors didn’t budge. I pushed and pushed. Oh, please. Don’t be stuck. I gave one more weary push. The rusty door was closed tight. I slid on the floor and turned off my flashlight, leaving myself in the dark.

I can’t do this. I’m too tired. I’m too weak. Maybe Cheryl was right. I should’ve asked to go home. I would like being home more than being stuck here in the dark, but those people. Those suffering, starving people. I had to do it for them, and if not for them, Dr. Sterling. He could be killed in this whole mess.

Then I thought, how could I do anything alone in the dark? It could be days before anyone finds me. I could go back and use the elevator, but right now it’s too risky. I sat in the silence. A song came into my head. It was the song I wrote that reminded me of how hard my dad worked to make ends meet.

Don’t give up when things are down,

The good things will come around.

Love will carry through,

The love I feel for you.

The song began to pick up my spirits. I absent-mindedly tapped the beat on the door. I knew somehow, I would get out of here, and I felt my strength coming back to me. Then the unexpected happened.

A knock sounded on the door in a definite rhythm. The only thing was, I wasn’t the one doing it. Someone was knocking on the other side of the door. I jumped up and turned on my flashlight.

“Who is it?” I yelled.

The only reply I got was the constant knocking. The doors bent more inward with every knock. They were going to cave in. I moved away from the doors. They bent in unwillingly, squeaking and dropping rust on the ground. The doors could not fight back anymore. They cracked and gave way, crashing to the ground, causing a cloud of dust to fly up. The noise echoed throughout the passageway. A dim beam of light cut through the particles that floated in the air and then a voice.

“Are you okay in there?”

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to see who it was.

A white-gloved hand came through the hallway entrance. It was the motorcycle guy.

“Grab my hand, and I’ll help you out.”

I obeyed, and he took hold of my hand and pulled me out. The lights that lit up the road reflected in his helmet, and his matching suit shone in the light.

He ran to his bike and rolled it over to me.

“Quick, get on!”

“We’ve already been through this before,” I said, throwing up my hands. “I do not know how to drive a motorcycle. I could take the car.”

He rested the bike on the ground and walked up to me. I could see my face in the visor of his helmet.

“You have to,” he said in his usual seriousness. “It’s 5 AM. There’s only a little more than an hour left. It’ll be easier to get through the crowd with my motorcycle. It’s all up to you.”

“But I can’t leave you here. What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry about me. I have business to take care of. The gate’s closed. Let me open it for you.”

The “sky” began to get brighter, creating an artificial dawn. We walked up to the tall glass gate. He removed his white glove, revealing a smooth hand with neatly cut and manicured nails. He placed his hand on the scanner.

“I don’t know why they make people scan just to leave,” he said as the beam moved up his hand. “It’s supposed to be for extra security. I think they would be better off with human guards, don’t you?”

I nodded shyly and mounted the motorcycle. The gate began to jerk open. I cut my eyes at him. He looked straight ahead with smile-less regality. Something about him ate at me. It was the way he carried himself, his attitude. I’ve never met anyone like him, but he seemed very familiar at the same time.

“The gate’s open,” he sighed. “I hope everything goes okay.”

“Me too.”

He turned and started walking down the road.

Author’s Note: I cannot get over how Lila sees her reflection in his helmet. It’s as if she is seeing a reflection of herself in him. He’s the part that remembers the things Lila has forgotten about herself. And when he hands over his motorcycle to her, basically allowing her to take on his role, it’s just…a chef’s kiss.

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