OLD - Week 1 Day 6 Evening

The man had sat down at the table and opened a folder, taken out bits of paper and a pen, then began to write on the paper. He was there for what felt like days to Ellyn and Seth, other people came and went, bringing the man drinks and snacks. Seth gave Ellyn a nudge as the man got up and walked out the room. Seth signed for Ellyn to nudge the others. He switched the fan off and they all filed out of the vent. Dahveed and Blueberry began sieving through the paper on the desk. Julian and Clarence went over to the door to stand guard. Seth went over to one of the machines and punched a keyboard, pressing many keys at once, nothing happened at first, but then the machines whirred into life, Julian walked up to Seth and gave him a light slap on the face, Dahveed reached up and placed all the paper they had gathered into the vent, so they could get it later. Clarence looked out the door and gave a thumbs up to show it was clear, they all left the room, and entered a long curved hallway, and entered a room on the opposite side. This room had a large map of England stapled to the wall, it had some areas shaded in colours, placed she noted were that Freeport Seth had mentioned once before, Pangolia, it was shaded in white, with many red arrows pointing to it, another city, called Waymon’s Pit was coloured green with several green arrows coming from it, stretching to other cities and towns. Seth and Blueberry reached up and pulled it down from the wall, only tearing a little at the corners. Clarence had gone over to a map of the area and crossed out the plans that were written on it and re-wrote some new ones, perfectly matching the handwriting of before. There were a couple of filling cabinets along one wall; Julian was going through these taking out every other file. Ellyn once more stood in the middle of the room, just watching, not knowing what to look for. The map was obvious but that was sorted. They seemed to all finish at once, and gathered at the door again. Seth looked out to the right, and saw no-one, looked to the left and saw no-one, looked to the right once more and he heard footsteps coming from around the corner. He signed to the others that there was someone there and they all backed away from the door. The footsteps approached the door stopped, then they heard the door on the other side open and close. A sigh of relief was heard from all members of the group. Just as Seth reached for the door to check someone opened it from the other side, and entered the room, there was a moment when neither side did anything but stare at each other. Seth was the one to break the silence. He grabbed the man by the collar and dragged him to the ground, then punched him in the face with his left hand. He fell immediately unconscious, with a small cut and a bruise forming on his forehead. Seth efficiently searched the man, finding a set of keys, his wallet, which he left on him, and a small set of papers. They crowded around the man, looking, wondering what to do.

“Dixon?” A voice sounded from outside the door, Ellyn looked at the man’s shirt and saw it had a name tag that said that this was Dixon. The door opened slowly and Dahveed rushed forwards and pulled the other man through the door, he yelled out before Dahveed could silence him. A multitude of footsteps could be heard approaching, fast. The all left the room, going back towards the opposite door. However, it was locked, Seth brought out the keys he had taken from Dixon, and started to try them in the lock, the footsteps were getting closer, so Seth started trying to knock the door down, but it was too well made for him, the first set of footsteps came around the corner, he shouted at them to stop, instead they all ran in the opposite direction. They didn’t try any of the rooms; they just kept on running down the corridor, the following footsteps getting quieter. At the end of the hallway was a set of double doors, Blueberry was first so ran straight into them, smashing to doors wide open. They then stopped dead in their tracks. Seth tore his tape off, as Julian’s curse was silenced by his own.  The room ahead was a canteen, filled with men in the tan uniform. They all turned to see the newcomers; Ellyn looked to Seth and could tell he was thinking hard. Some of the men drew their weapons and pointed at them. Seth saw another vent opening, just behind them behind the door. He pointed to it “That’s our way out,” some of the uniformed men looked to see what he was pointing at, this amused Ellyn somewhat.

“Ready? On three” said Seth, their group got ready to run. While they were in a life threatening situation, at this moment Ellyn was happy, it was the first time that she felt she belonged to a group, while at the manor, she was much younger than any of the other servants, while here, Seth was only a year ahead of her, more or less. Seth shouted “THREE!!” and pulled Ellyn from her thoughts, they turned around and slammed the doors shut, They reached the vent and they threw their collected loot into the vent, then Seth brought out a length of rope from his satchel, and tied the door handles together on the door. He then held out his hands as a step and pushed Clarence up into the vent. Dahveed and Blueberry were pushing back the men from the corridor. Julian went up next, pulled up by Clarence and pushed by Seth. Julian picked up the loots and moved on down the vent shaft. Ellyn went in next, and then moved to join Julian, but staying where she could see into the room, Blueberry traded places with Seth, and with help from Clarence, pulled himself into the vent, Seth and Clarence helped Dahveed up into the vent, then all helped pull Blueberry up. They quickly crawled to the end of the vent and lifted each other up to the surface. Even Julian had no idea where they were. They decided to stick together, but ended up getting hopelessly lost. They wandered long past sunset, and decided to stop for the night.

“Hey if we are lost, it makes us harder to find!” Seth said after moments of silence. This raised a few chuckles from the group, although their expression was grave. They managed to get a fire going, and cook a couple of wild Cludu, a type of flightless wild bird. Tonight, the group slept around the fire, lying down on a couple of broad leaves Blueberry and Seth had gathered from the nearby bushes. It was not nearly the comfortable night of last night, instead her bed was the cold lumpy ground, surrounded by noises from the unknown.