by: Matt Hall
“Shadow was stopped by three armed guards. He was forced to surrender, slowly put down his bag and the hard-drive, and walk toward them. When he got right up to them they turned him around and firmly hit him on the back of the head. When Shadow woke up he was looking at a single bright light in a dark room that smelled like body sweat and trash. He was tied to a wooden chair.”
Where was he? As he struggled to be free of the chair. Suddenly Shadow could hear footsteps gradually getting louder as they approached the steel cast door in front of him. A very broad and armed man opened the door followed by another very muscular and armed man though they seem to be shielding yet another man behind them both. As they separated and took their posts at each side of the door a smaller less muscular man walked in, in-between the two men. He was a short, maybe 5’3”, kind of ‘big’ man, had a third of a bald head on top with grayish/ black hair on the sides, maybe around his late 50’s. He wore a, what seemed to be, black pin striped coat and slacks complete with a gray T-shirt underneath and black dress shoes. The darkness blanketed their upper bodies with black. The only light there seemed to be focused on shadow, giving off a heat that made shadow sweat grayish balls of sweat down his face, dirty sweat from the mountain side and climbing through the vents earlier.
“Well good morning Mr….shadow isn’t it? How rude of me. You told me your name. My name is Augustus Borm. So where are you Mr. Shadow?” Shadow gave no reply, just a glare with a look of hatred and disgust. “Awwww, you look unhappy.” He said with a sad face that turned into a smirk. “Well, I got to thank you for bringing back the hard-drive. We had left it in the mainframe. We could not figure out how to retrieve it.” They all just chuckled. “You have put us in a bit of a dilemma now. You see, we just can’t let you go back to your buddies at the CIA and tell them where we are, now can we. So I’ll tell you what, tell us how to bypass the encryption codes on the hard-drive and I will consider you becoming my own personal spy or something.” They laughed again. “I’ll give you some time to think about that Mr. Shadow.” He chucked once more and turned around.
The guards went outside, one of them held the door open for the “fat guy”. “Oh yeah, and if you don’t tell us how to bypass the codes in, say 24 hours, the boy is, how should I say this politely, DEAD!” They all laughed sinisterly as the last guard let Mr. Borm pass through and he slammed the thick, door behind him. Shadow must get out of there! His mission, now, is still to retrieve the sleeve, but now he has to find a way to keep the boy from getting killed in the next 24 hours. He looked around, but could not find any of his stuff to help him. All his things were gone. There must be a possible escape route somewhere. He looked up and all there were, were some pipes probably some air conditioning pipes or something and a fire alarm up above. He looked down and just sat there tied up in the chair all slouched with his shoulders sagging. He had this burning pain in his neck, sweat running down his face and back, with a strong feeling of failure and depression. He was surrounded by cement walls and floor, dirt on everything and cobwebs, some stacks of boxes and a table with a lamp on it.
How could he escape this underground chamber? He sat there thinking and he looked up at the pipes again. Duh! The pipes! And it looked like there was a gap in on the pipes that seemed to be broken. If shadow could just get his arms loose enough to swing them under his feet he could stand up and slide his binds through the gap in the broken pipe, which will give him the power he needs to pull himself up and drop himself back down. The velocity of the fall hitting the floor might be strong enough to break the chair or break it enough so shadow will be able to release his bound body. Shadow bounced in the chair managing to weaken the legs and, thus, break them partially, just enough where he was able to pull down is bounded arms under them and, further, under his feet. When he got his arms through, he partly stood up, raised them up and slipped them in-between the broken pipe up above. As this provided him more stability, he was able to pull himself up, as he grasped the cold metal pipe, and forcefully throw all his body weight down along with the chair onto the floor. There was a loud crack, but the chair did not break. He got up and tried again. He grabbed the pip, lifted himself up and dropped to the floor, sadly, again it did not break as he hit the floor, though the chair had now become real fragile against his body, thus, he had to try one more time.
He stood up and grabbed the pipe again, pulled himself up and dropped himself with the chair hugging his back, using all the strength left that he could muster up in his body. He hit the floor and there was a loud smash. He was, finally, broken free of the chair. He pulled himself up slowly and staggeringly, moaning from the bodily pain and wiping off the dirt on his clothes. He looked around for an escape, unfortunately there were no vents as before. The only exit was the steel door. Now it’s not like he could just waltz right of the there. There are probably guards right outside the door. Somehow he had to cause a distraction. He looked around again for some hope of salvation from this prison cavity inside this enemy mountain fortress. All shadow could see was some boxes, a small table with a little, unlit lamp on it and some tiny mouse holes. Shadow went into deep thought. He approached the boxes, but they had nothing, but some shredded paper and some old broken computer parts. I guess he knows where is now.
Shadow turned around and formed a smile as he looked over at the lamp. He walked up to it and looked at it more closely, he could see that it was just a plain kerosene lamp with some kerosene still in it. If he could find a way to ignite the kerosene, he might be able to figure a way out of here. Hmmmm, AH! Got it, the light bulb. He grabbed the lamp and ran back over to the boxes and ripped off a piece of the old cardboard. He turned over to the lamp and soaked the cardboard in it. Then he turned back to the boxes and grabbed a hand full of shredded paper. He made a pile of shredded paper on the ground, placed the kerosene soaked cardboard on top and made a Tipi like structure over the pile with small pieces of wood from the chair. “Here we go.” He took off his shirt and reached up to the light bulb to unscrew it. The bulb was at a good 260 plus Fahrenheit at least; since, it was so hot that it was making shadow sweat. It was hot enough to catch many fabrics and paper on fire. Even with his shirt over the bulb it was still burning shadow’s fingers, but he was able to get it unscrewed. He hastily brought down the bulb to the shredded paper and laid it on top,
In a matter of minutes the cardboard started smoking and eventually created a small flame. Shadow quickly removed the, now warm, light bulb from inside the little structure. Another few minutes went by and the fire had ignited all the paper, the cardboard and engulfed the wood. He fed the little fire with more cardboard pieces, and bigger pieces of wood to make it grow. When the fire was became big enough, little billows of smoke started rising up to the ceiling hence the fire alarm up above. It was like slow motion anxiously watching and waiting for the alarm to go off. When the alarm goes off it is mandatory that the whole building must be evacuated at once. That will open up most the doors in the building also. The plan would be as the alarm goes off the two guards outside will burst in the door to get shadow, but will only see the fire. Shadow will then throw a rock out the door, hearing the noise and thinking shadow escaped the guards will rush back out the door, paying no attention to it and not closing it behind them. This will give shadow enough time to get out of there and find a vent, which to hide in and to search for his stuff. Then he will make a daring sprint back to the mainframe room call for extraction, retrieve the sleeve again and reach the roof for the extraction. Shadow looked around for a place to hide, his best bet was to hide behind the boxes and pray that the guards don’t see him as he later throws the rock out the door. Shadow darted behind the boxes and crouched down eagerly waiting for the alarm to go off. He picked up a rock on the dirt floor next to him and in the matter of seconds the alarm was triggered.
In literally no time, the guards burst into the room. Shadow could hear them shuffling. Suddenly there was a pause shadow got up just enough to see the door over the boxes and throw the rock out the door, next there was a yell, “He escaped!” Instantly, Shadow could hear the guards rush out the door again. There were no sounds of the door closing either, Shadow was free! He jumped up and ran out the door. He didn’t have much time to find a vent and get inside. As he ran out the door he could not spot any vents on the walls, so he kept going down the corridor, but he had to stop at the end of the hall where the hallway split. He looked around the corner down the hallway to the left, “all clear,” then he jumped across to the right side of the corridor to peak around the corner to the hallway on the right, “also clear,” except for a repair toolbox on the ground. As he scanned up the wall above the toolbox he saw an open vent. He ran up to the vent to see if it was okay to climb into. It didn’t look like any serious repair work maybe just cleaning or something. Shadow grabbed the edge of the vent and pulled himself in. He crawled for a good five minutes or so to some scattered light shining up out of another vent covering ahead of him.
Shadow crawled up to it and looked, nothing just some chairs and a few computers. He crawled forward a little further to another vent below. He looked down, but still nothing, only some desks and stuff. He continued forward again for another five minutes and saw more light, but this time a light blocked by a fan. Obviously, the fan was broken or something cause it was frozen. Shadow crawled up to it and looked through it. Past the fan/vent he could see the corner of what seemed to be a locker down below, this looked very promising. This seemed like somewhere they would store shadow’s stuff. He squeezed through the fan blades and dropped through the vent opening on the other side of the fan. He looked and still heard no noise that any of the guards had come back in after the alarm went off. He saw lockers surrounding him. He approached one. It seemed that each one didn’t have a completely solid screen hiding its contents inside and each one was labeled to a specific person. Shadow stepped back and looked around some more. He squinted as he looked to his left at a locker. It seemed to contain a large, black bag inside. He approached the locker, which seemed to be all beat up and not labeled and it did not have a pad lock on it like all the other lockers did.
Shadow opened it, it was his stuff! He pulled it out and looked into the bag. They apparently took his weapon, the gas mask and the night vision goggles, but left the optic cable and the phone at least or they just didn’t have time to take those too. Well the phone is all he needed anyway. He grabbed up his bag and started walking back to the vent, but he briefly stopped in his tracks as he could hear men’s voices meaning the guards had reentered the building. He quickly threw his bag into the vent, reached up and pulled himself up into it. He crawled forward again and turned down an adjacent shaft to his left. Hopefully this will lead him to the mainframe room. He kept crawling forward following several other curves in the shaft, but to his surprise he spotted an open vent leading to a room down below and it was dark except for some little bits of light coming through the vent mouth. The shaft started opening up more to where shadow was now in a crouched position as he approached the open vent. He looked down, he got lucky, it was the mainframe room vent that he had encountered earlier. He could even see the black blast residue on the floor from the gas grenade he had dropped and that little chair he used to get in and out of the vent. He lowered himself onto the chair and down onto the floor. He crouched behind the computers again, moving towards the mainframe. He got up just a little bit this time remembering that there’s a big window showing the contents of the room to the control room outside.
Just as he thought the hard-drive was back in the mainframe. He ejected it again and pulled out the sleeve. He put it in his bag and took out his emergency phone. He called and whispered for extraction on the roof of the building. The reply was that air extraction would be in bound in 15 minutes. Shadow hung up and put the phone back into the bag and stealthily moved back to the chair. He got on top of the chair and pulled himself back into the vent. Again he crawled forward to find the exit shaft to the roof staircase. He dropped down, quickly looked left and right and there were no guards waiting there as before. So he climbed the staircase and burst through the exit door to the roof. He ran forward through the cool breeze and up a ramp to a helicopter pad. Shadow looked up to find a little black figure silhouetted by the night sky. As it approached, the noise of its heavily rotating blades got louder and the wind around Shadow grew with greater force, forcing him to move back and cover his eyes. After a few minutes the chopper landed on the pad. Shadow was so relieved to see it land as he approached it and threw himself onto it. As he sat up, he looked over to a government officer was yelled, “It’s good to finally have you back Shadow.” He turned back around and looked down at the exit door on the roof as the helicopter took off from the pad. Suddenly the roof exit door burst open and a flood of guards poured out onto the roof top sending a violent spray of bullets up towards the helicopter. The helicopter avoided the bullets and took off.
“Shadow just looked down and smiled…”