Lincoln slowly advanced down the dimly lit corridors, carefully checking for any traps that Booth may have laid. Curiously enough, everything seemed fairly safe. Maybe Booth hadn’t expected him to get on board, or maybe he was just being overconfident. Either way, it worked to Abe’s advantage. He’d have the element of surprise.
Unfortunately, so did the building. Or rather, it had the element of confusion. Rather than a convenient set of straight lines, the layout seemed more like a maze, with plenty of twists and turns. Some branches led to dead ends, others to further junctions. He kept hoping there’d be a handy floor guide, or perhaps an old map etched into the walls. Because that was reasonable, right? That whoever designed this building would carve a map into the walls.
Not that a map would even help out in the long run. He wasn’t at all sure where Booth was, or even which direction he was travelling, and time wasn’t on his side. If he didn’t make it before they reached the Moon…well, admittedly he wasn’t really sure what would happen, but he imagined it wasn’t anything good.
At last he came to a set of stairs. He was on the ground floor, so it was fairly obvious that Booth would be on the top floor. Perhaps…a little too obvious. Maybe Booth was banking on the fact that Abe would go to the top floor, and would use that to sneak up on him from the floor below. But perhaps he’d counted on Lincoln thinking that, lulling him to a false sense of security, so that he could actually sneak up on him from the floor above! But then wouldn’t Booth have counted on him thinking that, to trick him into—
“Oh come on!” came a voice from seemingly nowhere. “It’s a flight of stairs! You climb them! This isn’t supposed to be a major obstacle!”
“What the…?” Abe looked around, trying to find the source of the voice. “Show yourself, you disembodied delinquent!”
“Don’t stress yourself out looking for me, old man. I’m speaking to you through that speaker behind you, as I’m sure anyone with half a brain could reason. But then again, do you even have half a brain anymore? Or did the cleaning crew throw it out when they cleaned your box?”
“I see you’re still too cowardly to show yourself,” said Lincoln, inwardly cursing himself for not thinking to check for hidden cameras.
“If you’re so desperate to see me, you dunderheaded diplomat, you’ll find me on the top floor. Just wait there, I’ll send an elevator down. I was going to lead you through my deadly maze of fiendish death traps, but if a simple flight of stairs is enough to stump you, I don’t think you’d survive the first floor.”
A whirr of machinery started up, and Abe was surprised by a nearby panel opening up to reveal a lift.
“And how do I know this isn’t a death trap too?” he asked.
“Oh for God’s sake, stop overthinking everything! Just get in the damn elevator and show a little trust. What good would this do as a death trap anyway? You can fly, can’t you?”
“Ah, of course I can,” said Abe, technically not lying, just not adding the phrase ‘although not at the moment’ to the sentence. Cautiously, he walked into the lift, the panel sliding back into place as he entered.
“You haven’t rigged this thing with bombs, have you?” he asked, as the lift began moving upwards.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a very cynical person?” the lift replied, or rather Booth’s speaker within the lift. The lift cannot talk. That would be silly.
“Sorry, I just have trust issues with people who’ve shot me in the back of the head.”
“Oh, are you still going on about that? You have a very one track mind, you know? That was in the past. Move on. Get over it. I plan to kill you in many new and exciting ways now. Won’t that be fun to look forward to?”
“I’ll try to hold my enthusiasm.”
No comments:
Post a Comment