“Wake up, wake up,” came a high pitched command through the darkness.

She must have dozed off after more hours of doing little but staring at the ceiling and navigating the most treacherous of imaginary mind mazes. Suddenly, Tory was pulled out of her dreamless sleep by someone shaking her by the shoulder and demanding she awaken.

Tory opened her eyes. It took a moment, as her lashes were kind of stuck together before her lids pulled them open. A pair of big blue ones were looking back at her.

“We can go now, you can go,” Ekaterina told her. “If that is what you still want to do.”

“Really? Where?” Tory asked, half asleep and yawning but also both excited and apprehensive. She started to get up, threw the blanket off of her. “Where are we going?”

“To get you home,” the girl said smiling, reaching out her hand.

Confusion filled Tory’s head, maybe she was dreaming after all. Ekaterina now wanted to help her get home, after arguing how great hers was? Still, she wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to escape this Hole, this prison, this world, so she followed the girl out the now strangely wide open and seemingly unguarded door.

Nope, no sign of any towering man with a gun in either direction when she stuck her head out.

“What happened to the guards?” Tory asked, turning to Ekaterina for an answer.

“They are gambling,” the girl said with a smirk. “They think if you are small you can be smart. They don’t understand that if you are small you must be smart!”

Tory nodded in agreement. Big did tend towards dumb, at least here.

Locking the door behind them, the girl noted that it would likely be hours before the guards realized she was gone, then Ekaterina lead her though tunnels back towards what Tory hoped was the airlock she’d come in through. When they reached a part of the maze that Tory recognized, she started leading, having committed to mind every turn that would lead her to her p-suit and supplied. They didn’t pass anyone along the way, but that didn’t stop Tory’s heart from racing every single turn they made and her left hand firmly gripped around the injector in case the adrenaline in her system triggered another attack. Finally, they reached the inner airlock chamber. Tory spotted the set of lockers, the one which held the Pressure Suit and her stuff and opened the locker she’d been ordered to stuff her belonging in. She swore something nasty enough that Ekaterina lifted her hand to her mouth.

“Do they speak like that back on Earth?” the girl wondered.

Tory gave her a scowly smirk.

“They do when they’ve been robbed,” she said.

Maybe half of what she had given over was still there, and not a bit of it food.

Thieves!

Next was the airlock. Tory could see it was night beyond the outer lock, stars gleaming over the crater beyond the dusty porthole. The clock on her p-suit display said she’d been in The Hole for eighteen hours. So long! Mom and Dad would surely be looking for her by now, that was unless they’d received a ransom demand. Then maybe Marsec would take over once that was delivered. And even Tory knew that wouldn’t be good for anyone, least of all anyone here.

That made her wonder again about what Gurminder had said. What were her parent’s working on that could be so important she had such value as a hostage? But that she’d only likely find out if she was rescued and returned to them in the CU. And while there was still a chance she could get to the Elysium landing field, who cared?

“This is as far as I can take you,” Ekaterina said from her side as they both gazed out the airlock window. “I heard over the radio two transports are leaving soon, but I don’t know where they are going.”

Tory nodded and thanked her.

“Best of luck,” Ekaterina said, “perhaps we shall see each other in the afterlife.”

It was an odd and way to say goodbye. Tory couldn’t tell if the girl was being hopeful, morbid or both.

“Maybe,” Tory replied. “Take care of yourself, and make sure that bully of yours is kept in his place.”

She started toward the controls to open the lock.

“One question though, how do you keep your hair from not clumping in the dust?” Tory asked running her hand through a clumps. She hadn’t put her helmet on yet.

“It’s easy,” Ekaterina said, smiling, then whispered how it was done in her ear.

Tory felt like throwing up. What the girl had suggested was absolutely gross.

“I’m not doing that!” she told the girl. “Well, maybe if it’s the only way, but ew! Thanks. That was the last thing I could have imagined. Now I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about it.”

Both of them laughed.

She gave Ekaterina a quick hug.

Once through the airlock, Tory dashed toward the collection of transports across the crater and with any luck, freedom!