"Hurry!" Marcus shouts. As the emergency arm bres in the background. "Quickly Nona. This way," he says, as he takes her hand and guides her towards the exit. The corridor they were running through was now dark, and the only sounds that could be heard were their heavy breathing and the *uooom uooom uooom* of the emergency arm. They then heard the sound of shots being fired behind them before it stopped, sending chills down their spines. Suddenly, they heard the sound of running footsteps and turned to their right to see two well-built armed guards run past them and head back the way they came.

  "We're killing it here!" One of the guards shouted confidently as if he had everything under control.

  "You can't kill her, she is too strong, we've gotta get out of here," Marcus says after he grabs one of the guard's arms. The guard pulls him off him and scoffs before he says.

  "She?" The guard looks him up and down. Has the fear got to his head? The guard thought to himself. "Just" -he clocks his gun, aims it down the hallway, and gets ready to fire it- "watch." The guards then start bsting down the hallway. Seeing them do this Marcus takes Nona and continues to run to the exit. Within seconds, they heard manly screams of terror, the sound of blood squirting, and then the sound of the guard's body dropping to the floor with a loud thud. The thud was loud enough for Nona to completely lose whatever strength she had left in her legs, causing her to fall onto the floor.

  "Nona!" Marcus shouts, realising that she has fallen. He turns around and dashes over to her to help her up, but she isn't able to stand up on her own. "Come on!" He urges her, as he tries to lift her up and tries to carry her to safety.

  "I. I..." Her voice trails off as she seems to have given up. "I can't. Just go on without me," she says in a defeated tone.

  Marcus then tries to convince her to keep going, "Come on. Please, stand up." But Nona shakes her head from side to side with tears in her eyes and decides to continue to y on the. "Listen to me." He grabs the sides of her face. "I'm not going to leave you," he says with urgency, as he tries once more to get her to her feet.

  "I'm telling you to leave," she says, realising he wasn't going to leave her to die. But it was too te. The thing they were running from, experiment 45643, was only a couple of feet away from them. Marcus had a suspicion that it had mutated, but it was hard to tell as the only light they had was from emergency lights that flickered on and off every couple of seconds.

  Suddenly, they hear a voice that freezes them in fear. "Well well, what a surprise," says the thing with a gentle smile on its face as it approaches them, covered in blood from fleeing scientists and helpless security guards. "And I thought you humans only cared about yourselves." Hearing this, Marcus stands behind Nona, sticking his arms out to protect her, and stares at the being, who seems like an innocent female in a bloody b coat. But it wasn't innocent at all. "Now that I have the chance, let me ask you something. You probably would have been able to escape if you left that human behind, so why are you protecting her?" Marcus didn't respond, so the thing continued talking. "Is it because you love this person? But I don't get it. What is love?" With all the strength she could muster, Nona says.

  "Save yourself." But her plea for him to escape fell on deaf ears as Marcus was in deep thought on how they could both survive.

  His mind raced with the thought of survival. He knew that he had to act fast if he wanted to make it out of this situation alive. His eyes scan the room, looking for anything that he could use to defend himself. Suddenly, he had an idea. He could use his ballpoint pen that was in his pocket to stab her in the neck. But he quickly dismissed the idea, knowing that he wouldn't be able to get close enough to her to do so. The stakes were high. He knew that if she was to get out, the amount of damage she would cause would be massive. And he also knew that he wouldn't be able to stop it from escaping on his own. She was capable of slicing through both of them like butter and could easily get out of the room by herself. The only thing that was holding back was the force field that surrounded the b but Marcus knew that it would be only a matter of time before she built up enough strength to break free. Then it hit him. He believes that she didn't even know about the force field and when she did he thought she would think she wouldn't be able to get out. So if he could persuade her that she needed them alive to bring down the force field. Then maybe. Just maybe, they could get out of here. "Yes that's it." He whispers to himself.

  "Ooooooh, so you're finally going to answer my question. Or have figured out a way to survive?" She asks in a curious tone of voice. Marcus took a deep breath and began to speak.

  "I know you're furious with the way we treated you. I get that. Anyone would-"

  "Just get on with what you want to say." Experiment 45643 cuts him off, not willing to listen to the waffle he was spewing. Her pure innocent little smile now went to a stone-cold straight face.

  "You have to keep us alive."

  "And why is that?" Experiment 45643 asks while she stands in stance ready to kill him.

  "The reason why you have kept us alive. It's because you need us to take down the force field that surrounds the b. No matter how strong you think you are, you won't be able to break out. You would need at least a nuclear warhead to even make a dent in it and with it compressing your power you will only be tickling it. And with you not being able to get out, it will be only a matter of time before more reinforcements come and put you in a stronger cage." Marcus says in a confident tone.

  "So that's the thing that I have been feeling" -she clenched and unclenched her right hand- "If that's the case, in a sense you're right in another you're wrong. I only need one person to get rid of it, don't I? So I could kill either one-"

  "You're wrong. To get rid of the force field you need two people and even before you get any smart ideas like killing us afterward, I would suggest you don't." He says cutting her off.

  "Expin?" Experiment 45643 says in a sharp tone not wanting to waste more time speaking to him.

  "This base gets two different types of check-in calls. The first one is a simple check that happens every eight hours in which a different branch calls to make sure nothing has gone wrong. If they don't hear from us then they send out an enforcer squad to see if there is a problem or not." Marcus replies with. He thought hearing this would put her off from killing them, but it didn't really change her pns too drastically. The thing that really stopped her was that she didn't know how strong she really was and if she was powerful enough to kill them.

  "And what about the other one?" She asks.

  "The other one is a full check-in. This one is where we give a full-out report to HIM every day." Marcus says. Noticing him emphasising him she knew he wasn't just talking about an ordinary person who was above him but the boss. Now knowing this she knew that she would have to change her pns. An enforcement team is one thing but the boss of Zen Craft was something else.

  "I guess I'll have to bring you guys along." She changes her posture to a neutral one. "However I got some conditions with you coming along." She holds out her index finger to indicate the number one. "First, you will stand in front of me and won't turn around a single time. I'm still deciding if I should kill you guys or not after I'm out. But if I decide to spare your lives" -she holds out her middle finger up to indicate the number two- "the second condition would be for you both to hand over those square boxes you use to communicate with other humans. And the only time you have them back is when you have to make your check-in reports. Now that I'm not imprisoned by you, I'm free to do anything I want. And I mean anything. If you try anything funny and try to go against those conditions or pn on having me recapture then I will kill you on the spot." She says in a stern tone as her eyes start to glow magenta.

  "T-t-that sounds fair and don't worry we don't pn on doing anything to get ourselves killed," Marcus says in a whimper, grateful she didn't decide to take their lives while Nona nods her head in agreement with what he said.

  "Wise choice. Let's go then before anyone else turns up." Experiment 45643 says as her eyes stop glowing, allowing Marcus to feel safe enough to turn his back and help Nona get back onto her feet. "Which way out?"

  "If we head straight down this corridor and then take the second to st right and go straight down that corridor we should make it to the exit." He bends down and gives Nona a hand to help her up. "Are you okay?"

  "I-I-I-I-I." Even though Marcus had prevented them from being sin on the spot, Nona's brain seemed to have blown a fuse and was in standby mode. Allowing her to only stutter and shake aggressively in terror. He grabs both sides of her face and makes her look him straight in his eyes. Just from feeling her face, he could feel that she was shaking terribly. With her shaking like this a memory pops into Marcus's head where they decided to watch a horror movie for a date night. A couple of weeks after that, any time she remembered the movie she shook tremendously and wouldn't stop until he hugged her and calmed her. But this was much worse. Not only was she shaking but her sage pupils were now pale and unstable, moving from side to side and up and down without any sort of rhythm.

  "Hey." Marcus grabs the side of the face a little tighter. "Hey," he says in a soft comforting tone, making her eyes regain some life and for them to focus on him.

  "Marcus," Nona says slowly.

  "It's going to be okay. She isn't going to kill us but we need to make sure she doesn't change her mind if we want to get out of here. Are you hurt at all?" Marcus asks as he softly rubs his right thumb up and down the left side of her face.

  "I-I think my ankle is sprained."

  "Here I'll give you a hand," he says as he slowly lifts her onto her feet and puts her left arm over his shoulder to support her.

  "Let's go then," and once experiment 45643 says that Nona and Marcus lead the way to the exit with her being a six-armed length behind them. Twelve minutes went by now and they had finally made the second right turn and were continuing to head forward until they stopped in front of a thick titanium security door, stopping them from proceeding.