Ulysses & the Fugitive - Ch. 19: Fighting
By Alfred Underhill
Running, O'Flannery lead them toward an exit. His phone appeared to have merged with
his hand. He shouted into his phone, only pausing to shout at whoever obstructed their journey.
They wound their way to an exterior door following a rhythm of several components: stopping at
a checkpoint, yelling at whoever was guarding it, making a phone call, having guns pointed at
them, and being let through. Not every part of the rhythm was always present at every
checkpoint nor were all the parts in the same order each time.
The vibrations grew more intense the closer they got to the exterior walls of the complex.
Ulysses knew the building was at least partially above ground. As they reached the surface levels
of the facility the damage went from subtle to obvious. It was around this point in their journey,
that the three of them had to start taking detours around collapsed walls, missing floors, and
blocked stairwells.
"Are you getting anything," O'Flannery would occasionally yell to Nera.
"Almost," was her response each time. Sometimes this elicited a grunt from the agent,
who then barked about regulations or authorizations at someone on his phone. Nera seemed
serious yet relaxed. She wore her usual, impassive expression. Ulysses could tell that she was
concentrating pretty hard despite everything else that was happening around them.
Detouring down a hall, they reached an unguarded door. O'Flannery swiped a key card
and went through, followed by Nera, then Ulysses. The young man ran, trying to keep up.
He didn't know what happened, and he didn't know why he was face down on the floor.
The ringing in his ears was so loud that he couldn't hear anything else. He felt a tug on his shirt.
It was Nera. She picked him up and threw him over her shoulder. Ulysses looked backward
down the hall as Nera ran. He could see outside through the wall now.
Nera began running much faster. Ulysses saw agent O'Flannery as she passed him. He
could feel the impacts of whatever weapon was being used against the base. He saw the Agent
fall into a roll in the middle of an all-out sprint when one of the impacts took his balance.
O'Flannery kept running as soon as his feet were underneath him again.
Nera turned a corner without slowing down. She pushed through a door that set off an
alarm. Fire door, Ulysses thought as Nera ran down the narrow hall to another door where she
stopped.
"Ulysses? Are you okay? Can you walk?" She still had him over her shoulder. Her
breathing only slightly more labored than normal. "Ulysses?"
"Hey, Nera," was what he could manage to get out of his mouth. It was hard to hear
anything over the ringing, but he could hear her just fine. His brain seemed to still work, just
very slowly. It was like someone had mixed his thoughts with tar. Good thing my alien
girlfriend's a psychic, he thought to himself, followed by, I think I'm in shock.
Nera set him down gently against the wall by the door. She was in his face, snapping her
fingers, asking him questions. She looked back down the hall, and said something Ulysses