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It's been weeks since the door.
It hasn't happened since. You don't know what to think about it.
You've heard the rumors, of course, distantly. That something happened with the troll the Empress had marked to power a ship (this ship), that something went badly wrong, even. Or maybe nothing went wrong, but things didn't want to go right. Or things did go right, but some part of him stuck around, lasted longer than his mind was meant to. You don't know the details, and what you have heard was encased in layers of propaganda, like an irritant in an oyster's gut being swathed in pearl until it turns smooth and pretty. You've only heard these smooth and pretty rumors. They all end the same way - people hated the Empress, but in the end she got her way, and simply had to leave Alternia for her own safety, as it became overtaken by vicious revolts. But here, everything is fine, say the pearlescent gossips. Everything on board this ship is just as it was. Just as it was meant to be.
You don't really like 'just as it was meant to be'.
In fact, even though you've barely been aboard for a few perigees, things have already gone absolutely crapsack terrible. Or, more like, already were absolutely crapsack terrible, and the only thing that's changed is now you're here instead of planetside.
You're starting to realize that conscription is just as much a death sentence as staying back would have been. Maybe more, considering that back there all you really needed to do was avoid the drones. Now, all you really need to do is avoid anyone who'd be able to take their frustrations out on you if they felt like it.
Which is just about everyone, seeing as how you're a rustblood, and thus are sitting pretty at the literal bottom of the food chain. Just about anyone else on this ship could turn you into a burgundy-colored smear on the floor, and no one would bat an eye.
On the bright side, it's only been a few people who've actually gotten pissed at you so far!
On the less bright side, you somehow managed to anger a fucking highblood! Don't know which one exactly, but the guy sure is big and some sorta purple and mad at you.
You've been lucky you managed to survive this long!
Or rather, not lucky. Because it wasn't luck. It was the door.
You'd been running for your fucking life, and probably not for the first time, when you saw the door - whether it was shut but strangely unlocked, or swung open as you frantically looked around for an escape route, or already hanging on its hinges like a probably-too-good-to-be-true savior, you don't even remember. Your memories only slip into clarity on the other side, as you pushed it closed behind you, hoping that maybe he wouldn't think to look for you that way, but knowing it wouldn't give you much time regardless. And then jumping nearly out of your skin at the sound of the lock clicking shut.
It'd been some moments before you fully processed that the door had locked itself. Being as terrified and in need of a hiding place as you were, the thought of being trapped in there didn't even come to your mind. The only emotion you could feel was relief, as you slumped against the now-locked door and let yourself breathe. And let yourself finally feel something ever so distantly resembling safe, just for a moment. And let yourself hope, just for a moment, that this wouldn't be how you ended.
You weren't able to rest for long, of course. A couple days, maybe. Possibly only hours. It was something, though. A moment to breathe. Just not long enough of a moment.
Nowhere near long enough, because now here you are running away again. Trying to hide again. You don't think a door will save you this time. You don't think it ever did.
You dart through the hallways of the ship's belowdecks, that strangely pervasive smell of blood scraping at the back of your throat as if it's your own. Maybe it is. You didn't manage to get away uninjured this time, after all. You're ignoring the pain, though, frantically looking for a place to hide, or a safe space. Looking for another door. Cursing your luck to have found it the first time, knowing you'll never get a reprieve like that again.
But then you do.
Once again, a door that you've never seen open is. Once again, it leads deeper into the corridors than you've ever been allowed. Once again, the smells of blood and ozone battle for control over your slowly rising nausea.
And once again, the door locks itself behind you.
But this time you keep running.
This time, you don't trust the door. You don't trust the facade of safety that it offers, the temporary moment to catch your breath, to delay your death. Instead, you keep going. You make your way further into these strange secretive hallways, into the bowels of the ship.
You want to get lost, to never be seen again. Maybe you'll lose yourself, wake up weeks later dead and half-fused to the wall by some strange organic cocoon. Just like the rumors, or was it a nightmare you had? Or, maybe you'll trip and injure yourself badly, being forced to contend with the pain you've been ignoring, and you'll rot and decease wherever you land. Maybe you'll find another door, that leads to an even worse place. You've given up on finding any kind of safety in this place. But you still keep running, even as the floor seems to shift ever-so-slightly under your feet. At times you have to cling to the pipes that run along the wall for balance, gravity threatening to tilt beneath you.
You make your way further and further into the ship's viscera, door after door after door locking behind you. Even your pursuer has slipped your mind now. How long have you been running? Hours? The security cameras all turn to follow you as you pass them by. The screens flicker strange words in old scripts. The pipes on the walls become soft to the touch, and segmented, like organs or the cables of some massive computer. You aren't even running, you're walking. Limping, really.
Your leg aches from the weight you've been putting on its hairline fracture, and as the pain sinks back in to your mind, so does reality. The screens are dark, the cables just as normal as ever as long as you don't touch them. Even the ozone is barely noticeable. You feel dizzy, or is that pounding something other than your heart? It's so loud.
It's so loud, it must not be you at all, you realize. It must be him. He's finally found you - maybe the doors were leading you in a circle this whole time. Maybe he was watching you through the cameras, taunting you through the screens.
But no, why would he? If he wants to hurt you, and he does, he has other methods of making inconsequential lowbloods like you regret ever daring to live.
This is something else. It must be.
But the pounding, thudding, practically tearing of metal, terrifying sound just gets louder and louder.
Frantically, you look around for an escape.
The only thing you find is a small cabinet of some sort, bolted to the floor. It looks like it might have been a storage space for some kind of tools, but now it's empty, so you dive in.
Your small form fits perfectly in the little metal box, and you let the tightness of the enclosed space comfort you for a moment, like a soothing warm cocoon. It's that or shit yourself with claustrophobia, after all.
But no sooner have you squeezed yourself into the confined space and convinced yourself that you like it, when everything explodes at once. Your ears pop and ring, as the sound of metal tearing threatens to tear your eardrums with it, and the world flings itself around with you inside like a tiny chicken in a cardboard box strapped to a roller coaster cart, just waiting for the tape to give way and bash the chicken's head apart on the ground eighty feet below.
Then the roller coaster comes to a slow and shuddering halt, and you remember who and what you are. You are a rustblood troll with a now probably badly broken leg, hiding inside some sort of tool cabinet deep within a spaceship that's rumored to be haunted by whatever's still left of the psion sentenced to power it, and you got here because you followed a series of doors that opened for you.
And the ship seems to have crashed. That or torn itself apart in the depths of space and you only have moments before your lungs follow suit. But no, amidst the smell of ochre blood and psionic ozone, you can recognize something else.
Normal-ass air. Real, outside, not-recycled air. You're on a planet again, and you aren't dead! You could escape this hell! Freedom is within your...
...
...you can't get the door open.
You're stuck. So close to freedom you can taste it, so close to either sweet salvation or at least a slightly more pleasant end. But your stupid broken leg can't kick the metal doors of the cabinet open, and the rest of you is wedged too tightly in there to try.
You whimper, then start to sob, then pull yourself together with a choking cough and try to push the door open again, only to sob again in earnest and in pain as the effort reminds your bone that it's supposed to be broken, and it dutifully obliges in sending waves of agony coursing through your body.
Eventually, the pain fades, and you almost try again, before some sort of self-preservation instinct kicks in and you decide to not do that. Instead, you opt for screaming. Your voice is weak and hoarse and frail, and you don't even think it's reaching anybody until all of a sudden oh shit that is the sound of footsteps there is someone else here and it's probably that highblood and your screams urgently stop and you are going to die
and the cabinet's door is abruptly pulled open, forcing you to blink against the warm sunlight lancing in through broken steel hull plating so far above.
A pair of pointed red glasses look down at you, the hint of a smile playing on a startlingly friendly face.
"Oh, he must have been leading me to you," a someone in legislacerator's robes says, and pulls you free of the box.