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She's running, sirens blaring around her as her feet pound on the iron grate of the compound floor. Her eyes are fixed ahead of her, but every once in a while she chances a glance over her shoulder to see if she is being followed, down the cold metal hallway she leaves further behind with each step. As she runs, her eyes scan the walls and ceiling for clues or signs of an exit, but all she can see is the winding hall ahead of her, illuminted by faint red glow crystals that give off no heat and bathe the dull gray walls crimson. She stops for a moment, her arm throbbing where a large gash has been made, bandaged hastily with a strip of cloth she tore from her dirty sleeve, and the screeching siren resonates painfully in her head as she searches wildy for an escape of somesort in the ceiling, the wall, the floor--but she sees nothing and curses before the thundering of heavy footfalls rings out behind her. Panting, she whips her head around to stare down the blood-red corridor she just came from with wide eyes, before facing foreward and taking off again as fast as her throbbing legs and burning lungs will allow.

Left, right, right and left, she winds her way through corridor after corridor, turning sharply at each intersecting hall and praying she finds some sort of escape instead of a dead end. The booming footsteps that follow her sound as though they are coming from everywhere all at once, closing in on her and threatening to suffocate her, a morbid pulse that carries like her own death song, drowning out the erratic and terrified beating of her heart.

But then--dead ahead, a door. She would have cried out in relief had she the energy, but as it were she was using every single calorie in her body for escaping alive.

Silently, Piper willed her legs to carry her faster.

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A/N: Some sort of drabble series? ... Shall continue soon.

- hazel