York and Mori

Mori:

Mori felt the book she stole from York drop from her fingers. She had cute pajamas on that her friend Sarah gave her for her birthday last year. Her pajamas had fishes on them and Sarah’s had cats on them. Technically they were supposed to be “best friend” pajamas and Sarah and Mori would always wear them whenever they slept over at each other’s houses.
Mori texted all of her friends minus Brady. They all said that they missed Mori, and told her about the documentary filming that they did today. They were finally finished filming and were going to start editing. She told them that they needed to send her the finished copy when they were done. Mori never told York on what the documentary was about yet. Once the copy came in the mail was when she was going to show the family what they were working on.
The book fell to the floor as Mori dreamt of her like a fish swimming in water. She was swimming around freely as millions of fish and plants floated by her. She thought that it was odd to see an oak tree in the water, but she continued to swim on. Suddenly, the water began to become muddy and gross. The water became heavy and Mori couldn’t breathe in the water anymore. She felt as if she was sinking to the bottom of the pond that she was swimming in.
The more she dreamt of drowning in the water, the more Mori couldn’t breathe, it was as if she was truly in the water. She tried to open her eyes to escape the dream, but she couldn’t, all she could do was hold her breath. Just as she left out her final breath she opened her eyes and saw someone dive down after her. She smiled in her dream as the person wrapped his arms around her to try to pull her up. Mori tried to render who her saver was in the dream, but the pressure of being in the murky water made her dream go black.

Mori coughed feeling a bitter cold chill shroud her body. She crouched holding her legs trying to calm the cold chills, but nothing was working. She opened her eyes to see only a cold damp ground and a black room around her. Her eyes attempted to adjust to the dark room, but nothing was working. The room was too dark.
The bitter cold feeling slowly started to disappear and her ears started to work again.
“Someone! Help! Get us out of here!”
Someone shouted, their voice echoing off the dark walls. Their voice seemed raspy as if they had been shouting for a while now.
“You’re loud!” Mori finally said trying to stand up.
“You’re awake!”
She felt someone run into her and she almost fell to the floor. She growled and the other helped her up. Mori couldn’t help but put her hand on her rescuer’s face. The face had a hard jaw and short hair that told her that her rescuer was male. She could feel an annoyed frown on his mouth, but he didn’t stop her.
“Are you done?” He said as she stuck her fingers in his mouth.
“I just want to know who you were, don’t blame me for that.”
“And I want to know why you were walking around the park at two in the morning by the pond.”
Mori stopped remembering back to her dream. She didn’t remember leaving her home at all and she never remembered her having a problem with sleep walking. If anything, their dad would be up getting a midnight snack from the fridge and would help her back to her room. But how did Mori get all the way to the park? She didn’t even know that there was a park by her house. And where was she now?!
“Why were you at a park at two in the morning?”
“I asked first.”
Mori sighed and sat down on a rock she could find in the dark abyss. Her eyes adjusted a tiny bit to see an outline of a figure in the cramped room but she couldn’t tell who he was and she doubted that he knew who she was too.
“So… what happened? Where did you kidnap me?”
“Do you think that I wanted to be here?”
He described to Mori that as she was drowning in the pond, he dove in after her and just as he was about to swim up, a huge force began to pull him down to the bottom of the pond. He awoke in this cavern just a while ago. He sighed in confusion and said that his parents were going to be so upset.
“Well, we don’t even know what time it is…” Mori said looking to the ceiling.
“If it’s morning, my mom is going to kill me for not going to school early…”
“Peh… going to school early is over rated, after school is more fun.”
“Not according to my parents. Before school is for getting ready for classes and after school is for perfecting at sports and doing more homework.”
“Sounds more fun than just going home and doing nothing.”
“Great, you’re on their side…”

Mori and the unknown rescuer just started talking about whatever. That was all they could do to keep themselves from going crazy from the dark abyss…

“Oh, I never asked what your name was,” Mori asked after a silence.
“After like five hours you finally ask me?”
“Well fine, don’t tell me your real name, tell me the stupid given name that everyone has around here.”
“Harsh.”
“I’m….”
Mori had to think for a moment, if she had a given name of a fairy tale character who would she be. She didn’t want to be anything, but this guy lived in town so he probably was uncommon with normal names.
“I’m Dorothy… you know like from the Wizards of Oz? There’s no place like home chick? That’s basically me. Except my dog could eat Toto.”
The man laughed understanding what Mori was talking about.
“I’m the Ugly Duckling.”
“Oh, come on! Really?”
He didn’t respond. Mori didn’t think of him as ugly. He didn’t breath heavily, didn’t look fat, he had muscles and his face was mostly smooth and wrinkle free. She could feel some roughness to his face, probably just acne or scars. Though she remembered back to what he said about his strict parents.
“My parents are beautiful, my whole family is. I was always the odd one out in the family growing up and the older I got the more I forced myself to work at trying to be like them. Though even through all the pain, I still fee like an outsider in my family.”
Mori stared off to where he was in the room. She could feel his pain. It wasn’t easy to be the odd one out of their family. It was like how Mori and York felt when they had a family reunion. Every one in their family is smart, like super smart. They were all logical people with PhDs and one even had a Nobel Peace Prize. York was the artist and Mori had a love for photography. Their dad was excited when Mori gathered an interest in video, but he always tried to push them to get those good grades that he and their mom had in school.
Mori got up and made her way over to her rescuer’s side. She had her hands out to help her move into the dark room and when she found his shoulder she sat down next to him. She felt awkward moving around in the dark room and she never realized how close she was sitting next to the man next to her. She could hear his deep breathing as he himself felt a little awkward sitting so close to Mori. She scooted over till she almost fell off the rock they were sitting on.
“You know the story of the Ugly Duckling is about him turning into a beautiful swan.”
She could almost see him give a painful smile.
“Yeah… it’s been seventeen years and I’m still no swan.”
Suddenly a light started to flicker on above. It was dim but it helped them to see more of the dark room. She could see the texture on the walls and the long drop they dropped from their midnight swim. Mori focused and saw the light on a ledge that was about six feet off the ground. Her rescuer stood up and walked over to the ledge. It was only about an inch taller than him and he pushed himself up onto the ledge.
Mori crawled over to the ledge as he got up on top of it. He disappeared and the light flickered as he walked by it. His head appeared back over the ledge.
“There’s something up here!” he said.
He reached out his arm and Mori took it. His body was lit up from behind and his face was shadowed off. She could see his dark shaggy hair and a pair of bright eyes. As he pulled her up, she could see more of what he looked like. She couldn’t estimate exact colors in the dim light, but he wasn’t ugly. He had freckles across his face and several scars. He smiled a shy smile and mumbled something about being glad to finally see her face. Mori smiled and he helped her stand up.
Mori wondered if he went to her school. He was seventeen and looked like he had the etiquette skills the guys had at the school. So it was a possibility. Though she really couldn’t get a good clear look of what he looked like. All she could see of his figure was that he had similar features to someone else. She couldn’t put her finger on it but she forgot as soon as she saw the doorway that the dim light was lighting up.
Several other dim lights were located down farther down the hallway the door way lead to, but they seemed to be so far away. UD struggled for a moment to find his balance and propped himself up on the wall. She saw him squint trying to see more clearly the hallway. Mori smiled realizing that he was probably blind without his glasses. She walked up to him and glanced down the hallway to the dim light.
“What? Did someone just turn on the light or something?”
“I’m not sure…” he said starting to walk down it.
“Hey! You’re not going to go down there are you?”
He turned around, “I don’t know about you, but I would like to eat soon.”
Mori agreed with his remark and followed cautiously after him. The hallway was just one long stone arched hallway that seemed to press in as they continued to walk down it. Suddenly, the hallway spitted off into two different hallways. The hallways were no longer stone, but looked like brick lining a foundation. Voices were coming down from the hallway to the left so they rushed down the hallway to the right and hid under a large covered table. The stone walls were gone and brick took over.
The voices became two men in lab coats talking to each other quite loudly. They were talking about some women that they went out with the other night. Suddenly, a name caught Mori’s ears.
“Yeah, you’re right,” one said, “I haven’t seen Stevenson in a long while. How many months has it been?”
“Two. Ever since she was experimenting with the Gemini project, she’s been missing.”
“Gemini failed though… is it possible that she was caught up in the mishap?”
“Possible, but Sir Carter even showed the organization a letter that she wrote herself.”
“It is easy to forge a letter, but then again, Stevenson had a specific type of handwriting. No one to date could copy her handwriting and her unique signature too.”
The men’s voices started to disappear down the hallway after that. Their conversation changed back then to the dates that they had the other night and then they were gone. The two crawled out of their hiding place and sighed in relief.
“We should find our way out of here, UD,” Mori said pointing to the other hallway.
“Why would Sir Carter know something about Stevenson?”
“Who?”
He looked over to her with troublesome eyes, “Sir Carter is the head of the college in town. He and Stevenson have never worked on anything together in their lives.”
Mori thought for a second on how he would know that, but then she realized that he must be in college or at least know the man somehow. She looked down the dim lit hallway. This whole place was a mystery, but she knew that they had to get out of there. The longer they stayed, they could get in trouble. She looked up and saw UD walking down the hallway after the men. She raced after him tugging on his still damp long sleeved shirt.
“We need to get out of here-”
They both stopped suddenly as they saw the stone ground changing into a metal platform. An entire underground factory stood around them and dozens of people were working on different things. UD’s eyes were large as he looked all about the gigantic factory space. Smells of burning objects and other strange things filled the air along with loud machines and voices. Mori couldn’t help but stare also. Something so high-tech and massive was in the town and she doubted if many people knew about it.
Mori looked up to UD and saw his confused shocked look. The technology was so strange to him yet amazing at the same time. He was like all the others in town, with no idea on what the real world acted like. Mori finally was able to get a full picture of her rescuer. The room was lit greatly and full colors came to her view. He had brown shaggy hair and dull colored eyes. He wore sweat pants and a thermal long sleeved shirt. He probably couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night either and wandered out to the park.
Mori felt strange standing in a room with a bunch of unknown workers in her fish pajamas and bare feet. She felt disgusting and damp from their trip, and couldn’t wait to take a shower.
“Hey!” someone shouted noticing the two of them.
UD was pulled out of his confused stare and the both of them stared up to some fancy dressed soldier that was a floor above them. The two of them ran as quick as they could back down the way they came. Voices of people echoed down the hallway, but they didn’t stop. UD took Mori’s hand and they ran down the other hallway that they didn’t travel to yet. Mori saw the similarities again in UD’s face. Though she now could see the serious look and how it looked familiar. He looked a lot like Prince.
“UD, are you related to Prince?”
“Now’s not the time,” he said stopping at an intersection hallway.
They saw a portal door way out and he ran towards it. Mori frowned and she helped him open the heavy portal door. Sunlight flooded into the hallway and Mori and UD put their arms up to block the bright light. Voices called out down the hallway and they quickly escaped out the door and closed it just in time to miss the people chasing after them…