SRR Morrahe`VnuChapter Fifty-Four: Looking for a way Out
[ Alone in a holodeck, this one was different though, he should know, he had seen the other one too many times today. It was older, sort of...or just very torn up and rusted out...]

He checked about his person, back in his normal clothes, he had all of his normal equipment for a holodeck program. After a quick look about the ruined, shutdown holodeck, he approached the doors and attempted to open them with the panel near them. Surprisingly they still opened, albeit with a loud shreik of rusted metal against metal, they clanged to their open positions. Dust and dim light floated into the room, an air of confinement echoing the clang of the doors. Looking through, the entire deck was trashed. Dark, dank, and torn apart. A few lights flickered, maintaining a dead light to the corridor, there was an abundance of exposed wires and holes in the walls. This echoed faintly in Vyynd's mind of the old stories his father had told him of ghost ships in space. Merely fantasy at the time, he was now standing in the midst of one, apparently.

He steadily held the bottom of his sheath behind his back and drew the katana from it, holding it loosly near the floor in his right hand.

tr'Khaine peered out through the door. The hallway ahead of him continued on, parts were dark and other parts could be seen flickering in light. The hallway that passed the holodeck went off in both directions to the sides, each looked nearly identical to the middle one. This layout was unfamiliar, it wasn't the wildstrike, nor any other ship he had been on. But it was a rihannsu ship, the structure and design gave that away easily. Back scraping the wall, Vyynd turned out to the left of the doors, and looked both ways down the corridor, staying quiet and waiting for anything to happen. Slowly, his katana hanging loosly behind him from his hand, he started walking carefully down the hallway to his left. Moving accross the hallway swiftly to the right side, he switched his katana to his left side, in order to avoid some sparking wires drooped from the cieling that blocked half of the hallway. His eyes caught a white flash of light move by behind him.

His head snapped around. Glaring passed the blade of his katana, the hallway looked how it had before. But he knew he had seen the shine of a flashlight go by, or the shine of something. Pacing back toward the holodeck doors slowly, he swung his katana back to his right side, and rested it across his shoulder, as his left hand pushed his shirt back a bit and snatched a disruptor pistol from his waist. He came back to the intersection, checking across with his eyes to assure the holodeck was still empty, which it was, he bobbed his head around the corner breifly, then back again.

Looking out for a longer period of time, it was the same too...his eyes moved back and forth scanning the entire hallway, he looked back to the holodeck again, then down the hallway once more. Nothing. His eyes grew wide as the same flash of light eminated from the hallway behind him, the one he had journeyed part of the way down originally. Diving accross the intersection, he caught his balance and spun, back against the opposite wall he brought his disruptor up to the hallway his back had been to. Staring down the original hallway to the left, it was the way it had been, no one was anywhere around. And if there was someone, they must have been getting a kick out of this man acting paranoid in an intersection and a bunch of hallways.

Breathing heavily, tr'Khaine looked down all three hallways once more, and into the holodeck. Then he started back down the original hallway, which had just had the flash of light in it. As he nearly exited the intersection, a flash of light waved by from the hallway behind him.

Spinning around on reaction, Vyynd stood poised on the edge of the hallway aiming his pistol down the hallway, waiting for anything to move. A light flashed by behind him, spinning down the original hallway once more, another flash came from the straight hallway. Nearly dizzy, he was getting extremely tired of what seemed to be games, and his head hurt. Jogging exhaustedly down the middle hallway, he stopped as a light shone breifly out of a door, he skidded in his tracks and snapped to the wall beside the door.

Breifly jabbing his katana into the floor, he tradded hands with his pistol, and snatched his katana with his left hand. Now noticing the door was closed, he could hear a very loud scratching coming from inside. It wasn't a natural scratching, more of metal gears grinding, and it was almost ear-piercing in pitch. Leaning closer to the door, he now stood directly in front of it. The sound stopped.

His ears perked as he heard something behind him. Turning impulsively he sat up and aimed his pistol. Staring directly at another disruptor pistol, he shot and dove to the floor beneath him. The corridor erupted in noise. Looking up through the smoke in the air, both had fired, and both doors were blown out from behind both men, whom had both ducked. The other person seized the initiative and dove directly into Vyynd, pushing them into the now open room behind him. Attempting to roll as best he could with it, he vaulted the other man over him and further into the room. Continuing his roll he hopped to his feet, with his back to the man he could notice they were just in a normal beatun up quarters. Turning around he was face to face with Rylan, whom quickly knocked the pistol out of Vyynd's hand and brought his own around. Wrapping his arm over Rylan's, Vyynd brought it under and snapped upward, breaking his arm. The pistol fell to the floor, and they struggled breifly standing in that postion,

"You're....not....Rylan!!!" Vyynd brought up his left foot and pushed the man against the wall, then spun and lashed his katana directly into the man's stomach, pinning him to the wall. "He fights better then you do..." Vyynd whispered into the man's face, as he began to bleed out of his mouth. Pulling his katana out of him, the man's body fell to the floor.

tr'Khaine's pulse was speratic, his eyes were watering, and he was sweating from every poor, he could hardly bear the throbbing of his brain against the front of his skull. It was pounding as if trying to escape a tortorous cell, and he nearly fell to his knees.

Gaining his footing a little better by bracing himself on the door frame with one hand. Turning, hanging from the frame still, he looked half morbidly out into the hallway. Seeing no one around, he sulked back into the room, and slid down the wall beside the doorway. His head fell down to his knees and he rested as peacefully as his mind would let.

A few minutes passed, his body had rested back to a psuedo-normal level, but his mind was still excruciatingly painful. He crawled over to the body, and picked up the disruptor pistol, then crawled over and picked his up in the hallway. Looking up through his sweat drenched bangs, he glimpsed something in the opposite room.

Gaining his feet by climbing up the door frame again, he stumbled across the hallway and into the other room. Falling to his knees he stumbled towards a dead body lying in the center of the far wall. He was now staring at his own dead body. His hands began to shake, his entire body was trembling, spinning uneasily, dropping one of the pistols, which was coincidently the one he robbed from the body, he frantically crawled, ran, and tripped out of the room. Flying halfway into the hallway he swung from the wall and fell hard onto his side. Looking up, moaning in pain he glared down the hallway. He could see someone's back, he recognized them, but couldn't tell who it was, he only knew that he knew them. Scracthing forward, he slowly gained a footing and started limping hunch over toward the person. They were standing in the center of the hallway, staring at a pair of doors at the end. It was a woman, he approached, and noticed it was the woman from the TAG team. He placed a hand on her shoulder and turned her to him. She reacted, turning with him, and immeadiately drew a pistol to his face, screaming. Vyynd, reacting in a similar way, whipped his pistol up to her shoulder, still shaking nerviously.

She shouted at him around her pistol, "You're DEAD!!!!"

Vyynd stated cold and confused, "Yes, apparently I am..." He grabbed her arm as she grabbed his, and they began struggling over each other's pistols.

She fired, grazing passed Vyynd's head, down the hallway and blew the doors at the end open. Having her slightly distracted at that, Vyynd dove his shoulder under her arm, turning around, and flipped her over it onto the floor. Having been trained by Vyynd for a short while now, she kicked her foot into his throat and pulled him over her as she fell. Slamming into the ground, she shouted in pain, then slowly looked up and saw Vyynd tumbling painfully through the large doors that had just been blown open.

Following him in, she entered the room. Both had dropped their pistols outside the room. tr'Khaine's eyes slowly came to focus, he was staring up at a wooden ceiling, and, looking around, he had fallen into an old living room of an ancient mansion. He only had time to notice the fireplace, balcony, some of the ancient furniture inside, the table, and the fact that it was still connected to an old rihannsu ship. The woman jogged into the room as Vyynd stumbled to his feet. She lunged at him, over an old sofa, and swung her own katana down at him. Catching her arms in his hands, he managed to stop her swing. She jolted her hands upwards, knocking Vyynd off balance, and then sliced down, cleaving his shirt and chest open. Clenching the wound tr'Khaine fell backwards, and managed a poor and injured roll to his knees. Picking up his katana which he had landed beside, he brought it up in time to parry another swing from the woman. Pushing her hands and sword upward, he kicked her back in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her as she fell onto her back. He dove over to her position, arching his sword down onto her, as he saw her own katana pointed up at him.

He landed, his katana sliding into her flesh, through her lower shoulder. He groaned, as at the same time her sword had slide up through his chest and out his back. They were now bathed in blood, the blood of themselves and the blood of each other. Deadlocked, in every literal sense, each continued to push their own katana into the other person. Convulsing painfully, Vyynd choked, "die.....just Die....why won't you.....just.....DIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE!?!" His scracthy, uneasy, voice rang through the room, echoed back and around. The woman only replied by eventually lunging him off of her, as their katana's slid out of each other.

They both lay, bleeding, barely alive, slightly breathing, on the blood drenched carpet, staring at the ceiling.

After nearly 14 long minutes, Vyynd's mind became peaceful. He looked around the room, remembering his own dead body. Remembering what she had said to him, and the layout of the ship. He slowly crawled out of the room, leaving a streaming trail of green blood behind him. He crawled, slowly, determined, down the hallway. Passed the two rooms, where no bodies now lay. He continued, back to his original entrance point. Crawling through the doors, he was greeted by the same ancient room, as opposed to the old holodeck. He crawled in, and there lay, himself, bleeding. And further off, was the woman, bleeding, his body was bleeding of a wound to the lower shoulder, and she had been stabbed through the chest. He crawled over and braced himself over top of her. "This isn't real...." he whispered, placing a bloody hand on her cheek, "It's all in our heads....this entire thing isn't real...you're not injured as badly as you feel you are..." he pleaded with her. Slowly he coaxed her to sitting up, and they helped each other stumble out of the room.

They were flooded by light as they exited the holodeck into the Wildstrike. The rest of the TAG team sat exhausted and relieved outside of it as well. Vyynd crawled over to the medical officer that was part of the team, and carried the woman with him. They both recieved adequate care for the moment, their bleeding was stopped, but Vyynd hoped medlab was operational again as he climbed to his feet and helped everyone up.

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