Two Halves: chapter 32

chapter 32 is here~

“It’s huge,” squeaked the small voice from Nicolas’s shoulder. It was true; the building was massive. At one end the dimensional rift generator was connected to the base of the Salex corp building. Chimneys set in intervals along the end were belching pure white steam up into the nothingness. When they reached the point on the opposite side of the street from the entrance Bestalel stopped short and turned around to face Nicolas.

 

“I will be doing most of the talking. Please only speak if spoken to.” Bestalel said. Now his attitude had returned to an entirely business mentality. His eyes here stony behind his sunglasses and his arms were kept neutrally at his sides. Before waiting for Nicolas’s reply he turned back around and waited for the lights to indicate that it was safe to cross the street.

 

The steam whistle on the pole above the street blew loudly as people began to cross the street. On the opposite side they walked to the large double doors that marked the entrance. A small hunk of metal eternally propped them open the rush of people in and out nearly clogged the doors with their urgency. Bestalel pushed his way through the crowd into the large room beyond and entered one of the lines leading to a desk.

 

“Tickets and Luggage.” Said the bored looking clerk behind the counter. Bestalel calmly handed over the ticket, and put the demon’s sack into the slot. The woman looked at the two sheets of paper and began to type into the machine, and paused for a moment. Bestalel tensed for a moment as she sat there reading the screen.

 

“Sir, your transport had to rescheduled due to emergency maintenance on Dimensional Rift Generator three. You have been moved to the early transport at DRG 2. You will be leaving in half a hour, and you have been move to express decontamination station 1.” Bestalel relaxed when she said this, and Nicolas let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.  The woman behind the counter did not see to notice and ripped off their ticket stubs and handed the slips to them.

 

Bestalel mumbled a thank you to the woman and walked along the cavernous chamber with Nicolas in his wake. A sign hanging from the ceiling pointing down a hallway, and the sign read “Express Decontamination 1-3”. They walked down this hallway, and fortunately it was much less crowded here. The light strips on the ceiling were far higher quality than the ones that lined the main chamber. The TeraFlex concrete was a smooth uniform gray. The hallway had several doors running its length, they entered the first one. A few businessmen were milling about as a few workers ushered them through to several enclosed cubicles inside the main chamber.

 

“Sir, I will need you to let me take your demon for a moment while you are in the cleaning cubicle.” Zeckle glared at the man angrily for a moment before clambering down Nicolas’s arm and onto the other man’s shoulder. Nicolas could see her digging his claws into the man’s shoulder as he entered the cubicle. Ever surface inside was white and was nearly featureless except for a small silver handle labeled “clothing” and rows of small black dots lining the ceiling. A computer generated voice spoke from some unseen speaker.

 

“Please remove your clothing and place them in the receptacle. They will be decontaminated separately.” Nicolas obliged and opened the clothes bin. It seemed to be nothing more than a box, but he stripped down and placed his clothing within regardless. After he closed the door the speaker started up again.

 

“Decontamination will commence in three, two, one.” Every sprinkler on the ceiling suddenly began to shower water over him. It stung slightly as it rolled off his skin “Please make sure that the decontamination fluid covers your entire body to ensure proper decontamination.” He reluctantly began to scrub in the stringing solution. After a minute or so of the painful rain the stream suddenly stopped. Then started again, but thankfully this time it was ordinary water that flowed over him. The stinging slowly subsided as the water washed the liquids away.

 

“Please accept our complimentary towel. Your clothes have been cleaned and decontaminated.” Said the voice as the water stopped. He opened the clothes receptacle to see his clothes sitting these folded and cleaned with a white towel sitting on the pile. He dried himself off and put his clothing back on and stood there for a moment. Waiting to see if the voice told him anything else, when it did not we walked to the opposite side of the room to the door marked “exit”.

 

He looked around the room on the other side of the cubicles. At once side Bestalel was standing at the exit of one of the other cubicles straightening his cuffs. The man who had taken Zeckle at the other side of the room walked up to him holding his arms outstretched. On his wrist was a particularly disgruntled Zeckle. Her wings were ruffled and she had an extremely angry look on her face. As soon as she got into range she flapped her wings and hopped onto Nicolas’s shoulder.

 

“They tried to power scan me… Me! You know how uncomfortable it is to mask my power enough to fool their scanners. I felt like I was going to sneeze for three minutes straight.” whispered Zeckle into his ear. She dug her claws into his shoulder a little more than as necessary as they waked over to Bestalel.

 

“We need to hurry. We only have twenty minutes until our transport departure.” Announced Bestalel as he walked away towards the exit from the room. It was the only exit from the room and funneled all of the passengers towards a small hallway. A sign on the wall had a red arrow pointing down another smaller hallway. It read DRG 2. Bestalel turned down this chamber, and at this point they were the only ones in the hallway. He looked around to see a camera on one of the walls. He lifted his wrist and pressed a small sound pad on his palm. The camera’s slow track across the room slowed and stopped as it powered down.

Author's Note

This are about to pick up. It's time to venture to the mile high wall.

Reviews

[Miss Coral]

Another good installment, but with a great deal of typos. Also, I would recommend picking a gender for Zeckle and sticking with it. You've been going back and forth between them. Good job.

[James Watts]

This is not a bad story. I have noticed, especially with emotions, some of the same words used to describe them over and over. My suggestion would be to grab a thesaurus. Most word processors I believe have one built in. This would also eliminate some of the -ly's as you will have to word the sentence differently for some words to make sense.

[Dutch Jr.]

Another nice installment to your book. Tension is building, and now I'm ready to see what happens.