Raiyev Part 23
#23 of Raiyev
Raiyev awoke with a start, back in that cell that had now become all too familiar for him. He remembered more clearly this time what he had done to those poor cities. Their defense was practically non-existent against him, the raccoon recalled. He got up from the stone bed on which he was laying and, with a heavy sigh, leaned against the cool clear wall facing the corridor.
He had been there tool too many times now. Well, really, once was too many, Raiyev told himself. His attitude towards it all now was beyond distress. He didn't feel like crying or yelling at anyone. All he could feel now was a resolve to escape by any means necessary. He placed his paws on the hard, clear wall, feeling it, trying to understand a way he could escape from it. He ran his fingers all along the edges, trying to find some sort of groove, but it melded seamlessly into the adjacent walls.
Pounding on it before didn't help, but maybe he could break through it somehow now. Raiyev noticed, looking around, that the cell looked considerably smaller than last time he was in it. He reckoned he must have been a little over fifty feet tall now. Pressing himself up against the concrete wall opposite the clear wall from which he had exited twice before, he prepared himself for his new drastic plan.
Raiyev breathed deep a few times, his eyes closed as he gathered his strength. Snapping his eyes open, he stared menacingly at the clear wall for a split second before he broke into a dash across the small cell, slamming his entire body into the wall. He bounced back hard and to the side, ramming backwards into the concrete wall along which the stone bed rested.
He shook his head, his body throbbing in pain all over, bruises forming quickly beneath his ruffled fur. Moaning, he looked up at the wall against which he had just slammed with all his might. Nothing. Not even a scratch or dent of any sign. Raiyev moaned harder, bringing a paw up to massage his forehead.
He sneezed as a sudden amount of dust fell in front of his face, and he looked curiously at the paw he had just raised. It was covered in dust, and looking behind him, Raiyev saw the source: the concrete wall behind him had a few large dents in it, as if someone had taken a few good swings of the sledgehammer to the wall.
The bounce back, Raiyev realized, caused the concrete wall to get damaged. Well, if that's the case, Raiyev thought, then... He got up, surveying now the concrete wall as he had done the clear wall next to it. It wouldn't do good to go ramming through there, he realized, as the stone bed was blocking the way. However, the other concrete wall at the back of the cell had a clear path to it.
Raiyev rested a minute, his body still aching all over, before he got up in preparation to repeat his tactic to the concrete wall. Backing himself up against the clear exit wall, Raiyev once again summoned every ounce of strength in his massive body, and took a full charge at the concrete wall in front of him. In a shower of dust and rocky debris, Raiyev successfully broke through to the other side.
Just as he was dusting himself off and looking around at the new corridor he had broken into, a loud, raucous alarm sounded. Knowing that sound could only be bad, Raiyev ran off to his left, trying desperately to find a way similar to the path he had found to escape before. The corridor didn't lead where he thought it might have, though, and Raiyev spent many panicky minutes darting around corners and down long hallways, his back stooped most of the time to avoid hitting the ceiling.
Left, right, right, left, straight, right, straight, left... The entire place felt like a maze, and as the second ticked by, he grew more and more anxious as to when he would run into more of those nasty humans. No one seemed to turn up, however, and he blessed his luck for a while until he figured ten minutes had passed (though it felt like hours), and he was still trapped in the maze of whatever place this was. He paused a moment at another intersection, to catch his breath, the alarm ringing in his ears, and he glanced around quickly.
Still, no one pursued him. He felt odd--more odd and out of place than he had before, as if they were just letting him go and not pursuing him on purpose. He couldn't explain it to himself, he couldn't figure why they'd risk losing their precious weapon now, but he didn't want to risk sticking around to find out.
At long last, he found a hallway that looked familiar enough to him that he dashed around the place almost on instinct. Before he even was aware of it, he had burst through the doors to the outside, the sun still shining brightly. The beautiful clearing and forest beyond still looked out of place directly outside the facility from which he had escaped, as if its natural beauty under the warm sun was mocking the tribulations he had just been through.
Nevertheless, he dashed through the clearing, not entirely sure where to head, until he spotted a figure running out from the line of trees at the other end. He froze a moment, afraid it would be another human, but saw to his great relief that it was Dr. Harper. She ran up to him, calling out to him as he just stood there in the middle of the clearing.
"Harper!" Raiyev cried back to the small rabbit, starting to run towards her. "Come on, we should get out of here, quick!"
"Raiyev, wait!" she said as they got so close to each other that they risked running into one another. "Wait! I don't think you have to run this time!"
"Wha...what?" Raiyev panted, holding a stitch in his side as he sat down in the tall heather, his massive body still looming over the diminutive rabbit. "What do you mean?"
Harper opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment, Raiyev cried out loudly in pain, his head pounding suddenly, and he leaned forward, his head in his heavy paws, rocking back and forth a bit. In a few seconds, something tiny had drilled itself out of the middle of Raiyev's forehead and dropped into the grass between his legs.
Rubbing his forehead and wiping away a small trickle of blood, the big raccoon picked up the tiny black and red object that had just exited his skull. Wiping it clean a bit on his leg, he held it up close to his large eyes, examining it carefully.
"Is this...?" he said slowly, almost more to himself than to Harper. "Is this a camera?" he asked in disbelief.
"Yes," Harper sighed heavily. "That's part of what I have to tell you," she said as Raiyev looked at her. She was about to start again when there was a loud rumbling noise and the earth started shaking beneath them. Raiyev looked around, panicked, and suddenly saw the mountainside from which he had exited a moment ago start to rip itself from the earth.
Something very large started rising from the mountainside, and Raiyev looked in slack-jawed awe as a deep, steely-blue metal surface exposed itself from beneath the mountainside, rock and grass still covering that part of it that was concealed by the face of the mountain. Higher and higher rose the facility in which Raiyev had been imprisoned, propelled upward by some unseen force. As it rose, Raiyev was able to take in just how massive the place really was, and saw for himself why the humans needed an entire mountain to conceal them.
It rose a few hundred feet into the air, hovering over them before it disappeared in a flash, leaving the sky empty save for a few high-floating clouds. The mountain now looked more like the remains of a volcano whose side had crumbled during a particularly violent blast, and Raiyev simply stared at it for a few minutes before Harper's voice drew his attention back to her.
"They've finally gone," she said. "And now I can tell you what this was really all about."