Those creatures' noises must have attracted the Peacekeepers on the streets to investigate. She hoped Shon wasn't one of them. She'd put him through enough in the past when he caught her falling out of the sky during his Area Seven patrols. Ari doubted he could do much if a group of Peacekeepers caught her, anyway, breaking curfew and trespassing on forbidden grounds.

She stayed still, slowing her breathing. Ari was caught between a rock and hard place. Peacekeepers would get her into deep trouble, for sure, but if she could get out with her life, surely that wasn't a bad price to pay.

But if she were caught, Mina would likely be lost forever. At that thought, a knife pierced through Ari's heart, catching her breath. Her eyes watered.

A flurry of movements below suggested the Peacekeepers searching for the source of disturbance – Ari. But if they didn't see her, they wouldn't know to stop her from working with Rale. With no leads on Mina except for the scientists' illegal experiments and this boy called Noan, a lot was bargaining on what the journalist had on his database.

The last of the footsteps died away. With shaking hands, Ari removed the vent door and peered down. Darkness. Heaving a breath, she stuck her legs before her and dropped.

On impact, she spread the energy into electricity, which disappeared into the ground. She paused again. No sound except for distant footsteps. She couldn't see more than a few centimetres in front of her. With her hands spread in front, she moved with tentativeness, all the time keeping an ear out.

Her fingers skimmed over the cracks in the walls. She only knew to head in the direction from where the Peacekeepers came, and even then that was vague.

Her toes knocked against something hard. Her heart jumped to her throat as she pitched forward. Letting out an involuntary gasp, Ari threw her hands in front to catch herself. She must have kicked a fallen door or a rock or something.

She caught herself in time. The landing sent a jolt up both her arms, making her grunt in pain.

The fall attracted attention. Shuffling came from one of the dark corners to her right. She got up, wary. Her knees stung.

Eyes gleamed from the darkness, curious. She stepped back.

Panting from her left made her turn, almost dreading to see what was there. There it was, another group of creatures.

The path from where she came was where the Peacekeepers went, so there was one path left. She turned and ran. For the second time that night, she found her chest tight and her throat burning. A headache pounded at her temples. Sweat flew off her head as wind streamed through her hair, which had started to come out of its ponytail. The monsters chased her, hot on her trail.

Their breaths sounded closer with every step. The corridor was endless. Ari stumbled over rocks and bumped off the walls on the side. No longer caring what a racket she was making, she pelted with all the energy left in her through the shadows.

She slammed into a wall. To her horror, it had no doorway. Panic overwhelmed her senses, deafening her. She swept her hands around with desperation. No, she could go no further.

Blood drumming in her ears, she contemplated for a split second to use the remaining energy in the battery necklace to blast through the wall, and then kicked herself for such a stupid idea. There was no way of ensuring there was a path behind, and it was as good as signing a death warrant for herself. She was underground. No windows, no alleyways.

A monster jumped at her. She flinched out of the way. Its claws scraped by her arm. She yelped, falling to the side. Her torch clattered onto the ground. Warm blood dribbled out of her wound, seeping through her sleeve.

The creature slid down the wall. Ari swiped her hand on the torch, bringing up the light. Her stomach lurched. Long hair fell over very human eyes. Its hackles were raised. Saliva bubbled at the corner of its cracked lips. Blocking her escape were four other humanoid creatures, feral and hungry.

Another jumped at her. Ari calculated the distance and averted its teeth just in time. Its body collided with her shoulder. Out of instinct, she took that energy and grabbed the creature by its legs. Strength soared through her muscles. With a grunt, she let go.

With a squeal, the creature disappeared into the darkness. A thud three seconds later indicated it had hit some sort of obstacle.

Something clicked in her head. This could work.

The creature behind her growled before leaping. Its claws scraped by her other arm. She yelled, flinching away. She grabbed it with her injured arm, stealing the kinetic energy and redirecting it, throwing it against its comrades. She missed one, but the collision sent the others stumbling, rolling into the rubble. They whimpered with pain.

The last one didn't hesitate, despite what she had done to its friends.  Vicious eyes glinted at her. Muscles rippled across its hairless body. It took a running leap. Ari braced herself. Claws tore at her shoulder. She gritted her teeth, tears springing into her eyes. The lower half of its body slammed into her side.

She took the energy. The creature slowed to an absolute stop. Spinning around, Ari redirected the force and slammed her palm into the wall. Before her eyes, the cracked walls exploded into fragments. Parts of the pavement above followed. Weak street light poured through the crack.

The thing next to her still struggled. She threw it off and taking her chance, she discharged the remaining energy from her necklace. A spark of electricity whipped through the air, hitting it squarely in the head. Its hair crackled, standing on end. A look of surprise flitted across its face. The light from the torch highlighted a pair of unkempt brows and dirty cheeks. Long-lashed brown eyes focused on her for a second, and then rolled in their sockets. It slumped to the ground.

Rapid footsteps echoed from the other end of the corridor. Ari snapped up her torch. Some of the monsters were stirring, making weak noises. She didn't stay. Hurriedly finding a foothold, she hoisted herself through the hole. By the time the Peacekeepers arrived to investigate the racket, she was jumping halfway across Area Two, with nothing but the safety of home on her mind.

Landing with a thump, she discharged too much energy and crashed to the floor of the rooftop of the next building. She didn't leave anything in her battery necklace and the height difference between this rooftop and the next meant she couldn't arrive at the top. Stupid elementary error. She must have been too tired to calculate her journey.

She sighed to herself, her face still stuck against the smooth marble flooring. She might as well just sleep here until the morning, when it was allowed for her to go onto the streets again. March City's climate control meant it was relatively warm outside, perfectly safe for her to sleep there, unless one of the sky probes caught sight of her and alerted the Peacekeepers.

And right then, she really couldn't care less. Exhaustion was suffocating her. Her muscles weighed like lead. Unable to move another muscle, her eyelids fluttered. Darkness washed over her.

"You are an idiot, you know that?"

Through the warm waves of sleep, the voice was familiar, the despair in it even more so. Ari made a noncommittal grunt.

"How you'll explain yourself out of this mess I don't know -- but then again, it's probably something you didn't bother to think of, you impulsive monkey!"

The words made little sense to the cotton wool comprising her brain just then.

The fuzzy darkness was later broken again by that agitated voice.

"What am I going to do with you? Geez..."

The next time she came out of the depth again, she opened her eyes to a small, grey room. She lay in a single bed with a wide plastic pane of window overlooking several white, square buildings. Specks of green decorated rooftops nearby and the city train wove in and out of the skyscrapers. The sky outside was bright. It couldn't have been long past midday.

Ari blinked. Why was she still in Area Eight?

She sat up, wincing as her aching muscles twinged. She felt as though she'd just run a marathon.

Last night's events came flooding back to her in a hurry, and she slumped against the wall, breathing hard. She might as well have run a marathon. The monsters' vicious faces flashed in her mind, making her flinch. The terror of being pursued, the Peacekeepers arriving, her desperate leaps across the city to get home -- they all came back.

And one name was seared into her mind: Noan, the Morpher, whose academic file she had found in the ventilation ducts of the abandoned basement flats.

She clapped her hands to her side. Someone had changed her out of her clothes from last night. A loose-fitting gown draped from her shoulders down to her knees. Kicking the thin, insulating duvet off her legs to the end of the bed, Ari swung her legs out and peered around.

It was a typical middle-affluence March City room – probably one of the cheaper communal ones, like Fris lived in, where a few students shared a kitchen and bathroom facilities. A single bed stood next to the wide window, letting the artificial sunlight stream onto the smooth wooden floor. Shelves upon shelves of books stood at one end, with various electronic devices packed on the end. Most of them were models several years old. A thin desktop sat on a table in the corner, its screen switched off. Workbooks were placed in a neat pile beside the keyboard.

At the end of the bed, three screens displayed different channels. One replayed the news: Investigators were still looking for clues and appealing for witnesses regarding the terrorist bombings. The next one was paused in an educational video. Several molecular structures spun of their own accord, each with their scientific name labelled beneath. The third one monitored Ari's vitals through her contact with the bed. Her blood pressure read 100/60 with a heart rate of 75 beats per minute.

Ari stood up; her right arm spasmed with pain; her blood pressure shot up at once. She'd forgotten the injuries sustained during her fight with those creatures. She shuddered, remembering the blaze of their eyes in the dark and their animalistic behaviours despite the relatively humanoid exterior. Someone had cleaned and bandaged her wound. Through the clear, neatly-applied dressing, she could see the gashes. The superficial areas had healed, with the lower layers of the thicker cuts beginning to stitch together. With a sigh, she lowered her arm, getting off the bed. Who had taken such painstaking care to look after her?

The door slid open behind her, emitting a quiet whirring of machinery. Ari spun around, tensed. Her eyes fell on a mop of red hair and a raised eyebrow.

"Nice to see you're up at last, Ari."

Remember to vote!