Hallway to the Falls

Hallway to the Falls

Alyss, Sam, and Saph climbed the stairs back up to the city. Cars, in neon lights, sped by. Although Alyss had been living with the constant noise and suffocating air for more than three days now, it startled her all the same. Only seconds after they got out, a siren sounded from all around them.
Saph cursed. “The cops! Run!” She bolted away as two cars, with blaring blue and red lights got out of the blur of the road and two heavily armoured people stepped out. Alyss and Sam panicked and ran after her, their heads swarming with sound and lights and colour and smoke. To Alyss, Saph was a lit up blue blur, her neon blue hair, decorated with blue lights, made her surprisingly hard to follow, as she blended with all the other lights all around the city.
The worst part was, she was very fast. Faster than the Hallwayers, as the man who gave them the digital map had called Alyss and Sam just minutes before, and much much faster than the cop. Sam and Alyss ran together, trying their best to keep up with Saph’s sleek and unpredictable movements. Allys wondered how many times she had done this before.
Alyss felt like she was suffocating. Her head spun and she couldn’t take in air. She tripped and fell on her hands and knees struggling to take in air. All the smoke. In between two lit-up buildings, dark only in that thin alleyway that smelled of rot. Sam instantly knelt down, desperate for her to get up and continue to run, sparing a dreading glance behind them. Nothing. The officer must’ve given up pursuit.
Alyss stayed on the ground panicking to get a breath. If she could breathe even just a little bit more she would use it to sob. Sam tried to calm her down, feeling his own lungs sputter smoke.
“No-no, just-” he paused to take in more smoke-filled air.”Just-calm down-breathe.” He tried to demonstrate by inhaling deeply, feeling his head spin. They could go inside a building, they had to have better air indoors, like the oxygen filter in Saph’s apartment. He demonstrated one more deep breath and Alyss tried to copy, her eyes wide in fear. She had to be breathing at least a little bit, more than two minutes had passed by now surely her lips would be blue if she couldn’t breathe at all, Sam told himself. His self-reassurance almost never worked though.
Alyss saw black dots spot her vision and she tried to blink them away. She was breathing more now, still, each gulp of air was more ashes than oxygen but it was better than nothing. She met Sam’s eyes and he tugged at her arm towards the street again. She gave a slow, determined nod trying not to move her head too quickly.
They walked out of the alleyway and entered through the first door on the building to their left. The door was vacuum-sealed, indicating there was some sort of air cleaner inside. Through blurry eyes she saw there were people inside, casually waddling around isles, this was probably some kind of market, like the one Saph took them to the day before. Sam lead her in, the door made the sound of compressed air as he opened it by tapping the bright green button on the glass. They walked in eagerly, and maybe a bit too quickly. As they heard the door close behind them, people in the market stared at them as they gasped for breath, feeling dizzy with the cleaner air, and looking for something to lean on.
When they got their breath back, they did as Saph instructed them in case of an emergency like this one where they got lost in the city. Alyss pulled out the tiny paper note with the tiny numbers on it and asked someone if they could borrow their phone.