Infinite Horizons

“Melissa Alfaro! Stop where you are immediately!” The voice boomed over the intercom and reverberated through the halls of the Multiversal Police Department Detainment Center as a stampede of Peace Keepers rushed past the booking desk. The alarm continued to blare through the halls as Melissa snaked her way through the hallways.

“God dammit, for the last fucking time, it’s Mel!” Mel cursed the boring-looking freshly arrested prisoner that had sold her out as she stumbled around a corner. Sprinting through a wide doorway, Mel found herself in an employee cafeteria of some kind as she knocked a tray from a portly man’s hands by accident. As mashed potatoes and peas rained around him in a circle, his eyes flashes from confusion to frustration to recognition to rage.

“No time, sorry!” Mel swiped a plastic tray off the nearest table and smashed it as hard as she could into his throat eliciting a horrific gurgling sound before shoving him sideways and continuing to run. The scene prompted several other off duty Peace Keepers in the room to action and they swarmed towards her. She leapt up, jumping from table to table as she dodged their outstretched arms.

While Mel could hold herself pretty well in a scuffle, she wasn’t a one to one match for a trained Peace Keeper. Her shorter stature made her elusive. Her stockier, compact build made her hit like a bowling ball if you weren’t expecting it and the tall thin woman who blocked the door at the other end of the room was certainly not expecting it. As Mel trampled through her, she yanked at the woman’s utility belt and came away with some sort of aerosol can. On the other side of the door a hallway stretched off to her left and right. Listening carefully for approaching footfalls over the din from the cafeteria, Mel took off to the right.

She turned a corner hard, nearly toppling a confused legal representative. Flicking him on the nose instead and throwing herself through a doorway, Mel looked frantically around the stairwell as she entered. The echo of stomping boots behind her went mercifully dull as the door shut. Mel picked down and took the stairs two at a time knowing that they’d be right behind her any minute.

Emerging quietly into a lower level, Mel found herself under a long, flickering fluorescent light. With no pursuers within sight at the moment, she moved more stealthily, watching for cameras and darting between sight lines. Finally, Mel found an unoccupied office and slunk in, locking the door behind her. Relatively safe for the moment, Mel methodically searched the room, finally producing an aged brochure that depicted a basic outline of the Detainment Center.

“Impound, impound…” Mel scanned the image, locking it in her mind before tucking the brochure into her jumpsuit. “Right. Clothes too.” Doing a second loop of the room, she grabbed a leather jacket off a chair in the corner and hoped it would be enough to keep eyes from immediately jumping to her.

Slipping from hall to hall, Mel made her way back to the stairs and continued further down into the facility. As she turned the corner towards the impound storeroom, she spun back around the corner. Three Peace Keepers stood between her and the double doors to the final piece of her escape plan. She exhaled, thinking through her options and drawing an expansive blank.

Pulling the swiped aerosol spray from her pocket, she looked over the container. No makings or labels presented themselves and Mel bit her lip while she ran through the possible contents. Contrary to what her Department assigned legal representative said, Mel wasn’t a total psychopath and she didn’t want to use some kind of lethal fog on these three officers. Thinking about every kind of spray deterrent she’d encountered on the 71 Earths she had visited, Mel decided to believe that she was holding mace and took a deep, calming breath.

Turning the corner, Mel rushed towards the officers at full speed, the can held confidently in front of her as she unleashed a cloud at the three Peace Keepers standing between her and freedom. Initially panicking and covering their faces, their expressions transitioned to confusion as the four stood looking at each other. Mel sniffed the air carefully.

“Fucking Febreeze? Who keeps unmarked Febreeze on their fucking utility belt?!” Then she took a baton to the chin and nearly did a full flip before crumpling to the floor in a heap. It took about three seconds for her eyes to stop spinning and the Peace Keepers began pulling her back to her feet. She felt a pair of cuffs around her wrists stopping her from rubbing her aching jaw and she exhaled. Mel looked longingly at the door as they began to drag her off the other direction.

“Straight to the Hole for her, we can ask the Shift Sergeant if we need to move her from there.” The biggest of the three Peace Keepers was speaking in an arrogant drawl that barely cut through the buzz in her head from the shot she’d taken. Add concussion to the list of minor injuries she’d have to deal with once she could get to a Jumper. This was Mel’s third visit to Earth One and surprisingly it was only the second worst experience.

Through a maze of hallways and down two more separate stairwells, Mel was convinced they were taking a roundabout way to confuse her sense of direction. Lucky for her, Mel had an impressive memory and was great at taking mental snapshots. Unlucky for her, she had her brain rattled around less than five minutes ago so she was struggling to retain anything she saw as they pushed her forward down an unlit hallway.

“Really? Solitary confinement is a punishment here? Maybe I’ll stay after all.” Mel slurred as they dumped her forward into a nearly pitch black room.

“You better hope the Sergeant has other plans for you. The mind doesn’t fare well in the Hole.”

“Fuck off.” Mel felt her way to the small cot in the room, sat down, and finally massaged her aching head. Listening for the Peace Keepers footsteps, she waited until she couldn’t see or hear a thing before taking another centering breath. Mel removed her right boot and pulled out the ID she had swiped earlier.

“This oughta come in handy this time”. Mel untangled a paperclip from some loose thread in her jumpsuit's armpit and began to uncoil it into a straight tool. Methodically, Mel began to pick at the lock until she quietly slid the door open again and crept out into the dark hallway.

Mel slunk to the wall and carefully felt around until she found a chair. Mel stood on the chair, fumbling with her short height for the ceiling panels. Using a light fixture for balance, she pushed herself up and through the panel tucking herself up into the space between floors. Muttering to herself about dust and bugs, Mel crawled aimlessly hoping to eventually jog her memory.

After several minutes without hearing the alarm, Mel figured she must have a good amount of time before they actually check on her in the Hole. By then, she planned to be several Earths away. For now, she kept crawling, carefully feeling ahead. Her head had finally stopped vibrating and she was pretty confident that she was heading in the right direction. She moved towards some shafts of light coming through some kind of vent and peeked down to the floor below.

“I don’t care about the price man, the ad said E-498! I’m telling you, this place doesn’t mess around, it’s full nude.” Mel wrinkled her nose in disgust at the pair of Peace Keepers talking about their post work plans and against her better judgment carefully let a wad of spit drip down onto the helmet of the one speaking. Satisfied, she shuffled onward for several silent minutes.

WEEEEEOOOOOOOOO! The blaring alarm shook the smug smile off her face and she crawled faster. They must have brought someone to check on her in the Hole sooner than she expected. That really threw a kink in things. Mel was running through potential adjustments to her already ramshackle plan when a creaking froze her solid.

But not for long, as the panel her legs rested on suddenly cracked and gave out beneath her back half. Unable to get a hand hold, she went tumbling backwards to the floor below and landed heavily in a cloud of dust and asbestos. Coughing and waving dust from her face she looked up nervously.

“Is this her? Excuse me, are you Melissa Promise Alfaro?” Mel took in the scene in front of her. A woman with bright silver hair was addressing her and at her side, the moron that caused the alarm during her initial escape was smiling dumbly at her. Neither was dressed in MVPD uniforms or set off her internal cop radar but she ignored the question all the same and scowled at the moron.

“Hey thanks for getting me caught earlier, asshat. I’ve got a splitting headache because of you.”