Blaze – 1

This is a sequel to the Rift series. You can read Rift’s ending here: Part 10

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Sol Selegna, Americana

“Please fasten your seat belts, we are landing,” the robotic voice of the PA system announced. The noise awakened Rachel with a start, and she looked around drowsily. She knew that this flight was going to a city in Americana, but Rachel did not know about Americana’s geography. Hopefully, she’d fit right in. Somehow, she doubted it.

Rachel walked into the pristine airport. The whole place was rather gray and colorless, full of glass, steel, and more glass. Well, it was better than her home in Zealandia anyway. Home. . .she had left without any baggage at all. Rachel decided to take a quick stop at the luggage claim. She made her way to the massive conveyor belt. 

As the baggage came around, Rachel grabbed an official-looking bag and sprinted. She bypassed security and just sprinted away. There was no security, and she had no idea why. At that moment, she thanked heavens that nobody attempted to catch her, and she jumped into a car. It was a taxi, and there was a driver in it. Rachel knocked the driver out of the car and slammed the door, locking it. She rolled up the windows as the driver looked horrified. She pressed down on the accelerator.

Nothing happened. “What?” Rachel nervously looked out of the window. And then she realized that she had to shift the car to drive mode. She yanked on the gear shift, pulling it to drive mode. Then, she hit the gas.

The speedometer’s needle started going up. Rachel had no idea where she was going, but she thought that it would be a good idea to find a hotel. She drove on to the freeway at nearly a hundred miles an hour, almost forty miles above the speed limit. If this wasn’t speeding, she didn’t know what was. She took an exit and drove until she saw a rundown building. 

Rachel got out of the taxi, making sure to remind herself to dispose of it as soon as possible. She read the sign on the building, which read “CHEF”

“Chef?” she was bewildered.

The sign actually read “CHEAP MOTEL FOOD”, but most of its lights had stopped functioning at this point. Well, she did need a place to stay. . .

Rachel entered the “Chef” and was met with a moth-eaten carpet. She walked on it until she reached the front desk. The clerk seemed asleep, so she pocketed a key card from the drawer on his desk. It read “12”, so she walked to Room 12 and opened the door, finding a rock-hard bed. Rachel fell on it and nearly ruptured a disc. “Oww!” she yelled. Well, there was no point trying to sleep on that. Instead, Rachel went outside. “I should probably take a look around this place,” she said to herself.

She walked out of the motel, passing the clerk, who was still asleep. Rachel opened the door to a blast of the frigid night wind and walked out. She sat on a bench next to the parking lot. “I wonder what’s in this bag,” she said, unzipping the luggage that she had stolen from the airport. 

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You can read the next part here: Part 2