The girl, no more than 11 or 12, gasped in relief when she saw the exit up ahead. She didn't have far to go. She would make it! She would be free! Excitement welled up inside of her as she made a run for it. She sprinted, refusing to allow the darkness of the corridor to swallow her. Her tattered night gown whipped around her legs, threatening to trip her. She stumbled and then regained her footing.

The magnificent exit sign seemed to grow brighter as she neared it. Her eyes stayed glued to the green neon word as she ran towards it. She couldn't believe she had found it! Freedom was right through that door!

A desperate sound escaped her throat as she reached the door and threw herself against it, praying it would be unlocked. To her sheer joy, the heavy steel door swung open smoothly and silently. No alarms. No lock. It opened with ease and she stumbled out into the darkness of night. Her eyes flew upward toward the sky and she caught her breath. The stars! She couldn't remember when she had last seen the stars!

Laughter bubbled up inside her as relief washed over her. She quickly brought her attention back to her surroundings. She was outside the building in a yard. There was a fence not far from where she stood and beyond it were trees. Forest. 

She crept forward toward the fence, keeping her body as low to the ground as she could manage. Her eyes scanned the yard around her, looking for any signs of danger. Signs of her captors. Everything was quiet. The only sounds she heard were crickets and an occasional toad. Her bare feet seemed to find every sharp rock in the yard and she winced as she felt another one pierce her soft flesh.

She didn't make a sound. She could tend to her feet when she had reached safety. If there was any such thing for the likes of her. She wasn't sure that she would ever be safe. They would come after her. They would probably not stop until she was locked back in her cell in the horrid building she had just escaped.

She shook the thoughts from her mind and concentrated on the task at hand. She needed to scale the fence. She needed to disappear into the darkness of the forest on the other side of it. She finally reached the cold chain link and her eyes climbed up to the top. There was a bit of barbed wire up there, but she could get over it if she were careful.

She grabbed hold of the fence and began to scramble up. She moved slowly and carefully. She cast furtive glances behind her toward the door she had escaped through, praying that no one came through and discovered her.

Her heart hammered in her chest as she neared the top. The barbed wire. Slowly, she reached toward it when suddenly her hand froze in mid-air. There was a crunching on the rocks below her and she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before looking down.

"Going somewhere?" The gruff voice chilled her to the core. A small sob escaped her throat. She was caught. She knew it. There was no way she could scale the barbed wire quick enough. She saw the Taser in his hand and grief washed over her.

Just as he raised it toward her exposed legs, she cast her gaze toward the sky. A white light shot from her eyes and within a split second there was a message burned into the night sky. The last thing she saw before losing consciousness to the electric shock he let loose upon her, was her own message written in huge lettering burned into the inky blackness.

It said, "HELP US."

.....................

Jackson stepped into the little lab area and looked around for his sister. "Lill?"

"I'm over here, Jackson. Come take a look at this!" She was hovering at one of the computer monitors, her fingers like lightning flying across a keyboard below it.

Jackson walked over to her and peered over her shoulder. He pretended to know what he was looking at.

"Yeah. That's.... interesting, Lill!"

Lillian glanced at him and laughed. She turned and playfully punched him in the shoulder. "Not this one," she said and stepped over to a different monitor. "This one."

She pulled an image up on the screen and Jackson studied what appeared to be a photo of sky-writing. Except it was a night sky and the writing seemed somehow burned into the atmosphere. It shone with its own light. The words were clear.

"HELP US."

His eyes narrowed as he studied the strange message. "Is that even possible?" he asked his sister without looking away.

"Not really. Not that I know of," she replied. "It says here that the message didn't disappear. It held its form in the sky and was still there as of the time of the report."

Jackson glanced at his sister, his eyebrow slowly creeping upward. "Where about is it?"

"It’s in Australia. Not far from Sydney, actually. Think we should check it out?"

"Yeah. Definitely. We need to show this to the others," he replied, still studying the image on the screen. "Macy's upstairs with the others. Do they need to come down, or....?"

She grinned at him. A mirror reflection of his own lopsided grin. "You really are clueless when it comes to technology."

As she teased him, she grabbed a tablet and punched something into it. Then she held it up in front of his face and he rolled his eyes. The same image that was on the larger monitor was now showing on the tablet screen.

"Okay, show-off. Let's go see what the team has to say, then," he said while reaching around to yank on her pony-tail.

She side-stepped him and headed into the hall with her tablet, sashaying her superiority shamelessly as she walked. Jackson shot a foot out toward her behind, missed, and then trotted after her in defeat.

(Please vote! Hope some of you are still with me, I know it’s been awhile.)