Creeping around

She heard a yell behind her, someone raising the alarm, as she ducked below the waist-high banisters and slid down the stairway. She caught a glimpse of filing cabinets at the bottom - way more solid than bookshelves had been. Frantic, Sylvie stumbled towards them, blushing furiously.

Getting caught naked was always embarrassing. Of all people though, the idea of being exposed to these people…

Maybe it was ego, but she liked to picture herself as someone the TVA feared, or at least disliked. A nightmare, a mischief-maker. Not a streaker showing off her butt to some random paper-pusher.

She jumped and landed almost flat on her front, scrambling a little way into the rows of filing cabinets, breasts dragging against the carpet. She shuffled back, trying to keep between the metal blocks and below the overhang of the floor above.

Was she out of sight? She hoped so. And so long as the TVA sent someone with a TemPad to catch the intruder…

Sylvie rocked back onto all-fours, fingertips nervously digging into the carpet. Not only was she sneaking around with her existence at stake, but she was naked - the ventilated air at the TVA was comfortably warm at least, but she could live without the feeling of the thin carpeting against her knees or chest.

She crawled, slowly, forwards. She didn’t dare stand and look out over the top of the cabinets - they’d know she was in this general area of the TVA now. She had to stay out of sight.

Keeping low, Sylvie shuffled forwards, knees dragging against the ground. There were filing cabinets either side of her, and ahead of her, more cabinets - there, at least, it looked like she might also be able to go left or right, albeit in relative seclusion.

She reached the last cabinet, a new wall in front of her, but with pathways to the side - there were aisles of filing cabinets here too, tall, solid blocks keeping her from view.

Sylvie went still, trying to ignore her racing heart, and listened to hear if anyone was nearby. She’d rather work on robbing a TemPad from some sort of ambush, not just, well, leaping up from the ground.

Grimacing, she slid out, and went right, trying to get a feel for the area. She saw a little movement in the distance, and ducked back into the privacy of the aisle gladly.

That was a start though, if she knew where people were - either they were people to avoid, or people with her way out. Either way, it was worth knowing.

Flushed, she peered out again, focusing on the distant movement. Was that a flash of gold at their waist? She hoped so.

They weren’t looking down; still, she drew back just in case, steeling herself. She scrambled quickly and quietly down a few aisles, then kept crouched, hands and knees on the ground and butt awkwardly sticking up in the air; she tried to lean low, so that peering her head out around the corner kept at as awkward an angle as possible, blonde her trailing across the floor.

That was who she wanted to get to. If she could get one alone, or at least get the pad off them before they got a pruning baton out, she could be out of here and be hoping Yelena had managed to get free too. She really hoped she’d had better luck.

Maybe she could use one of the cabinets somehow? They were heavy. It would be noisy, but so long as she could get out quickly enough…

“There you are,” said a voice from behind her.

Sylvie froze. She was still nude, still on her hands and knees, skin pale and bare and stark against the dark floor, toned butt pointing up almost directly at Ravonna, standing overhead. The judge seemed rather less than pleased with the escapee.

Sylvie swallowed. Mentally, she tried to figure out if there was any way out of this.