What Happens When You Don't Stop.

Hey everyone and thank you all for your support so far. It's been amazing. So here is my own effort at using a prompt from the audience. The prompt allotted me was a first sentence from Elise that went as follows: "He jumped up the stairs one at a time using his damaged right leg, leaving behind him a trail of blood reminding all of the incident which caused his left foot to be cut clean from his leg."

So here it goes:

He jumped up the stairs one at a time using his damaged right leg, leaving behind him a trail of blood reminding all of the incident which caused his left foot to be cut clean from his leg.
The mobile bridge was slowly pivoting away from the far shore just as he stumbled onto it and the supply train from Azur I disappeared into the iron structures of Eyeball 35. He knew he wouldn’t make it but he refused to stop. He had worked too hard to get to this point; the plan had been perfect, a work of art, really, except for that unfortunate Ancient Laser incident a year back, when he was constructing the Complete Immunity Suit that would allow him to survive the crossing from his dying city to the promised land of Eyeball 35, where the supply trains took Azur’s life blood, the precious axrun ore, to build the ships that sailed the Emptiness Between. The Head’s police had been called to his warehouse then; they’d seen his severed foot, given him a first aid kit and a warning: whatever you’re doing, stop. We will not hesitate to remove you to the Lower Lands.
He hadn’t stopped. He couldn’t. It was his life’s work, his very own sweat and tears poured into his escape plan, though he didn’t think of it as escape but more as a voyage like those of the explorers of old, the discoverers of the Upper Pelvic Area and such heroes of a forgotten and better past.
In any case, the Head’s police had caught up with him tonight, in the last moments of the sunset, just as he was about to jump on the supply train through the hole he’d cut in the shielding tube. They’d ordered him to stop, one last time. He’d disobeyed, a capital crime for an Azurian. They’d shot him as he stepped onto the maintenance stairs that led to the bridge. Fortunately, the shot had missed his head and instead butchered his right leg, so he’d hobbled on, his prosthetic foot clanking on the metal steps, his blood draining away like his city’s life.
He thought of the last radio message from Ania, his only contact in Eyeball 35. He’d been so eager to meet her. Maybe see the sun from her windows, the sun that had deserted Azur I for so long, now.
Well, that wouldn’t happen. But he was damned if they would get Ania’s name out of him. Contact between Azurians and Eyeballis was also a capital crime. He could never lead them back to her.
So, as the bridge pulled away from the far, forbidden shore, he jumped.

Vincent Mackay