22. Secret Passage

In the meantime, in the hospital pantry...

"I knew this would happen" sighed Ah-moo who gave up pretending to be a plant after a few hours. "From the day I was born I knew this was bound to happen some day... Inevitable. No hope. No chance. They're going to take us... We're all going to die here..."

"不要吵lah!" Ah-pui barked, as she tried pulling hard at the doorknob. No use. The door didn't budge. She kept on tugging at the door, hands, legs and everything she tried.

She didn't recognise the large "PUSH" sign on the door.

"We're never going to see father and Ah-mo anymore. They are going to be killed, just like us... We will have to eat the furniture here, then we will have to eat one another, then ourselves... Imagine biting yourself to feed yourself..." he continued.

"不要吵hor! 死Ah-moo!" the impatient Ah-pui threw her rubbish bin at Ah-moo, hitting him squarely on the back of his head.

"And now the sky's falling down on me..."

The bin landed with a crash at a nearby wall after bouncing off Ah-moo's head. As the bin rattled noisily after impact, they looked in that direction and saw a small metallic door in the wall, a square about 20 inches on each side.

The "door" opened quite differently -- instead of hinges by the sides, that was hinged at the bottom. Furthermore, it was very small, and didn't particularly smell nice. Normal people would have at least suspected that it wasn't really a door. But of course, they hadn't been around much on Earth.

Ah-pui pulled it off its hinges and stared down the dark tunnel.