CHAPTER 26 – T-minus (12)

Arrow; right at the heart. That damned place again. Why did it have to be that? Why must I bear with another heart thing again?

I feel touches around my body, when in a frozen stance. Feeling everything numb, after Scelestha had touched me, not so inappropriate-ly.

Jokes. I felt funny. Jokes kept me awake. I had to laugh. I couldn't.

I see glimpses, thanks to barely blacking out.

I get placed on a bed… hopefully. I see Scelestha for a moment, and black out for another second there. And as I barely gain the frozen consciousness again…

"Do you have anything which-" Scelestha says and before she even finishes.

"-Freezes him? Like you had done for Witch?" I hear Feather, and feel something poke into me, but no pain. "Not that extensive technology, but this is a numbing drug. Very effective combination which even had put me in a bad state. Trust me, that's hard to do."

I hear a thud.

"What?" Forcerer asks. "Are you okay?"

"Just," Scelestha says and footsteps race away.

Time passes by, I keep getting hit by the freezing drug, but lose consciousness a lot, because of my heart. I even hear this, Grandpa, talk about my heart's bad condition. But only if they knew why it had occurred…

How much time had it been? Probably years passed. At least months. Had they escaped this… game which Saturn Organisation had brought upon?

I don't see Psyand's mother by my side anymore. But rather, the Grandpa finally seems to be the one who comes to my side. I deeply wish for zero bad news.

"Your team is saving everyone. But they won't be able to see you. I'll take care of you," Grandpa says, and for the first time in a while, I could hear properly. "Be a good boy and wake up for them."

I feel cold hands brush my hair, and a soft smile. But coldness and the softness disappear.

"Wake up!" Grandpa's voice comes as a slamming door. "Wake up! I said wake up! Why don't you wake up?! Everyone is worried for you! Wake up! WAKE UP!"

***

Having taken the role to take a stroll along the building, and check on everyone's safety, even when they had hid from us the whole day, I get ready to take my third stroll. Now at 7, in the morning.

from Witch and Lost-Bird, who were now sleeping, I get ready to take my third stroll. Now at 7, in the morning.

"Really nothing suspicious on the cameras…" Psyand gives me a confirmation, before I leave.

Lost-Bird and Witch were in-charge for the checking, about half of the night. And now when they were resting, it was me, Psyand and her mom, in-charge now.

"You both be careful please," I say, for the third time, and go up the stairs, barely waiting around this time for a reply.

People had learnt to stay indoors, thanks to a whole pandemic. So there was no one planning on going outside. But looking at me, people shuddering this early in the morning, not because of the cold but this person who wanted to protect them… I finally understood how the authorities who were responsible of the lockdown must have felt. At least there was no kind of riot here. Yet.

On my way back down, after looking around the whole building, right when at the stairs of the second floor, I hear screaming from far behind me.

I rush towards the sound.

Locked door.

I remember the words of Crystal-cave; forming a shield in my hands, I rush the shield and my body towards the door, and break it to a waste.

Rushing forward, gasping, and I stop at the scene of people in a shock. Except for few people… who had fallen dead on the floor, with their insides now fallen outside, on the floor.

People look at me with hopeful eyes. They scream and look towards the still window, gasping.

"W-what happened?" I ask, and look at everyone. "Who…"

"Ma…" someone whimpers, going closer to a female's now-corpse. "Pa…" she says, at another one, while tearing up.

I look across the room, feeling something, but there just is a wall. An empty wall. Without even a little dent or scratch or painting or design or anything. Just a plain wall.

I smell the oozy aura of the bodies, and feel a chunk of my stomach trying to pop out of my mouth.

***

As I wake up in the morning, I see Witch still resting across the room. But hearing noises arriving from outside, which also had woken me up, I just step outside, wondering how Witch was also a heavy sleeper.

I see a whole crowd, crowded towards the entrance. And I see Rusk, Psyand, and Psyand's mother at the forefront, talking to the crowd. More like, negotiating with them.

"You can't help us!" a person shrieks in Tamil.

"We are doing our best," I hear Psyand's mother saying, in a very different accent.

"We would choose life than chance!"

"Please just calm down!" Rusk says in English. And I recall him saying how he couldn't speak, but understand the languages.

I push through the crowd and go to the fore-front. Rusk seems very happy, finding me awake, as he says…

"Took you long enough to wake up."

"What are all of you doing here?" I ask to the crowd, in Kannada.

"We are going out. We will go with whoever is behind this, than stay put," someone replies back.

"Think for a bit. They are the villains," I reply.

"How do we know you are not? You do some show for new year, doesn't make you special."

"If they come for a moment here, it could be any of us dying. We don't want to die."

"Tell them that Saturn Organisation won't just choose not to stab in their back," Rusk says in English.

Before I say anything-

"-You say that," somebody replies back in English, shivering with every word. "But who do we trust? None. But who is stronger? You, who uses petty tricks? Or them, who literally look like they can burn us all down?"

"But we are truly trying to save you here," I say in Kannada, with only the 'save' part in English, directing to the whole crowd.

"Save? Do you not know?" somebody replies in English.

"Many have died," the person replies in English.

"When you were SLEEPING, many already got killed by them. And those animals laughed at us and went away, as a warning to us. SAVE it seems," somebody says in Kannada, saying 'save' part in English, like me.

People… had already died?

"They came into the building this morning. When you were sleeping…" the shivering lady says again, in English, still shivering. "I saw my family…" she shakily breathes.

People comfort her, as others growl and glare at us.

I and Witch had taken strolls. We were around the building. That is why we were sleeping. And then Rusk was supposed to…

I look at Rusk, and he trembles.

"We reached there late…" Rusk says. "But that… that was impossible."

"They didn't appear on cameras," Psyand says.

"The kid says we are lying," the same lady says in Kannada, and cries and scoffs.

Psyand's mother steps between the people and Psyand.

"Corpses can be faked?" someone asks in Kannada.

"So will you rather kill us?" I ask.

Everyone gets silent, even if I had used English.

"If they tell us to," the lady sniffles. "I will kill the incompetent people who couldn't save my family."

People push Rusk aside, and he just stays at the ground, expression-less. They just rush outside, and so do I, after seeing how Psyand's mother had safely protected Psyand, and moved aside from the rushing crowd.

"Please!" I try to grab people by their shoulders, but they just push me away.

I look back at Rusk, who is just staring at everyone go. I realise that he had given up now, after putting blame of the deaths, on himself. I realise all those words people had used, was not on us, it was at Rusk.

I still helplessly follow the crowd, as they reach the entrance, and the edge of the glass-dome.

"We all have chosen your side. Please let us go," somebody says.

"We will obey anything you say. We are a lot of people. We'll be enough."

There were about eighty people here.

"We'll even get more people."

"We'll do anything."

Yet… every message of theirs had lesser and lesser words now. With zero words spoken back to them.

"It is dangerous, please…" I say.

And to second my words, the Exterior-Beings showup, and before even the first scream, couple people fall to the ground. Everybody scatters and runs. Some get hunted, some let someone else get hunted and just make their run.

Me? I freeze at my track. The side of the happening, where people were running to now.

I see one person left behind. In between the corpses and the Exterior-Beings. And this person was the same lady who had lost her family. And she was frozen now. I could only see her back.

Again, I get reminded of someone else at the moment. And again, it becomes my strength, and I run the direction the people are avoiding. I run to the person who is unable to.

There was once a time, a time when I hadn't. When I saw the vehicle coming to crash into that one person, to kill her, as she stood there, and so did I. She didn't want to move, and I couldn't. I just let her get hurt.

I hadn't even moved when I saw her fallen on the ground, with blood falling out of her skin, from everywhere. Yet she had moved, and sat down, still unable to die. I couldn't get myself to watch such gore, yet kept staring, until she stared back and looked at me.

I rush forward, while persistently running through the Exterior-Beings who are out for some flesh. Mindlessly, even while knowing I was so.

I grab this person and I cover her. I can't just…

As I cover this unknown lady, the Exterior-Beings pounce at us, and I get thrown alongside her, in my grasp, to the edge of the glass-dome. Like a brick thrown from one side, and crashed me into the cold glass-dome. Yet… why is there coldness felt on both my sides?