Chapter 9: Night of the living virus (2)

*Huff* *Huff* *Huff*

My breath came in rugged huffs as I ran through the thick undergrowth of the forest surrounding the island with all my might.

"Shit!" 

I could not help but curse under my breath when I thought of the magnitude of the sheer stupidity I had committed. I berated myself as a fucking idiot. I thought it would be awesome introducing a genocidal virus which inflated the bodies of its targets before rapturing them like a frag-grenade. The virus would spread upon contact with any matter from the exploded host but what I failed to account for was the fact that I didn't take my own immunity to the virus into account when I gave that prison warden some funny ideas.

The dude must have had an overactive imagination because unlike the single stick of TNT type of explosion I was expecting when the host burst apart, they instead exploded with the force of a mini truck load of TNT. I don't exactly know what I was expecting basing the virus off of the imagination of dude high on drugs and it certainly wasn't this!

On top of having to survive devastating shockwaves from the blasts going on behind me, I also had to avoid the good guy shrapnel flying hundreds of meters in all directions. The only saving grace to this was that the hosts of the viruses exploded like literal fireworks on steroids so there were all those flashy colors and whistling sounds giving me a clear view of the trajectories of the meaty shrapnel so I could easily dodge those and avoid infection.

As I ran through the forest, my mind was screaming for me to get off this island and to get off fast. For that, I needed a boat and I could only get a boat on one of the piers at the north side of the island, the exact direction I was heading towards.

Just as I was running and tumbling through the forests, an overwhelming sense of crisis suddenly washed over me and my running immediately came to a stop. I was out of range of people who could act as observers to fuel my shadow leaping ability so right now I was as harmless as a fly with no powers to speak of. I had no choice but to go on both my hands and knees before I began to slowly crawl over the dense carpet of fallen and dried leaves making my way forward careful to avoid making any loud noises.

Soon, my crisis intuition was proved correct when I heard low voices speaking ahead of me.

I peeked through the branches of the undergrowth in front of me and my eyes immediately narrowed to their limits.

Rebels…. A squad of around twenty-five rebels were moving through a wide path in the forest looking around vigilantly with their eyes trained on their gun sights as they surveyed the forest around them.

"An escort." I could not help muttering to myself when I saw a girl in prisoner's clothing similar to mine standing in the midst of them flanked by a pair of twins who radiated an intimidating aura.

The girl was utterly breath-taking with an ethereal type of beauty which had me holding my breath for a moment as I forgot to breathe. Her stunning porcelain white skin seemed to glow with a translucent white light under the illumination of the moon and her exquisitely beautiful face was set in a lovely pout as her silver brows were furrowed in deep contemplation whilst her silver eyes and silver lashes fluttered as she surveyed the way ahead of the group.

A soft breeze kicked up her lustrous ankle-length locks of silver hair and sent it hugging the lustrous curves of her sensuous hour-glass figure as though hiding it from my prying eyes. 

I saw the girl's supple shoulders flinch before she suddenly whipped her head around and stared dead into my eyes. This time I forgot to breathe for an entirely different reason. I felt my muscles tense and a sheen of cold sweat dampen my body as my heart started pounding madly on my rib cage as though begging to escape on its own and leave my body which refused to respond or move no matter how hard I tried.

The eyes that looked at me were the eyes of a predator eyeing its prey. They exerted a profound amount of pressure upon me keeping me rooted to my thoughts as my fight or flight instincts short-circuited and merely went into freeze. I was like a deer staring into headlights and these headlights were not those of a magic car, they were those of a three-meter tall armored Antinite freight trained designed to plough through mountains.

  A few seconds which felt like hours slowly ticked by before the girl's eyes left mine and looked elsewhere. The breath I had been holding up until now finally managed to escape from my lungs leaving me slumping onto the ground like a spent rag. I had a feeling that I had been spared from a sure demise and I did not like that feeling.

"Did you notice something lady Elmensia?"  One of the twins asked her in a hushed tone as he warily looked around my general direction which the girl had been staring at.

The girl shook her head and answered in a soft voice which sent sharp bolts of electricity running down my spine, "Nothing, it was just a rat."

I did not know how to feel about being called a rat but hey, all is fine that ends well right? That's exactly where I was wrong.

It did not take long for one of the scouting rebels to notice an ancient portable depilated shrine with a candle lit inside of it hidden amongst the shrubs. When the rebel inched closer to investigate, there was the sudden sound of a whip cracking and then all hell broke loose.

(A/N: Hello guys, I'm finally free from my exams so I can finally write freely and enjoy this journey with the lot of you. I will be releasing a chapter each day until further notice because that is what my student schedule currently allows so you can buckle up. Allow me to apologize for the long delay. The exams where tough and I had a lot of lecture content to go through until I was ready for the exams so I had to take a long break from my author writing practice so I beg for your understanding. Without further ado, please enjoy and feel free to berate me for any mistakes I make and the content you deem worthy of change and unsatisfactory. I am writing this novel as practice for the real book I want to write but I will still try to see this through to the end. For those who took their time to read this, a huge thanks!!!)