They were in a swamp, or, at least, that’s what it looked like now. Maybe it was from the torrential rain that had been falling on and off since he’s been at the hotel, but any bits of nature looked water logged and drowned by the storm that they were currently sitting at the very edge off. When the rain fell it fell like you were being blasted by a hose and your skin was being peeled back by icy little daggers, but when it stopped...it stopped. Everything stopped. The wind. The rain. It was eerily still and quiet, only the sounds of distant rumbling breaking the silence.

Here there were tall trees, but they weren’t like the others he had seen – these had massive trunks and very little branches, all of which were located at the very top. But there was a strange maintained quality about where they landed that made him think that maybe this wasn’t wilderness like the rest, but instead some sort of old base camp.

He hurried away from the starting point while it rained to cover his track and scent, focused on moving toward the direction of Point B and very little else. N the rain, if was impossible to see much further than the length of your arm so he was running mostly blind, only focused on keeping from tripping and injuring himself as he moved.

But suddenly the rain stopped, and he was taken aback to see that they were in a base, but instead seemed to actually be in some sort of suburb that had been evacuated. He saw a cement path and he hurried to it, running down it as his body screamed in protest, already telling him it was time to call it in. He saw a play structure and a couple benches half under water not far off from the path he followed, and as he continued down the path, more and more structures appeared. There were abandoned buildings that seemed like the elements had started to reclaim, the bones of homes and businesses left behind while the rest had been hollowed out. When it had been up and running, it seemed to have been ten times more populated than his own town, but now he felt like he was the only soul left.

When he looked up, lightning flashed across the black and emerald clouds and he caught sight of what he was sure the metal structure of one the domes that the Zerric lived in. He traced it with his gaze and realized that at one point this whole area had been under a dome – the entire town, as all the town and cities in Zerric were - but it seemed to have failed and the storms reclaimed it. Almost all the domes he had been under here had the capability to have sections opened to let fresh air in during more calm periods of the weather, but half the sky was always covered with the slightly green colored material.

It wasn’t long before he had to stop to catch his breath against a building, an as he dragged himself along the wall of what he thought had been a bar, given by what was left over inside, he knew he wouldn’t be able to run much longer.

He might have gotten his usual head start, but that wasn’t going to cut it if he wanted to make it all the way to the end. He was going to have to switch up his tactics if he was going to have a chance.

Thunder rumbled and he glanced around before he started down an alley between two larger buildings, figuring if there was a sliver of a chance that he was going to make it, he was going to make it hiding. He just needed to find a big enough structure to-

He straightened at the sound of quick, heavy footsteps coming down the pathway in the distance, turning to look in the direction of the sound before he whipped around and hurried down the alley to come out the other end in what looked like a downtown area, eyeing a store filled with debris before he carefully entered it, figuring it’d slow down whatever hunter was on his ass. But when he looked around inside, he saw that there was no exit and came back out.

He could hear it though – people were running around now, there was cursing and crying and lots of shouting. Usually it’d drive him into running harder, set a fire under his ass. Now it just scared him. It bugged him on an entirely different level to know his head start hadn’t been much of a head start at all.

He licked his lips and looked around before he started running again with light, quick steps, twisting and turning down street corners, looking around for a proper place to try and rid this hunt out-

Something slammed into him and he flew forward off the street corner he was at, skidding along the cracked pavement to lay face down in the mud with someone on his back. He panicked and immediately started to struggle, but the person that had knocked into him wasn’t trying to grab him. Instead they were scramble off of them to move. He turned and saw that it had been another runner, a hunter umping off a building top to rush after them before they both disappeared around a corner.

Fuck!

He looked around to see flashes of movement, people rushing by, and he suddenly felt very, very small – the tiny little critter at the bottom of food chain, the first one to be picked off because it was wounded. He gritted his teeth and quickly hurried off, glancing around as he moved to try and avoid being within the eye line of any hunter.

“ADAM!”

Adam’s eyes widened and he felt a thrill of panic dance down his back at the sound of his voice being roared out by one of the Zerric, who he was sure had to be Number Four, since he was the only hunter he had given his name to – he had sort of been hoping he wouldn’t show up, but alas. As with the rain here, when his luck was bad, it didn’t just rain, it poured.

Adam narrowly avoided colliding with another runner when he turned a corner, the hunter slipping on a puddle before he recovered to continue his chase, and disappear down a street after a runner. He chewed on the inside of his cheek as he hurried across a street, looking down the way he came to see a familiar looking hunter step around the corner to stop and listen-

It was, in fact, Number Four. Hair was a little longer, there was a scar down one of his cheeks, but it was him alright.

And he looked determined as fuck.

Adam stayed perfectly still as Number Four lifting his nose to smell the air, turning his head to listen intently as another runner rushed past. Adam felt his eyes prickle with tears as the end came washing over him – this was it. He’d be captured, and he’d be stuck down on Zerric.

Which he wasn’t even mad about right now, to be honest. His lungs burned. He felt really fucking sick. He was so tired. He just...didn’t have it in him to run anymore, or fight. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, but at that moment he felt very resigned. He left out a frustrated sigh and Number Four’s head snapped forward in his direction -

And then the sky opened up and what felt like an entire ocean of water was dumped down onto them.

Adam struggled back toward the building to lean against the wall, holding onto one of the metal bars that were sticking out of the bricks as the ground seemed to move with the water. He waited for what felt like nearly an hour, expecting for Number Four to suddenly grab him, but no one came. The water slowly rose, inch by inch before it settled just under his armpits, nearly as cold as the river had been.

And then it all stopped abruptly, and he stared out to where Number Four stood right where he himself had been standing before the rain started.

Thunder roared above and Adam stayed very still, trying to control his breathing and keep his teeth from bouncing off of each other and drawing attention to him. He kept his gaze on the hunter, watching as the larger man looked around before he drudged through the water past where he was against the wall.

Adam blinked hard as the other braced his hands against the wall near by, turning his head this way and that to listen.

Maybe...he had a shot?