When I opened my eyes, I was lying flat on my back. The dust had collected around me. There was pressure weighing heavily on my abdomen and right arm. At first, I didn’t register the pain, but as soon as I looked, the agony overcame me. The weight of the debris on my stomach made it hard to breathe. Each inhale ragged, and I couldn't let out an exhale.
I tried to wiggle my way out. With each movement, another part of my stomach was being ripped open. By this point, the circulation was being cut off from the rest of my arm.
“Are you guys ok?”
I looked up, it was Keira. She managed to hold some of the debris up with her vines and whipped them to the side out of my field of view.
“Not really!” Stefan yelled.
“We’ll get you guys out!” Lucas reassured us.
I could hear Stefan approaching me. His footsteps sounded uneven and clumsy. I was able to look over and see him. He had his hand on the back of his head. Blood was pouring from the wound. I struggled some more to get out, to no avail.
“I can help,” his words were slurred.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He said nothing but started pulling the chunks of debris off me. At one point he had to take his hand off his bleeding head to get more strength. Within seconds I was free, in excruciating pain, but free.
“Hey man, are you ok?” I walked towards Stefan.
He fell drunkenly to his knees. He was breathing heavily and squinting his eyes closed. “Sure.”
“Shoot! We gotta get you help immediately.”
I looked around to see if there was any way out. The stairs were now obliterated. Our exit was gone. There wasn’t a ceiling anymore, which was the only benefit. If we could somehow climb out of here, that would be great.
“Guys! If you move to the side of the room, I can pull you up,” it was Keira.
“Easier said than done!” I yelled back up.
I kneeled down next to Stefan. His eyes were still closed, and he was occasionally wincing in pain. The last thing I wanted was to ask him to move in the state he was in. The guy was usually a giant, but now in his hunched state, he looked so tiny.
“Keira says we have to move,” I told him quietly.
“Move?”
“She can send down vines to get us.”
He shook his head slowly, “I don’t think I can.”
I put my hand on his shoulder, “I’ll help you.”
He sighed before finally agreeing. I reached under his armpit and attempted to pull him to his feet. He was unstable and leaning heavily on me. We walked as slowly as we could to the other side of the room.
Part of me was expecting the others to send someone else down. I knew they didn’t want to do that because it was riskier. I wasn’t starting to feel very good myself. The bleeding was even close to stopping, and I could feel myself starting to get light-headed.
When we reached the end of the room, Keira already had a vine waiting for us. “Unfortunately I can only lift one of you at a time.”
“No problem. Get Stefan first.”
Her vine wrapped itself around him. Every so slowly, she lifted him upwards. There were still jagged pieces of debris everywhere. One wrong move, and he’ll be impaled or smashed into it.
Once he reached the top, Lucas and Clarisse brought him away from the edge. I could hear them gushing and worrying from here.
“Ok, you’re up!” Keira yelled.
I walked over to the vine. It wasn’t my first time having her hoist me up somewhere with her vines. She wrapped it around my abdomen. Probably the worst spot she could’ve been as more pain exploded from the area.
She slowly brought me up. The light from the sunset was washed out all around her. Splashes of orange and yellow blocked out the background. The only thing I could see was her.
Before I knew it, I was back on my feet. As soon as I was semi-stable, she wrapped her arms tightly around me, “Thank god you're ok.”
I was uncomfortable, to say the least. “Yup, somewhat.”
Once we were patched up to the best of our abilities, we had to leave. The building, albeit old, had no reason to collapse as severely as it did. Could I just be overthinking things? Perhaps, but it was all too convenient that just as we reached the kids again, the building went down.
Believe me, I wasn’t opposed to leaving as quickly as possible, but I felt like we were on the cusp of figuring things out. Just knowing this annoyed me immensely.
The insanely slow journey back to the campsite in the middle of the dark was the least of our worries. Stefan could barely walk in a straight line so I guess that was a problem. Lucas and Clarisse had that pretty much under control.
“Well, this doesn’t look good,” I said as I laid eyes on what used to be our campsite.
The place was beyond demolished. Our tents were on the ground with long slash marks running on them. Our food was nothing but scraps for wild animals to enjoy. The ground looked like someone had just bulldozed over it with razor blades. Oh yeah, there were also five monstrous wolves waiting to eat us.
“Shoot! Come on!” Lucas whispered to us.
We ran away as quietly as we could. Despite it being an actual forest, there weren’t many places we could hide. Climbing a tree was dangerous and stupid because eventually, we would starve while they waited for us. There were cliffs nearby that we considered jumping from if it wasn’t too far to the bottom. Unfortunately, it was. Our last ditch effort was well, a ditch. Close to the river, some rocks formed a small shallow enclosure.
We managed to get under it without being spotted. The sound of everyone breathing heavily was making me nervous. It was so quiet elsewhere I was afraid that they would be able to find us just on that sound alone. There weren’t even crickets chirping.
Lucas gave us a side eye before gingerly walking out from the enclosure. He lifted his head ever so slightly to see above the ditch. That’s when I heard the growling and the rugged sound of their footsteps. He quickly ducked back down.
“Clarisse, I need you to use your ability. If you can freeze them, then, I can create a barrier around us,” Keira instructed.
“All fine in theory, but you need to use your hands to activate your ability. You can’t plug your ears at the same time,” Lucas warned.
“Oh for Pete’s sake, I’ll put my hand around her ears,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Clarisse asked.
Lucas looked up again, “We don’t really have the time to decide.”
I put my hands around her ears. I looked over to Clarisse and nodded my head. She took a deep breath and clapped her hands together.
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