Page 33 of A Sea of Secrets
The sound of footsteps zoomed towards me, light and sure, and a spark of hope ignited in my chest like a small, fuzzy thing that lit up the cavity of despair inside me. Or would have, if not for the bloodcurdling scream that erupted nearby. Then another, not far off. That spark in me fluttered like the dying flame of a wick. The screaming didn’t stop.
“Kendra,” I yelled, trying to be heard over the insanity unfolding around me. “Where are you?”
Someone knocked me so hard that the breath wheezed out of me. I tumbled to the ground, knees scraping on the hard cementas I doubled over. And still more screams rang out, everywhere and all at once, the voices all swimming in my head until I couldn’t tell one from the next.
Fuck! Which way was I going?
A light clicked on from a generator some ways ahead. I blinked, trying to adjust to the brightness that now blinded me… and wished I hadn’t. Because straight ahead, not five metres from where I lay, was one of the Potentials from my group. He might have been a welcome sight, were it not for the fact he was banging his head against a wall. Repeatedly.
My stomach churned as each hit became more violent than the last. And all the while he was screaming as he banged his skull. Blood splattered the wall, dripping down his face in spades. And somehow, over all the chaos, I heard the grotesque wetness of his brain matter mashing against the wall until one finalcrackfinished the job and he went down like a sack of potatoes.
Holy fuck. Holy fucking fuck.Alarm bells fired in my head as a high-pitched shriek that might have been Dick echoed through the room.
“No,” I breathed. “No, no, no.”
We didn’t come all this way together to be killed so brutally. I didn’t know if it was in the air, like a chemical making everyone crazy, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out.
More lights flicked on, revealing Potentials scattered across the room—some I hadn’t even seen before. Was this some sort of web connecting to other chambers? My heart skipped a beat. Would the guys find themselves here, too? I looked around for them, but all I could see were Potentials in varying states of distress—some looked as though they had ghastly sunburns, others had freshly drenched clothes and more were covered in blood.
Cautiously, I kept an eye out for the thing that had shouted at me. Nothing. Not a single red or yellow eye, nor a glimpse of a fang or horn. I’d either imagined it or the chemical in the air was losing its effect on me. I wouldn’t wish this shit on anyone. I just needed to put my big girl panties on and remember who I was. My name was Fallon Auger, and no noxious cloud or demonic spirit was going to stop me. If this was a video game, I just needed to level up so I could make it to the boss stage.
I gritted my teeth. Game. Fucking. On.
The heat from the floodlights warmed my blood enough to propel me forward. One final scan of the room revealed no demons or monstrosities lurking nearby, and that was enough for me. I tried to run, but my legs turned to jelly as I put one wobbling foot in front of the other. What the hell? I blinked, suddenly seeing four legs instead of two. Okay, not good. Not good at all. There was definitely some kind of toxin being pushed out from that generator and it hadnotlost its effect.
I squinted around the room for my friends and blurrily saw Dick and Lou dragging a half-conscious Kendra along the side of a wall, taking care to avoid the manic gaze of Potentials gone mad. My stomach flipped at the sight of my friend’s limp body.
Kendra was my rock. A saint in a world full of vile, evil things. No chance in hell was I going to let anything happen to her. The fact the air had gotten to her so quickly… it didn’t bode well for the rest of us. But at least she hadn’t turned into a total psycho yet. We could still survive this.
Slowly, so painfully slowly, I stumbled towards them. Skirting around Potentials was easier said than done, though. I didn’t dare look too hard at the shapes darting across my vision—or at the horrid things they were doing to each other.
All around me, I saw flashes of blood and bone, leering smiles and the whites of eyes rolled so far back into people’s heads I was surprised they hadn’t popped… no. This was toofreaking much for one damn day. Fuck this. I ran like it was my last day on Terrulia because this circus was more batshit crazy than any insane asylum could ever compete with. And I was on a fast track to crazy town myself unless I got out of here. Hell, that was being optimistic. Even if I did escape, there was no telling if the toxins in my body would clear out of my system any time soon.
Someone’s face popped into my vision, and I screeched, snapping out my fist so fast I almost fell over.
A high-pitched scream answered.
I blinked, seeing the very terrified face of my friend. “Oh my god. Dick? I’m so s-sorry.” A hysterical laugh bubbled up my throat as I realised it was just him and not a monster, but I locked that shit down asap.
“Fallon.” He glared at me, but his shoulders wilted in relief. “We gotta get Kendra out of here.” He gave me a once-over. “And you, too. Never thought I’d say this, but you look like shit.”
“S-so kind of you to… to notice.”
“Whatever is in that filtration system is kicking in hard. It seems to affect us all differently,” Lou whispered frantically to Dick. “Fallon has been exposed the longest and isn’t going to last much more. We need to move.”
Understatement of the century.But I couldn’t get those words out. My lips moved, but trying to piece the sentence together felt like slogging through mud. And moving my feet… I stumbled into Lou, who grabbed me gently, somehow bearing the brunt of my now leaden body.
Dick tossed Kendra’s limp body over his shoulder. If I hadn’t been so out of it, I’d have remembered to be impressed, but then we were moving, my feet half dragging over the floor as Lou used the wall to help leverage my body.
“So pretty,” I said through a grin as I stared at Lou’s face. The headlight framed her head, making her blonde hair, whichseemed to remain perfectly fluffed and curled, look like a golden ray of sunshine in this hellhole.
She just patted me on the cheek and pulled me along like a ragdoll.
“There!” Dick shouted suddenly.
I tried to see what he was vigorously pointing at, but I couldn’t make out left from right anymore. “Sooo hot,” I mumbled.
“Yes. Lou is very beautiful,” Dick said a little irritably. “Focus, Fallon.”
