I see the empty dreams

Race across the sky here

I see energy streams

Where the ashes lie here

-

Chapter Caution: Cadavers

「8:17 PM | Cine Undrehart」

Cine could've sworn the world spun in reverse.

A while ago, while they watch her unconscious friend slowly breathing in and out, her boss addressed the following accounts of the girl with the tendrils, then his phone interrupted. She waited for her boss to come back when too many moments had already passed and he hasn't re-emerged from the door of the clinic. So she went outside to ascertain the puzzling, nerve-wracking delay. That, and because she couldn't bear being still any longer after what happened for four minutes between her and Lycas.

Stepping outside, she found his boss standing stiffly and had his fist dripping with his blood. His phone in a crushing grip.

The phone call.

Cine didn't hear any single peep or whoever called him, but she figured much that the talk was anything but pleasant. But she never expected it would cause seething anger to his boss. Especially to his boss.

He remained stiff and eerily silent. His dark eyes glowering at the tiled floor.

"Mister Edrun?" she managed to whisper. 

Light flashed in his dark eyes. A prick of emotion disgusted her because for a second she was afraid. Afraid of him. 

Without giving her a response, he closed his eyes.

Cine knew the world had spun back to its normal direction. The opposite of what she saw from his features was gone.

Yet the disgusting feeling lingered like a ghost inside her body.

"The call." His voice was controlled. "It made me forget myself."

"I see," was all Cine could say.

"Why you are still here?"

Cine flinched. Her boss didn't react much as hers, except to normally look at the person who called them out. It was the girl, Aglen, looking back and forth between her and her boss. Although Cine still has yet to know about the girl, her boss had already informed what she needs to know about the girl. And it's the fact that the girl is apparently not a human and had murdered Lycas' friends.

As if the girl somewhat sensed her thoughts, the girl took a brief moment to stare at her in the eye, before giving a burning look toward her boss.

"Didn't he called you?" the girl asked with a dripping insult from her tone of voice.

"He did," her boss calmly said. "If we're going to leave right away, you should have urged the others as well, Miss Aglen."

The way her boss slurred his honorifics to the girl sounded like it was a word of profanity.

"They are not stupid," the girl retorted with a frown. 

In that moment, Lycas and the young man stepped outside; both looked crestfallen.

No, Lycas was crestfallen. The young man has a look of mild frustration. They were looking at the girl for a brief moment, before diverting their gazes agonizingly slowly.

Eyes widening, Lycas eyed her and her boss, before taking a quick look around. "What—Ashe is not with you?"

"She's still resting in the cubicle," Cine told him, but he shook his head at that. "She's not there."

"Perhaps she went to the bathroom," offered her boss.

This time, it was the girl shaking her head. "No one there."

They took a minute search inside the clinic, perhaps missing her by other corners. However, it was as her partner told her; her friend disappeared.

-

It was more than a half of their destination, little time they wasted, that they stopped briefly to observe people slacked on the ground in fair length of distance.

Everyone was hesitant, but not Lycas. Cine watched her partner teetered one step at a time at first, before pacing faster, then halting, suddenly frozen in place.

The young man caught his breath in realization as he fought his convulsion with a slap to the mouth.

They were indeed people. Their bodies contorted in the opposite direction. Fractured bones on the inside, miraculously without shedding blood. Some with ruptured noses buried to their faces. Some with hollow skulls. Eyes opened wide and rolled up, showing their mere white sclerae that lifelessly gazed at the ceiling. Mouths slackly opened, jaw dislocated. Saliva flowed on one corner. They looked like they couldn't breathe until their deaths. Terror plastered on their faces. Tears rolled down their cheeks.

All are their peers in the InerOrg.

Cine's chest felt constricted, and her heart seemed to be palpitating for more blood. She felt the gravity pushing down on her. Pressure and disquietude inside her body in an indescribable twist. Muscles tensed. Simply breathing in and out was difficult to do.

"Chief was right," her boss begun to say, sounding a little restrained in speech. "This is the same mutilated body in the reports."

Cine didn't have to take a second or two to comprehend his statement; the mutilated bodies in front of them were just as the same way the man, the traitor in the news, had been treated. "So that means..."

"Yes. This was done by our other traitor."

"But," Cine paused for a moment, thinking more logically despite the horror. "One couldn't do it alone...unless it's-"

The girl spoke in-between them, stepping forward without ever looking down on the columns of corpses. "Someone like me."

Halls encompassing their dead comrades stretched far too long until the exit doors were in sight, arriving the ground floor of the mall. The young man was vomiting on the nearby trash once more, sobbing at the same time. It made sense to Cine why he was in such a pitiful state. For her part, she doesn't even know what to feel, except to think and think, and think—

—when thinking did not help her for once.

The middle part of the mall was crowded with retail employees huddled in a small circle, landing stomps and hard kicks to a man tied up and gagged on the floor. It was the Chief.

Surrounding the circle of people were another group of beings Cine knew weren't passable for humans. Although their figures are similar to a human shadow, their skins— or what look to be like skins— were black as the pit of the black hole in the universe. At the far left of the scene was Ashe sitting on a shoulder of the same utmost black being as on the circle. Strange-looking circlets, the color of the darkest blue skies, were hovering and spinning in one orbit above her drooping head.

Horrified, Cine wondered why her friend was there, looking ever so unconscious until she heard the distorted voice that originated from the utmost black being.

"About time. Do not worry. I will not kill Chief."

The listless, efficient manner of speaking was of Ashe's.

「Lycas」

As if magnetized by a mysterious force, I begin running, charging towards the circle without hesitation, without thinking, without knowing exactly what I'm doing. I did a slide tackle that took one of the creatures to trip and fall.

I just remembered, my first encounter with one was elephant heavy. But this creature is light as a cat. Two meters tall. Stumbling easily. Like a bowling ball did to a pin. Getting up, I make my way across.

Cussing is what I want to do in the crowd. But I feel like I'm already wasting time shouting and shoving them away to get to the Chief immediately.

Slow movements came from a handful rest of the creatures, probably planning to stop me. The Chief is still groaning as I approach him. I know he'll be okay. His past experiences as an ex-soldier that made him tougher tell me that.

I didn't say a word to him, just my hands doing the work for me as they search inside his coat. To my luck, my pistol is still inside his coat pocket. With a swift movement that mimics the Chief, I aim my pistol at the nearest black creature.

Anger swelling inside my gut, tightening the corset of my throat, up to my gritting teeth, the image of the guys I met earlier—  to those who were lying still with lifeless gaze, urine, saliva, and tears stayed like a backdrop inside my head—

I eye the black creature slowly closing in at me, then look at the surrounding civilians backing away in fear. I look back up at the creature.

Do something first. Regret it later.

Like that night, I keep my gun hold firm but not tight with a steady breathing, just as how the Chief had taught me to shoot. I remembered what he had once said before in my training, echoing once inside my head.

If only to save somebody else's, I guess we all have to learn how to harm a life.

I ignore the dark pit from my stomach and squeeze the trigger.

The bullet flies through the creature's body, like thrusting a hand into the air. The people panicked at the firing sound, forgetting the creatures that surround them, or that they didn't know the creatures were there behind them.

I remembered that the creature we had from earlier is much more reactive with the gunshots. But this one didn't even flinch. It simply grabs a screaming person by the collar, having me to shoot another bullet at him, just to steal its attention. It worked. The screaming person got away thankfully, although the person looks at me like I'm the one killing everybody. That's fine. I'm too focused to care. Distracted.

Lunging before the creature reacts, I send it a few yards away. The feel of its body in my arms was like a balloon without the rubber itself; a body made of compressed air. Definitely different from the first one I tackled. Carefully I back up close to the Chief, shooting another creature coming close to spare me few seconds to think ahead of what to do next.

A thought pops into my head, confused and a little anxious why the creatures are too easy to get away with, unlike my first time dealing one. But I didn't have the calm mind to figure the puzzles out. From the racket, I hear the Chief's muffled screaming, like he's warning me to something, or that he's demanding to be free right now. He's kicking me from the legs, making me bend while standing.

"What—!"

I feel myself being lifted up off the floor effortlessly, my head being compressed that felt like hand and not at the same time. Without my bodily permission, the unnatural thing on my head spins me around to face what's behind me. Another black creature.

I just recently noticed, that these black creatures don't have those black eyes like I've seen before. They don't even have eyes.

The gun I aimed for the black arm on my head was swatted away before I could fire, leaving me defenseless. A crushing pain takes over my skull. My mind screeching. Ears pounding from the screaming.

I think I heard a gunfire. Been dropped to the floor.

Head numb. It hurts. The world is swaying and wobbling.

I look up, remembering that it helps somehow, but I think I made it even worse. My throat feels so sore, I must've been screaming while in pain. Something is leaking from my eyes. 

I try getting up, but kaleidoscopes in my head are not letting me.

I blink back— what is it— tears from my eyes while I'm gazing at someone in the distance by chance. A little figure— a child? It's a little girl.

Running crowds.

Crowds panicking shitless.

My fault.

Some hands or arms yanking me to my feet, but I push them off. A person is running in the little girl's direction while I close in the distance between me and her like a madman. I shove her out of the stampede, taking all the hit instead. Things happen in speed— blurry. I feel blood streaking on my face. Too much thinking or moving is painful.

There's a small foot next to me.

Oh, it's the little girl I just shoved. She looks at me with wild eyes and screams painfully to my ears. I think I heard okay from her statement. A question? What? Then my tummy— glad nothing hurt there— felt a vice squeeze of someone's arms. 

Then explosions, and booming, cracking blocks of cement overlapping the racket all around.

Enduring the throbbing pain in my head and neck, I dart up—

I feel my eyes

they're widening

in horror.

---☆--||--★---

If you find this decent, feed me a star, will you please? :>

Joie de vivre.