Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon so please refrain from suing me for writing fan fiction

Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon so please refrain from suing me for writing fan fiction. Thanks and enjoy!

Kari was beginning to get frantic. She wanted out of the cave and she wanted to see what was happening to the others. She wanted to try and help her brother.

But Matt was still holding onto her, knowing what she would do if he let her go.

"Do you think the others are all right?" TK whimpered, his voice sounding frail and hollow.

"I don't know, TK," Matt admitted.

Kari struggled against the older boy's grip at the mention of the others, but it was useless as he was stronger than she.

Matt's grip loosened ever so slightly and Kari felt him shudder before breaking free of his arms.

Then she was racing for the cave entrance as another coughing fit overtook Matt.

"Kari, come back!" Matt choked as he hacked.

"Kari!" TK cried out.

But Kari had already left the cave. The shouts of her two friends back in the cave went unheard to her as she ran away.

She ran back into the forest, back to where they had been camped. It was silent now. Quite suddenly she tripped over something.

Her feet were wet from whatever she had tripped over. Kari looked at what it was and swallowed her scream.

It was Sora. Or at least, she was pretty sure it was Sora--it was hard to tell after what Tai had done to her.

Her face was livid, beaten beyond recognition and her eyes were barely visible through the thick coating of blood. The left side of her head was the worst--her skull had splintered and bits of the chalky-white bone were in her bloodied hair. Her blue hat covered the right side of her head and it too was stained with the bright liquid.

Kari looked down to her feet and took a shuddering breath. The liquid was blood. Sora's blood.

He killed her. She--she's dead! Kari's mind was screaming.

Something was shining in the moonlight and she squinted to see what it was. Metal. Sharp. Knife.

Without thinking, Kari had picked up the knife. She held it, looking at the surface, then looked back over to Sora.

It was unnatural to see Sora--somebody she knew and trusted so brutalized, so horribly hurt.

Kari quickly closed her eyes, trying to blot out the scene, but still she could see the image of Sora's broken skull and battered face behind her closed eyes.

I have to find the others. Mimi, Joe, Izzy. Tai. They need help, she thought to herself.

Kari shakily got to her feet, knife still tightly gripped in her hand and raced back into the forest, leaving the body of Sora back where they had been camped.

She soon reached the fork in the road and followed the path Joe, Mimi, Izzy and Tai had taken. It wasn't long before she heard screams. Mimi was screaming. And cries of pain--somebody was being hurt.

The realization made the eight-year-old girl run even faster. Within seconds she was out of the thickest part of the forest and at the edge of a cliff. She arrived just in time to see Tai throwing Joe off the cliff.

Joe's cries faded and she shuddered at the horrible way they were silenced. Then Tai was after Izzy, hitting him with enough force to send the younger boy crashing to the ground.

"Stop it!" Kari screamed. "Tai, why are you doing this?!"

Her brother turned from Izzy and for a brief moment his eyes showed a fleeting flicker of fear and regret. But then they had retained back to the crazed ugly look they had earlier gotten.

Izzy was on his feet and out of Tai's reach before the brown-haired boy could turn back around. Unfortunately, he didn't see the way the cliff abruptly ended. And he didn't see just how close he was to the edge.

"Izzy, look out!" Mimi warned, but it was too late.

The bearer of the crest of Knowledge slipped and lost his footing. For one awful second time seemed to freeze as he teetered on the edge of the cliff. And then he was gone.

Kari covered her ears after tossing the knife aside. She felt sick.

Mimi quickly picked up the knife herself as Tai turned on her.

"Leave me alone!" she shouted, holding the knife protectively in front of her.

But that maniacal glint in Tai's eyes would not leave and he advanced nearer to the pink-clad girl.

"Go away or I'll--I'll--" Mimi stopped and waved the knife.

Tai did not stop.

"I warned you!" Mimi shrieked as Tai was nearly directly in front of her. She pulled back her arm and threw the knife with every bit of force she could muster. The knife spiraled through the air and cut Tai deeply in the neck. So deeply, in fact, that it went straight to the spine.

Kari watched in shock as her brother fell to the ground, head hanging half on and half off. Blood was gushing from where his head had been perfectly attached. There was no doubt in her mind that he was killed instantly.

Mimi started shaking at the realization of what she had done. "Kari--I--I"

"Tai…" Kari quietly muttered.

"Kari I'm so sorry. I--I don't know… what…" Mimi trailed, backing away from the young girl.

"Why did he do this?" Kari whispered.

"Kari, please forgive me," Mimi sobbed as she continued to back away.

"Mimi…" Kari warningly gasped.

"Please!" Mimi pleaded.

"Mimi," Kari again warned.

"Please Kari!" Mimi begged.

"Mimi!" Kari shrieked as the girl fell from the cliff.

Kari ran over to the side of the cliff and watched as Mimi hit the ground, her blood mixing with Izzy's and Joe's.

"I…forgive you, Mimi," Kari muttered as she turned away from the scene. I have to get back to TK and Matt, she decided.

She walked back by Tai's nearly decapitated form and shuddered, but tears would not come. She was calm. So unnaturally calm.

Kari walked the whole way back to the cave silently. Once she had entered, TK raced over to her near tears and shakily stated: "Kari, Matt's sick. Real sick."

Matt lay on the ground of the cave unmoving, eyes barely open. His breathing was ragged and a line of sweat glimmered on his forehead.

As Kari watched Matt again retched as though he was about to throw up.

"They're inside of me," he whispered as he convulsed. "They're biting me."

Then he gagged and a spider fell from his mouth. A black spider. A black spider with a red hourglass shape on its back. A black widow spider.

"Matt!" TK wailed as his brother coughed and choked on the spiders.

Then Matt stopped coughing spiders up and his eyes slid closed.

"No! Matt wake up!" TK pleaded.

"Matt," Kari muttered.

Both young children knew it was useless. Matt would never reawaken, that much was for sure.

TK gasped, noticing for the first time the spiders crawling on him. Though he slapped at them, they were biting him all over.

"TK!" Kari cried, just now realizing that he was the last of her friends that was still living.

TK fell to the ground and the spiders swarmed off of him.

"Kari?" TK feebly questioned.

"It's me, TK," Kari whispered, getting to her knees next to him on the ground.

"Kari… Goodbye. Looks like you made it…" TK whispered.

Kari sat in silence for a moment before shouting: "No! TK, don't give up on me! You've got to live!"

"I'm sorry…" TK trailed.

"Don't leave me all alone! Everyone else is gone! TK, you're the only one left!" Kari desperately pleaded.

"Goodbye…Kari…" TK whispered as his eyes slipped shut.

"No!" Kari screamed, looking around the cave for somebody--anybody. But it was hopeless. All her friends were gone.

Then the Digiworld disappeared. She was in a small room, the bodies of her friends and brother all laying scattered about the floor. The knife was still lying beside Tai, his blood coating the blade.

A man in a white coat walked into the room and Kari cried: "where am I? What happened?"

"Allow me to explain," the man calmly stated. "I am Dr. Cromsby. The world you were in for the past few months was not real. Nor were the Digimon. It was all an elaborate illusion."

"But--"

"You have really been in here the whole time. The only real things in that world were you and your friends."

"What did you do?" Kari demanded.

"After a few months we were going to begin testing new medicines on all of you. Your brother received the first dosage. It was supposed to be a depressant. In other words, it should have made him sleep. But as you can see, the results were quite different."

"It was you…?" Kari whispered. "You did this to all of them?"

"It was for the good of science, my dear," Dr. Cromsby stated.

"You…you…!" Kari shrieked. "Was that all we were to you? An…experiment?"

"In a word, yes."

Kari couldn't believe it.

"You killed them!"

Before she knew what she was doing, Kari had picked up the knife and was holding it in front of her.

"Are you going to kill me? Are you going to be a murderer?" Dr. Cromsby inquired, arching an eyebrow.

Kari paused for a moment and Dr. Cromsby muttered: "you won't kill me."

"You're right. I'm not like you," Kari replied. With that she plunged the knife into her chest, burying it up to the hilt. She turned toward the ceiling and whispered: "I'll be with you all soon…"

And then Kari fell to the ground dead.

Dr. Cromsby looked on.

It is too bad the experiment had to fail. It is of no matter. There is always next time… he thought.

(A/N: Strange, no? I hope you enjoyed this. Sorta sad, though, I admit. I'll be putting something new out soon!)