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No, that was not me swearing. But I am close. No reviews again? Come on guys. Give me a break! I feed you these words all the time! Did you find another author? A better one? Luckily, I hired better readers. INVISIBLE ONES! Muahahhaha!
I barely feel my hand getting soaked with snot. I leap into action, grab my retractable spear and use the blunt end to hit the vent open, the bars tumbling out with a big crash. Then, I hoist Marlin into the hole. The first Peacekeeper sees me. He looks young, not like the usual Peacekeepers in District 8. I ignore this, scoop the bars and throw it like a Frisbee. It hits him and stuns him, though not quite knocking him out. I take a few steps back, run to the vent hole and launch myself next to Marlin, who helps me get up.
We crawl, trying to get away from other Peacekeepers. He's still shouting. After a while, his incessant yells finally fade away to nothing and we decide to stop. Examining my scraped shins, Marlin says, "That was a close one."
Then, I remember. "What are you doing here?"
He looks at me fearfully, almost apologetically. "Uh... saving your butt?"
I think about it. "That's true. But this is some initiative you're taking."
Marlin is about to defend himself when someone screams. The sound bounces on the closed walls of the vent, making it ear-splitting. It came from a vent in our right. Abandoning our fight, we crawl as fast as we can to the sound. After a few feet, another vent hole opens up underneath us. Through the bars, we see Zee. And she's fighting a whole army of mutts.
We look as she charges at one, duck as it passes over her and stick both of her fighting knives in its belly. She takes it out again in a sickening 'shlock' and rolls out from under it. Another leaps at her and she backs away quickly. It lands in front of her and she lashes out, taking out its left wing. She's spitting and swearing like a cat but they had cornered her. It isn't long when a mutt attacks her from the behind when she's busy with another. She quickly disappears under a writhing mass of hybrid dogs.
Without thinking, I stomp on the gate, knocking it away. I jump down, expecting to hit the floor with a bang and attract the monsters but instead, I hit one of those aforementioned monsters. I end up sitting on the back of it, gripping it by its neck. It roars in rage and attempts to shake me off by flying wildly around, smacking itself in its walls and in the process, me. I'm getting dizzy and the thing is moving too fast for me to get a knife and stab it unless I want to fall off and get turned into pancake.
The mutt then flies in a loop, suspending me upside down before my sweaty hands looses it's grip on the mutt's fur and I fall down. I hit the floor on my side and I lie there for awhile, knocked out of breath. When I open my eyes, Marlin is right in front of me, tugging at my hand to get me up. I push of the ground to my feet again. Marlin has several knives at his ready. I draw out mine too. We charge in the most furious part of the battle and fight.
It was a blur of stabbing, dodging and slashing. But it's also full of blood. Mine and theirs. I feel slash after slash. Then, somehow, I find myself back to back with Marlin and Zee. They aren't looking too good, but then again I must look like them. Mutts surrounded us.
"Guess this is our final stand, Roobie," Zee chuckles, amazingly able to find the humor in this. Another final stand in five minutes. It's a new record.
Just as I was about to die, a shout of defiance rang across the room. It sounds human. I crane my head to find the source of the yelling. My eyes land on two boys waving spears and swords.
Mercury and Horus!
Excellent, now we can die together. But I admire their spirit. I take out another knife and hurl it at a monster. It misses but hits another monster on the side of its head. Huh.
I run a hand on my belt for more knives. I have used them all. Instead, I take out the retractable spear out and before I get to press the button, a mutt jumps on me. I crumple to the floor again, the spear in rod form skidding across the room, where it disappears into battle. The mutt faces me, I swear it has a grin on its malicious face. As it was about to tear my throat off, its eyes suddenly blank out and rolled over me. I look at my rescuer. It's Horus, with a sword. I salute him and for a while, he's distracted. A mutt's on its back paws, wings extended claws about to slash down on Horus.
"Look out!" I shout.
It's too late, Horus glances back and the mutt claws him across his face. Horus falls to his side, bleeding. The mutt was about to deal Horus a killing blow and I'm weaponless. Desperately, I check my pockets. Nothing's there except my coin. I take it out as a desperate attempt. I clamp the coin between my middle finger and my index finger and throw it like a discus. I feel like the David to the Goliath. It hits the mutt on the forehead.
I was hoping that it will knock him out but it just bounces off his forehead. At least this brings his attention to me. The mutt opens its wings and charges at me. I duck and it slams into the wall. I run to Horus and instead of picking him up, I grab his sword just as the mutt rebounds against the wall. I hold the sword upwards and it drives itself in my sword. It falls limp.
I wipe my sweaty and bloody forehead with my sleeve and check on Horus. He's unconcious and the gash on his cheek is bleeding fast. I've got to get him back up and running, but I don't have a clue how. I look around for Mercury. He's busy fighting.
Swearing, I take off my jacket and press it into his cheek to stop the bleeding. I hope it's the right thing to do, since I've never had to heal anyone, not even when I'm in the wild, going to District 13. Suddenly, Mercury appears next to me.
"Cover us," he says. "I'll try to wake him up."
I stand up and engage myself with an oncoming mutt. We fight for a while until it gives me and opening and I drive the sword into it. After it falls, I stagger a bit around. I look back at Mercury and Horus and see that Mercury has his hands on Horus's chest and that Horus's eyelids are already opening.
Suddenly, I hear Marlin above me. "Rooba! Get everyone and let's go!" He's holding a rope.
I nod and race to Mercury and Horus.
"Run to the vents! Marlin's there with a rope! Go go go go!" I'm starting to sound like Mercury.
I don't stay to see if they obeyed me. I run around, trying to find Zee.
"Zee!" I scream.
"Here!"
I sprint to where the voice comes from. Instead, she runs to me. She looks stricken and has only one knife. She has a mutt tailing her. I grab her wrist and pull her to the vents. Horus is already up and Mercury is scaling the rope. I then hurl myself to the air and catch the rope with both hands. As I climbed up, I hear Mercury release a bullet, as well as a dying howl. Back in the vent, I see Zee being tailed by mutt. Just as it was about to jump on her, she clasped the ropes tightly and we all pulled her up. I ended up with my back to the floor and someone's foot practically up my nose. It reminds me of the time we went on that crazed elevator while escaping District 13. It seems like a year ago.
Someone slams the vent gates shut. Now it's just us, the cold walls and the sound of our heavy breathing. I sit up and ask, "Hey, can I borrow someone's knife?" Okay, that doesn't sound like the most compassionate question, given that everyone's lying around with possibly fatal wounds.
Horus unbuckles his belt and hands it to me, more than half of the knives still on it. "Take it. I suck at aiming. I still have my spear."
Yay! I slip my belt off and trade it with Horus's. He can use the buckle like a club or something if he's desperate. Come to think of it, I could have used it as a club or something too back there. I mentally facepalm myself. My why-am-I-such-an-idiot feeling grew when I realized that I had a gun in my pocket. I wish I had an out-of-body experience so that I can kick my own butt.
"Can we take a nap?" Marlin asks. "My legs are numb." We hear a loud bark, presumably from the mutts still down below. Marlin jolts to his knees, since we can't stand. "The feeling's back. Let's go!"
We crawl and crawl and crawl. (Yes, it deserves to be repeated. We crawled for a mile.) We check every vent hole for signs of prisons. We've been above a Peacekeeper's canteen, a (male) bathroom, and some barracks where we found a napping guard, a clinic and an arsenal, where we swiped some bulletproof vests, another spear for me and a pair of bigger, more deadly-looking fighting knives for a delighted Zee. I had my eye on a couple of bronze-tipped throwing knives and Mercury some poison and arrows but we couldn't lift anymore items because of the chance someone might spot us. But we had pretty good loot.
Around half an hour after we started crawling, we saw it.
The prison was a long narrow hallway with cages lined up on either wall. It's a nest of misery, everything is quiet, but not like the austere quiet in the white hallways, but a lamenting kind of silence. Just looking at them makes my heart break in two. Some were pacing, shooting angry glares at the bars, some were on the ground, squishing themselves against the walls for some kind of invisible support, and some were huddled together, holding hands through the bars. I see the blonde-haired boy, Mercury called him Tobias, I saw being deplaned from the hovercraft. He's carrying out an inaudible with a girl next to him. She has short brown hair and she's almost entirely covered in a thin layer of ash. She looks like a victim of arson.
Mercury breaks the silence by unscrewing the bolts on the vent gate and kicking it open. It falls in a clatter to the ground. He boldly jumps down from the vent to the floor, which wasn't very far away, in the cramped condition. He gestures us to jump down. I'm next and stumble on impact with the ground. Everyone else made it to the ground safely, though Marlin almost did a face-plant on the dirty floor.
Mercury immediately rushes to Tobias. "Toby!"
"What's up, man?" Tobias sticks his hand through the bars, which Mercury slaps. They share a laugh. "Small world isn't it?"
"Dude, you okay?" Mercury says.
Tobias was about to say something when the ash-covered girl joins the conversation. "Hey, what am I, chopped liver?"
Mercury smiles at her. "Actually, you're the best sliced bread ever."
She beams at him. "Thanks. Are they your duckies?" She waves at us.
"Duckies?" Marlin asks. "We're no one's duckies."
She giggles. "Actually, duckies is slang for the people the Evacuators are supposed to resuce. The name's Nimbus, by the way."
We each greet Tobias and Nimbus with 'heys', 'hellos' and 'how do you dos' with the exception of Horus's stuttered greeting to Nimbus. Somebody has a crush.
"She's too pretty for you, Horse," Zee jokes, earning a punch in the arm from said boy. Horus is blushing hard. He's quite handsome, actually. Enough to have earned him several lady stalkers back in District 13. It's kind of Zee's style to tease someone about their crush. I just grinned through the exchange.
"Don't mind them. I'm fairly certain the mutts killed some of their brain cells," Mercury says.
"They can do that?" Marlin whispers to me. I shrug, giving him the benefit of doubt.
Mercury continues. "What happened? How did you guys get in here?"
Tobias became stone-faced. "They ambushed us. I was sleeping in the forest with my duckies. I woke up hearing gunshots. I have no idea where they are now." His voice choked in the end.
Nimbus saves us from an awkward silence. "I got sent to District 12. I was going to rescue this lad and confront him in the mines. I heard the Peacekeepers block the exit. They blew the mine up and I was almost buried alive. They got me out and transported me here. Now, enough sob stories. Get me out of this freaking cage. I think I've got freaking claustrophobia."
Zee fumbles with her new knife and tries to hack the lock of Tobias's cage open. It wouldn't open. By the third hack, she only made it halfway through the lock.
"You know that we're going to have to rescue everyone?" I say, trying to speed up the process.
"Right. So everyone grab a knife and start cutting," Zee replies.
Suddenly, a now-familiar siren booms out of nowhere. The speculating prisoners clamp their ears with their hands, some groaning. There's a huge gate in the end of the long hallway that's beginning to close with barred gates. We'll only escape if we sprint.
"GO!" Nimbus screams at us. "Leave us!"
Like a coward, I didn't look back until I reached the door. It has already closed half-way through the wide space. I duck under it and turn my head so quickly it snapped. Zee, Marlin and Mercury made it just behind me, but Horus is still outside Tobias's and Nimbus's cages. He's sprawled on the floor. From what I can see, he triggered some kind of trap and is now struggling to get his feet free from- what is that, like ice? - something.
Mercury swears and dives back under the gates. He flies to Horus and starts hacking at the ice with the blunt end of his sword. He can't get them to crack open. Horus grabs Mercury's arm to stop him and says, "Just go! The doors are closing!"
Mercury looks back and seems to be torn. If he leaves Horus now, he'll make it barely in time. But leaving duckies alone must be against the Evacuator's code or something because Mercury kept on hitting the icy cuffs. Horus grabs his belt and pulls out his gun.
"I'll shoot you if you stay! Save the others! I'll be fine!" Horus says.
"I don't care." Wow. That line made my eyes bug out.
Horus points the gun to himself. "I'll kill myself, then."
Then, a loud bang richoheted in the narrow hallway.
Author' Note:
Okay, I'm going to magically assume that you guys are busy studying up for whatever exam you have. Until then, my invisible friends will replace you. Are you jealous? You should be.
Peace out,
Me.
