We've finally hit the chapters that I've daydreamed about the most. I've been itching to write it ever since I thought of this story, which is why I wrote this chapter so fast after posting the previous chapter. That being said, this is where it gets into the gruesome Madness Combat content we know and love.
By the time the plane was smoothly sailing across the skies, the anxious cramping in Brynn's stomach dissipated.
She had ridden the wildest of rollercoasters and slid down the tallest water slides, but neither could prepare her for her first ride on an airplane.
In addition to that, the weight of last night's end still lingered over Brynn, which is why she clutched her cellphone, hoping either woman would text her. In contradiction, she also felt apprehensive about any text she received bringing up that night.
Next to Brynn was Theresa, who sipped from a glass of champagne that matched her ensemble.
Theresa would never let a small squabble worry her. As her successor, Brynn knew she had to be more composed like her.
"Is this your first flight?" asked Theresa.
To which Brynn gasped, "Oh, yeah."
There was no use lying for ego's sake. Boats were Bermuda's only form of transportation outside of the island. Most grunts had never taken a plane before.
"Here, this helps calm my nerves."
Theresa handed Brynn her glass of champagne. It was still mostly full, and sheer lip gloss left a print on the rim.
It wasn't as sweet as last night's wine. In fact, it was surprisingly bitter when considering the whimsical color and glimmer of it.
It reminded Brynn of the antibiotic her mother gave her when her facial cross was congested and runny.
Ugh.
But Brynn couldn't deny Theresa's hospitality, so she took long, elegant sips, trying to mimic the royals during mealtimes on the boat while also emptying the glass faster.
By the time she was staring at a clean glass, she could definitely say her nervousness was gone. Though, she couldn't tell if it was from gaining an actual buzz or being too disgusted by the taste.
The next thing she knew, Theresa carefully slid the neck of the glass from between Brynn's fingers. She then leaned towards her and uttered, "Brynn, I want you to remember this: As the princess, you'll be taking over for me as time goes on. Keep in mind that no matter what happens to me, you have to take the initiative."
Her words were so soft and warm that it felt like a caress, which caught Brynn off-guard both with its unexpectedness and its contradiction with her serious message.
"Queen Th-"
On the screen, the infamous white lightning struck the plane.
It wasn't on par with the atrocities he had seen before, but it was still a new sight.
The way the aircraft lit up made his entire room flicker. Flames burst from the turbine engines, then the nose.
A normal plane wouldn't have reacted this way to a lightning strike, but he knew that when the Higher Powers wanted something, they made it happen.
When warned about turbulence, Brynn expected to just be shaken, but the heavy jolts of the plane hurt like the impact of a stone. It almost hurt more than the drop into the water. At least, one would assume it was water.
With the miasma of iron, decay, and sediment flooding into her nose and facial cross, it was hard to determine any facts other than it was a body of liquid that she could swim in.
Brynn coughed, sputtered, and gagged as she breached the surface. The instinct to vomit fought the desire to fill her lungs.
During that struggle, her vision cleared as tears cleansed the contaminated water from the sides of her cross.
The sky was a dangerously scarlet red, not a cloud, star, sun, or moon above. The lighter debris of the plane fell down, carrying flames with them.
Around her, servants and royals flailed about in the water. Brynn's mind had shut out all of the noise earlier when the plane's alarms, explosions, and the flight attendants' orders reached a deafening peak. But now, in the relatively quieter water, she could hear it. The desperate cries of those who couldn't swim, the panicked questions for the missing passengers' whereabouts, the slurred wails of the heavily injured.
Over it all, the authoritative, but just as frightened, commands of a few grew in number as they pinpointed a shoreline.
"This way, this way!" "Grab somebody and move!" "Hurry, we've got to go!"
Even though it wasn't a paralyzing cacophony like the panic on the plane, it was still a difficult mess to navigate with the rolling of the tides nurturing the flaming debris with its oily residue.
Regardless, Brynn shook her head and swam deeper.
She hadn't seen or heard Olivia and Gwen. The thought of Gwen's situation, in particular, struck even more dread into Brynn's being.
"Gwen! Olivia!" she called out, coughing up more water trapped in her throat, "Where are you? Olivia! Gwen!"
Suddenly, Brynn was pulled back by Theresa.
"Wh-wait, Queen, we have to-"
"You have to get to shore first with the other princesses. Let the queens handle this."
"But-"
Theresa hushed her, not gently like before. It was almost like a hiss.
Brynn watched the wreckage shrink into the distance and noticed that Theresa was right.
Only the queens were taking charge of the situation and helping the princesses out. The few queens who were injured or couldn't swim were being assisted by other queens.
It was an unusual sight. Back at home, the youths were at their elders' beck and call, whether they were of kin or a complete stranger. It was a matter of respect and social etiquette. Brynn just had to accept that such social matters were unimportant with the current situation at hand.
Theresa and Brynn walked onto the shore where other royals sat trying to recuperate.
Even Brynn's body felt exhausted after the ordeal, which is why she didn't protest when Theresa slid onto her knees and pulled her down alongside.
The two let themselves lie in the black sand and catch their breath.
Brynn's relief was temporary, though.
"Brynn…" Theresa's hand gently shook her.
The younger grunt looked up, seeing Theresa loom over her with a sad, weak grin.
Blood dripped down her chest.
Immediately, Brynn shot up and held Theresa.
"My God! We have to-!"
Theresa hushed her again, softly.
"I had this wound since we fell out of the plane..." she coughed, blood dripping from her lip, "That water's been in it, and it's getting hard to breathe..."
Another cough.
Brynn's breath hitched as she prepared to call for help, but Theresa stopped her again.
"Don't," she said, "When you're a royal, the rules are switched. The elders protect the young. It's because we depend on you to lead the land when we die."
Theresa's body weight began to slump on top of Brynn, who found it hard to hold her up with the dampness of their skin.
"No, no, Queen, you can't do this to me, you can't..." Brynn's voice cracked.
Theresa fell limp against her. Blood dripped down Brynn's side and soaked into the sand behind her.
Before any of the other royals could notice them or the roar of a truck engine, Brynn's head grew heavy and she slipped into unconsciousness.
Theresa stood up, licking the blood away from her lips and retracting the tiny needle from Brynn's back.
Around her, agents with similar needles captured the women, carrying their limp bodies into the trucks.
One of which approached Theresa with a towel and tablet.
"Welcome back, T69, the Auditor is waiting for your call," he said.
"Thank you," said Theresa as she wiped away the blood on her abdomen, "And tell the others to run a bath for me, would you?"
"Absolutely."
Theresa dialed a code into the tablet as she walked towards one of the trucks and seated herself in the passenger seat.
It wasn't necessarily the pain that woke Brynn up, but it certainly prevented her from falling back asleep. It was only amplified by the concrete floor and handcuffs.
"Wait, handcuffs?"
Brynn sat up, seeing her hands had been bound in a metal casing that dangled from her neck on a chain. She also realized that her clothes had been replaced by a cheap hospital gown, but the dark gray walls around her didn't belong to any hospital.
Confusion and fear gripped her stomach as she clumsily got to her feet and padded her way over to the bars. She could see what looked like one guard standing between two other cells on the opposite wall. Though, the assumption that the grunt was a guard was only that: an assumption. Brynn didn't recognize the uniform, but the closest thing that she could compare it to was that of a security guard or police officer.
"Is this prison? How did I get here? Why would I even be jailed?"
"Uh, 'cuse me?" she asked, her voice still stale from the earlier events, "Where...is this?"
The guard glanced at Brynn, but ultimately ignored her.
"Ma'am? Ma'am? I just need to ask a few questions. I'm very confused," she continued, "I was in a plane crash while traveling to-hell, I don't know-anyway, my friends and I fell into the ocean and a lot of us got hurt, and I just-"
A baton whipped around the corner of Brynn's cell, swatting her across the cheek and accompanied by a, "Shut the hell up!"
Both the swing and the voice shocked Brynn. From where she stood, she didn't see that guards also flanked the sides of her cell, and even more odd was the voice that scolded.
It was oddly deep and gruff.
"Just tell me why I'm under arrest!" snapped Brynn.
She scuffled backward on the floor to avoid any other attack. Maybe if she kept her requests short, the guard wouldn't swing again.
Frustratingly, no one spoke.
Brynn was forced to add, "I don't know what I'm being charged with. Just please tell me who I'm supposed to talk to to get the answers."
More silence.
Brynn sank to her knees and let her forehead rest on the floor with a groan.
She sat like that for a few minutes, trying every possible way to figure out how she got into her current situation. The last thing she remembered before waking up was the agonizing final moments of Theresa's life.
Brynn shuddered, still feeling the stickiness of Theresa's blood on her torso, and the breath fading into nothingness against her neck. Never did Brynn think that she would have the cruel experience of watching somebody die in her hands.
With that painful thought, a question was raised.
"Wait...do they think…" Brynn raised her head. "Do they think I killed her?"
It was a sickening possibility, one that made her chest hurt. Theresa was the woman who took Brynn under her wing, supported her when her own mothers didn't, and died trying to save her when she didn't even have to.
And people would think Brynn took her life in response.
Brynn sat up, but didn't step up to the bars. She had learned her lesson the first time.
"Hey…" she said, her voice apprehensive, "Do any of you even know why I'm arrested?"
Silence.
Brynn swallowed.
"Do people think I-"
Gunshots, punches, and slices exploded from one end of the hallway, dragging Brynn out of her dread.
All of the guards looked in the direction of the sounds, which grew closer at an alarming rate.
They pulled out their guns and began to join the fight, unbothered by the flowing pool of blood that crept down the gray hall.
Once Brynn became fully aware of the danger nearing, she ducked and rolled into a corner right beside the bars, hoping the lock would protect her from the massacre outside.
She still couldn't quite believe what was happening. Just a moment ago, she was questioning if she had been arrested for a murder that never happened.
Now sparks popped in her dark cell as stray bullets penetrated the back wall.
Her nerves seemed to sizzle, as if to confirm that this was not a stress-fueled dream caused by the plane crash. No, she was fully awake, lucid, and very much in danger.
She didn't even dare take a peek at the prisoner who she imagined had broken out and managed to take on all of the guards. No matter how much she tucked herself into the corner, she kept trying to further shrink herself out of sight. To say that fear had taken complete control over her being was an understatement.
Even when the sound of the fighting disappeared into another hallway completely and left her alone with silence, she still couldn't move away from her spot.
It was only in those moments of petrification that she realized something.
"None of this is right."
Brynn hadn't heard a single sound from any of the other prisoners.
There wasn't even an alarm warning of a breakout. And just how did one prisoner incapacitate so many guards in only a few minutes? Why was her cell completely empty; no bed, no toilet, no sink?
Why was Brynn in a hospital gown instead of a prison uniform?
Brynn stood up, still staying in the corner.
"This isn't right," her mind repeated, "I need to get out of here."
Carefully, she peered around the corner of the bars, grimacing at the display of collapsed, bloodied guards.
They weren't just beaten up.
They were killed.
And she could end up just like them if she got lost in her own fear and disgust.
As much as it pained Brynn to look, she continued to study the bodies for a set of keys.
She stooped downward and attempted to poke her leg through the bars to move the guard nearest to her, but once the width of her ankles brushed against the bars, the door swung open.
The battered lock fell to the ground, bullets leaving their craters deep in the metal.
Brynn gave a desperate thanks to the gods above before stepping out.
Just as she feared, the hallways were littered with even more bodies. There was barely any place she could walk without stepping in blood. Still, she knew that being squeamish would be her demise.
Brynn steeled herself and tried to keep her head upwards so as to not gaze at the horror for too long.
"If she went that way, I'll go this way," she told herself.
She kept her eyes focused on the end of the hallway, where she would either make a left or right turn. She would find her way out of here, somehow.
As suspected, the cells flanking either side of her were mostly empty. A few times, Brynn thought she caught a glimpse of a limp figure slumped in one of the cells, but she tried not to think about it for too long. She just had to round this upcoming corner and…
"Hey!"
A sudden shriek caused Brynn to jump, subsequently slipping on the blood and falling onto a pair of bodies.
Looking up, she saw a grunt gripping the bars of its cell with a deadly amount of pressure. His face was haggard and marked with sores. He looked like he hadn't bathed in over a week.
His voice was raspy like a wolf and he trembled, pressing his face against the gap in the bars.
"You there! Y-You escaped! So you gotta help me get outta he-here, man. Like, like, whatever you did to get out, do it here! Do my lock! Get me outta h-here!"
His speech was just as erratic as his stance.
Brynn struggled to push herself up, wincing as she felt the warm bodies beneath her squelch under her feet and knees.
"I-I didn't do anything, I…" Brynn raised her handcuffs, "My lock just broke and I walked out. I don't know how to-"
"You lying little shit!" hollered a grunt from another cell, "Ain't no way you just walked out! Get us out of here!"
"No, look! My hands…!"
A crescendo of trapped grunts from deeper in the hallway began questioning the ruckus and soon joining in the hurl of insults. They pounded on the bars, their strangely deep voices assaulting Brynn's eardrums.
All she could do was run.
Run over the dead bodies.
Run past the jeering prisoners.
Run through the bloody floors.
Run underneath a desk anytime she thought she heard footsteps around a corner.
Run outside where a car sat with its door open and its engine running.
Brynn pushed away all of the foreign objects to jump into the driver's seat. She shakily pressed down on the brake pedal and reached for the gear stick, only to be restrained by the handcuffs. She then stooped down and tightly gripped it with her teeth. Once she was sure that it was in Drive, she lifted her other leg onto the steering wheel and hit the accelerator.
Choo-choo, all aboard Brynn's Trauma Train