"Get a grip on yourself, Adriana. You can't afford to space out now," Ellen said to her sister. They had not been walking for long yet she was stopping for and simply staring ahead for no apparent reason. "Of course, of course..." came back a distracted reply. Her normally straight brown hair looked had not been combed or touched for weeks and an amount of dandruff had started appearing. Her clothes did not fare better. She shook her head and took a good look at her filthy, dirt-covered hands, her jeans which had holes in them on a few places, and ran a hand through her straggled hair. "Ugh, it's been so long since I last showered. I'm a total mess." she quietly complained to Ellen. "How pretty you look will be the least of your worries when they come after you." hissed an irritated Jonah who was a few feet in front of them all and keeping a very careful vigil for their encounter wasn't exactly quiet. "Besides, why are you all still following me?"
"Well..." There was a brief pause in which Jacob looked at his friends. "At first, it was because we sort of didn't know what to do. Y'know, trapped in that house like that. And it looked like you knew what you were doing. This time it's because I need to know why you killed those two." Jonah shot him a quick glance, as though surprised, before asking, "What's it to you?" "Well, obviously you three had met before, seeing as how you did what you did... Anyway, I need to know if those two are part of a larger group." "What makes you think there's a group?" Jonah quickly asked. "Look around you, almost everyone who's still alive this late in the game has teamed up with a few others. Everyone's moving in packs and frankly I'm surprised you aren't. Loners like you aren't that common. Besides, those two had guns and everyone knows that the police station has been totally raided . A couple of people can't do that; it was a team effort."
"So anybody who's armed must be a part of this group, is that your thinking?" "Yeah, but you have a gun and you weren't exactly best buddies with them. Anyway, aren't we there yet? And won't you answer my question?" "We're almost there." said Jonah, who was now carefully checking the street for signs of life. They had left the dark alleyways, much to their noses' relief, and reached the main roads. He beckoned them to cross the street and with a swift glance to ensure that Claire was right behind him, opened a house's front gate.
A small and modest garden greeted them, but it wasn't a warm greeting. The grass wasn't standing upright; it looked like a man who had been hung, its tip slightly drooping, giving up hope. Yellow streaked through it for it was deprived of something vital to its survival. A solitary tree's orange, drained and falling leaves seamlessly integrated themselves with the dying ground, the garden a faint glimmer of its past glory days. The house, from the outside, appeared to be in a far better state, but its two stories and various rooms still gave off a derelict aura, as all the windows had been made a light shade of brown with all the dust shrouding them. A few months ago, when the garden was booming and the house's inhabitants were leaving and entering everyday, you would've imagined it to belong to a succesful lawyer or doctor. But it wasn't a wealthy, middle-class man opening the front door; it was Jonah and his newfound teammates, whether he liked it or not. The interior was similar to the outside: neglected and in disarray. The first room visible, the living room, had multiple travelling bags scattered about the floor and a few items, such as clothes and a few broken photo frames, here and there. "Not doing much to clean up after yourself, are you?" commented Adriana. "I don't pick up after others." said Jonah, who was on his knees and reaching under the carpet for something . "Isn't this your hideout?" He strode right past her and into the kitchen. They all followed and the first thing the glasses-wearing man did was to almost run to the refrigerator, eager to empty it of its contents. "Don't bother, stupid. You think I didn't already eat what little there was these past two weeks?" "Edward's the name. And just what are you doing?" Jonah was crouching and undoing the four screws on the corners of a kitchen counter's tiles. No reply came back for he was concentrating very much on his work. Soon, Jonah was done and he pulled the block out of its place to reveal a staircase which lead into darkness. "Whoa!" "This is my hideout. Now if all of you would hang back a bit, that'd be great.
Jonah rushed down the stairs, his mind doing all what it can to analyze the situation and come up with a plan, whether long or short-term. He absent-mindedly groped the wall for a light switch and pressed it on. An ancient lamp flickered a few times before properly illuminating the underground room. It was dangerously suspended; the only thing separating it from crashing down and spreading its sharp fragments all around the room was a single, tightly stretched wire, begging to be cut and placed out of its misery. It hung directly above a barely supported wooden table, its legs threatening to slip past and send the piece of furniture and its contents clattering down. A map of the city, littered with various X's, circles, and notes, got the lion's share of the tabletop. An untouched water bottle stood next to it, its interior carved with a myriad of evaporating water droplets, slowly turning into storage for nothing. However, a block of what appeared to be steel, taped to yet another smaller block, was placed next to a very small device, which had a trigger built into it. There was a lone mattress resting on the room's corner, a few coils poking out of its end. Jonah's first action was to stuff the two blocks and the device behind the mattress. He scanned his run-down quarters for a few moments before calling out, "All right you guys come on down." footsteps and clatter followed, but they were too brief for Jonah's suspicions. Had they seen him hide it?
Claire's figure was the first to appear, her face turned and mildly chattering with their recent teammates. "Oh, so you've all been together from Day 1? That's pretty damn impressive." "Yeah," Ellen replied, "we're all from the same college. We were the first to escape campus and we ran into Jacob and Edward. Turns out all of us chose the same gate to leave from. And then things just... worked out after that." "Really, you're all so lucky!" "That's quite an understatement," cut Jonah's sharp voice. They looked at him with irritation, as though he was some outsider who rudely interrupted their conversation. "You see, I'm much more concerned with how you two got your guns." He gestured towards Jacob and Edward, who consciously tried to shield their weapons. "And what were you doing before we ran into each other?" "Actually, I was just about to ask you that," shot Jacob's quick reply. "I'd prefer if you guys answer first." Worried looks were exchanged between the four friends and it was clear that their leader's next action eluded him. Some whispers and nods were shared between them. Jonah took this opportunity to steal a glance at Claire. She was leaning on a wall, her arms crossed,and relaxed eyes looking straight Jonah. Their eyes caught each other for a moment, but she quickly diverted her gaze towards Ellen. There was something about the way she did it that unsettled Jonah, however he could give no more thought to the matter when Jacob straightened up and cleared his throat.