Shun

When I woke up, I found myself laying on a hard rock ground. Upon further inspection, it looked like I was laying down in a basement or storage room. I tried to sit up, but found myself too weak to do so. Pain shot from my wrists and ankles, causing me to bite my lip to keep from yelling in pain.

When I looked at them, I stared at the burned, pink flesh where the leather straps had been. They hurt every time I moved them the slightest bit. I finally found the strength to push myself into a sitting position, enduring the pain that followed, and leaned my back against one of the walls in the room. Water dripped from a crack in the ceiling and started to form a puddle below it. "Shun?"

I looked around and saw Feliciana. She was rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. I didn't know how I hadn't noticed her when I woke up. Perhaps I had been too occupied on the pain I was in. I asked her, "Did they do anything to you? Like, to get answers?" Feliciana pushed herself up and was sitting now. "When those idiots finally realized I wasn't going to tell them anything, they knocked me out and I woke up in here with you. What about you?"

I held up my wrists and said, "Nero tried to shock the answers out of me, but I didn't tell him anything." Feliciana squinted her eyes in order to see my wrists, but she must have been too far away to make anything of them because she got up and knelt down beside me. "These burns look painful," she said as she examined my wrists and ankles.

I gave her and sad smile and said, "Just a little. As long as I don't move them, they don't hurt." Feliciana shook her head and started to search around the room. "What are you looking for?" I asked her. She dug around in a box and pulled out a piece of white fabric.

Feliciana told me, "Something to wrap those burns up with so they won't get any worse." She tore off several strips of the fabric, then returned to me. Then, she proceeded to wrap the fabric tightly around my wrists and ankles. I took in a sharp breath as the cloth touched by burns.

As the pain began to go away I said, "Thanks." She nodded. I stared at the makeshift bandages on my wrists and ankles. On my arm, I could still see some of my muscles twitching. The electrical shocks were more powerful than I thought they would be, and my still spasming body was proof of that.

Feliciana sat next to me and asked, "So, what kind of questions did they ask you?" I shrugged and told her, "Dunno. I never gave Nero the chance to get a word in." She was about to say something else when the door at the top of a staircase opened. An Official threw somebody into the basement with us; it was Marquis.

His hands were tied behind his back, as were his feet. "When I get out of these, I'm coming for you! I swear!" he shouted. The Official just laughed and said, "I'd love to see that," and slammed the door shut. Marquis, still thrashing around in his rage, had yet to notice Feliciana and I sitting in front of him.

He finally calmed down enough and saw us. "Oh. Hey, guys. Could one of you try and get these damn restraints off of me?" Feliciana and I looked at each other, and she got up and started trying to break the ties that bound Marquis's wrists and feet together.

After much work, she finally got the wrist restraints off of him. Now with his hands free, he started working on the ties that were around his ankles. He easily got them off thanks to years of tearing and untangling fishing nets back at the lake.

Not long after Marquis was thrown down here, the door opened again and another Official threw Brunswick in as well. Just like Marquis, his arms were tied, but not his ankles. Feliciana helped to get the bindings off of him. I did a head count and realized that we were still missing Dan, Val, and the other guy that came with us.

Marquis asked us, "Did any of you see Val after they took him away?" We all shook our heads. Marquis's shoulders slumped slightly and he said under his breath, "I swear, if they did something to him." Brunswick put a hand on Marquis's shoulder and said, "Don't worry, Val is strong. Whatever they may do to him, I'm sure he can handle it."

But even Brunswick looked like he didn't believe himself. Val had been the one who attacked, and seriously injured, an Official before they took all of us away. And he had been taken away to someplace different from us. What the Officials did to him when he was out of our sight, I had no clue.

He could have been subjected to shock torture like me, or any number of other things. I fiddled with the cloth bandages on my wrists and said, "We have to hurry and get out of here." Marquis asked me, "What about Dan, Val, and the other guy?"

I left the white cloth alone and told him, "We can look for them while we're escaping." I hadn't noticed that Feliciana had walked up the stairs until she yelled down to us, "The door's lock. We'll have to find another way out." My eyes searched the room for another door or a window.

There was nothing. Feliciana walked back down the stairs, each wooden step creaked underneath her weight. Marquis abruptly stood up and said, "I'll unlock the door." He stomped past Feliciana and up the stairs. Brunswick said calmly, "Marquis, get back down here."

Marquis started to kick the door with his foot, and it looked like he might actually break the lock. That was, until he lost his footing and fell backwards down the stairs. He groaned when he finally landed on the hard ground at the base. Brunswick said, "I told you to get back down here."

Marquis growled at the bearded man, then punched the rock floor beneath him. "I'm just trying to get the hell out of here and find Val!" Brunswick snapped at him, "And you think knocking the door down and drawing every Official here is going to help?" Tears were starting to form in Marquis's eyes. "I'd do anything to find my brother and make sure he's alright," he said softly. I stared at him and asked, "Val is your brother?"

Marquis looked away from us and Brunswick spoke up. "They're not blood related, but they've grown up together since they were young. So, they're almost like brothers." That was kind of like how Christina and I were. We had known each other long enough that we almost viewed each other as siblings.

"It doesn't matter if we're not blood related. I made a promise when we were little to keep him safe, and right now I'm not keeping that promise," said Marquis. It grew deathly silent after that, the only thing that broke it was the opening of the door at the top of the stairs again.

We waited to see who was being brought in now. This time it was Dan. The Official helped him down the stairs, and I saw why. Some of his hair was matted with blood, and his eyes showed that he looked dazed and confused. When the Official released his hold on the brunette, Dan dropped to the ground.

The Official left us alone once again. We ran over to Dan's side. Brunswick carefully rolled the brunette over onto his back. His eyes opened slightly and he looked up at all of us. "Where are we?" he asked in a slurred tone. I watched Feliciana inspecting the wound on the side of his head.

I recognized the marks through the blood. He had been hit with the end of a rifle like I had been not so long ago. I told him, "It looks like we're in a basement." He nodded slowly. Feliciana looked at us and said, "He should be fine. I don't think his skull is damaged or anything like that."

He would just be disoriented for a while. Feliciana tended to Dan's injuries by using the piece of white cloth that she had made my bandages with. She wiped the blood from his face and hair, then found a way to wrap a piece of cloth around his head. Now I know where Christina got her healing hands from, I thought to myself and smiled.

But that smile faded just as quickly as it came. We sat around in the basement room, all of us still silent; Dan was the only one making any noise as he laid there unconscious. The brunette finally came too. He sat upright, and began frantically looking around the room as he digested where he was at.

"Calm down," Brunswick told him. "You're safe." Dan did calm down slightly and said, "The last thing I remember was having questions asked to me, then that Nero guy walked into the room and hit me with something. That was it." My best guess was that Nero took his anger out on Dan after our little disagreement during my interrogation.

Dan then grabbed the side of his head and grimaced. "Ow. My head." Feliciana crossed her arms over her chest and said, "You did tell us you were hit in the head." Dan narrowed his eyes at her and said, "I know that." Feliciana shot him a cocky grin then her face turned back serious.

She said, "If we are going to try and get out of here, then how are we going to do it? The door probably isn't the best idea unless we had something to fight back the Officials on the other side." The door was certainly a bad idea, but we had no other way out.

If we attempted to go through there and fight the Officials, then we could just as well say that we would be shot on the ground that we stood on. Feliciana tapped her foot and said, "If only we had our weapons back." The Officials confiscated our weapons before they took us in for questioning.

They left us with nothing to defend ourselves with. My eyes drifted over to a broom that was leaning against the wall. "Maybe we do have some weapons after all," I said and walked over to the broom. Dan asked, "What are we going to do with that? Sweep them to death?"

I held up my index finger to signal for him to wait. "Watch." I hurried up the steps and tried to doorknob. Lucky for me, the last Official forgot to lock it. I quietly turned the knob and saw an Official standing guard outside of the door. I lifted the broom and hit the handle on top of the Official's head.

He dropped to the ground unconscious. Before anyone else could see me, I pulled him inside and closed the door the door back. I found a rifle and hand pistol on his person. I threw both the weapons down the stairs, where Brunswick caught both of them. "It's a start," I told them.

Two guns could give us a better chance than if we ran through a headquarters full of armed Officials. "Now," I said. "We need to do something with him before he wakes up." Feliciana nodded and asked for us to bring the Official down the stairs. Brunswick helped me bring him down.

Feliciana had the white cloth torn and tied together to make a long rope, along with the ties that had been on Brunswick and Marquis. She tied the Official up. Just as she tied the last not, the Official came to. He began to panic when he saw he was taken hostage and restrained.

"Let me go! Help! Somebody help!" He squirmed like I did when I was being electrocuted. Feliciana tore another piece of cloth off and stuck it in the screaming Official's mouth. "That should shut him up some," she said. I folded my arms over my chest and said, "Now we just have to do the same to about six more Officials. Then we'll have plenty of weapons."

i can see now that this week is going to be slow. o.o or maybe i'm just ready to get out of school. yeah. let's go with that one. read, review, and other things. ~Copperpelt~