CHAPTER FOUR

"…There they are, all gunned down in a row…"

…

Sleep was difficult. Roger offered to take first watch; he claimed that his stomach still hurt, and that he was the most rational choice anyway, having a gun and all. I allowed this. He sounded like he needed some time to himself anyway. Still, even with the watch, nobody could rest easy. We were all on edge, waiting for an alarm, waiting for someone to find us. And when I finally did slip into something of a fitful type of slumber, it was only interrupted by another one of my dear friends.

I blinked open my eyes to a stark-white room, blurred and covered in fog. It was seemingly endless, and I don't believe that any walking would get me to any distinct location. Instead, I sat and waited for him to arrive. I knew he would. He always did when I dreamt of this room.

"Piggy." I said aloud as he stepped through the smoke. He was wispy and glowing and faint. This dream wouldn't be as long as the others.

The boy adjusted his glasses on his round face and frowned. I mirrored this. What was with the worry?

"Ralph." He replied, not waiting for a response from me, "You have to take them back."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"You have to go back to the rooms." He explained further, anxious and worried; I could tell by the way his features wrinkled up and his voice trembled, "You have to, you see? Don't you know—d"

"—I can't take them back now!" I objected sternly. Usually, his advice was wise. But not today. "We've already gotten so far!"

"But you haven't even made it halfway to the exit yet, Ralph!" Piggy shouted. It was very unlike him. I startled, back. "Do you know what they can do to you?! What they will do to you?! What makes you think that all of you are so special!? You hated each other a few months ago!"

"What are you going on about, Piggy?" I angrily retorted, "There's not even anybody following us. We're fine."

"Not that you can see." Piggy sighed, defeated, "But, since you're insisting on going ahead with this anyway, I might as well advise you on that. Now, you can't say I didn't warn you about the consequences…"

"Go on."

"In order to get out," He started. The misty room started to slip away from me, and he did too. Gradually, I was plunged into feathery blackness, with only Piggy's voice for reference. I must be waking up. "A sacrifice must be made. You will all be broken. But you will get out…at a high cost."

What could possibly mean that much? I thought.

Then, I woke gasping on the hard pavement of the facility, feeling as if someone had thrown me there like a wet dish-towel. I sat up, shivering.

What a bad omen. If Piggy thought I was crazy, what we were doing must really be a bad idea.

"Ralph?" A voice asked in the dark. Then, it yawned. "Is that you? Are you up?"

"Yes." I gathered myself up enough to say, "You're still on guard, Roger?"

"Mmhm."

"You can get some rest. I'll take watch the rest of the night."

There was no objection. Within five minutes he was asleep, and I was once again plunged into loneliness, with no one but my mind for company. I couldn't help but wish desperately that Simon had taken my wishes to heart and stayed out of that dream.

I decided not to tell them. It was better if they didn't know.

"Do we even know where we're going?!" Jack growled to me, fury filling his bright blue eyes. He and I headed up the lines of boys, walking throughout the large complex of concrete and metal and foul fluorescent lights. He was angry because he thought I had been leading them in circles for hours. I probably had been, but that was beside the point. It was our job to keep everyone else confident about this trek, and right now I could tell that no one was feeling all too confident about lazy, meandering hallways.

"No." I muttered, "But we're bound to get somewhere…"

"Some plan!" He snorted disdainfully.

"You got something better?!" I shouted, suddenly very angered by his blatant show of disrespect. Déjà vu, I felt for some reason. Well, we were supposed to be working together, weren't we? For the better good? What happened to that plan?!

At this show of unsettled fury, Jack turned bright red and looked away.

"I don't have one."

"That's what I thought!" I shot back, "Now, go together with this or we stop until we figure out something better, ya hear?"

Instead of answering, Jack grimaced and marched a little bit ahead of the pack.

Stupid, I thought, so he's at again…

The next night was rough. I couldn't bear to sleep, for the nightmares of death and dying pursued me wherever I went, especially in sleep. There was no more Piggy. There were only his screams. The white room was awful smelling and dank and suddenly very small.

I forgot to sing that night.

We woke to the sound of bullet-fire; a hail of twisted hell raining down on us from the stationary turrets that must have been hooked up to security wiring or something like that. Jack must have dozed off during his turn at watch. What a leader he made…I checked the thought. If I thought like that, I was just as bad as he was, wasn't I? Shaking my head and scurrying around a nearby corner and out of range of the bullets, I took in my surroundings. About a hundred feet out, my group was struggling to dodge the turrets. Instead of staying safe, I rushed blindly back out to them and crashed into a cement wall. Ow. Something hot and furious grazed my shoulder and jolted away.

"Stay together!" I ordered, rolling painfully to the ground as another burst of bullets thundered through.

"But then it will be easier to pick us off!" Jack contradicted, nearly barreling into a very frantic Simon as he spoke, "We gotta split!"

"Serpentine! Serpentine!" Maurice quipped, laughing jovially. He bounced around on one foot and as a result was blasted back a few feet by exploding concrete. I rolled my eyes, but smiled. Now, if only he was as good at dodging as he was at joking.

"What are we doing, Ralph?" Simon cried, attempting to crawl a bit closer when some shrapnel caught him in the arm and struck him into submission. I glanced back to the corner where I'd first escaped. I'd bolted when the attack first started, before they had the chance to pick me up on the cameras…there was no chance all of us would make it now…Turning back to Simon's struggle, I darted forward and pulled him into a new scant cover—behind me. Jack shot me an enraged glance.

"We can't keep up like this!" He growled. I knew it was true, too. That was the worst part. "It's every…monster…for themselves!"

"We have to STAY TOGETHER!"

"They'll kill us all!" Jack insisted.

"Stop fighting, you two!" Simon wailed, "Please!"

"Chief!" Roger called adamantly, "Plan! Now!"

"What…What are we doing?" Bill asked from the middle of the grey hall. His mouth was curved into a tense but free concentration, though he was currently dodging bullet-fire left and right, deflecting shrapnel with his arms—he looked relatively happy, strange enough. A sizable chunk of concrete bounced off his elbow and he winced; it went on to ricochet off the wall, and Bill took another blow to the knee.

Meanwhile, Jack and I were in a tumultuous battle of wills, glaring each other down with poison daggers in our eyes.

There was a scream above the ringing metal.

I'd never heard such a horrible scream.

"BILL!" Maurice cried, in anguish, "BILL! Oh my God! Bill!"

I chanced tearing away from the miniature war I was waging with my counterpart to look at what had just happened. Big mistake. Shaking, I cupped my hand around Simon's wide eyes for the second time and pulled him back. Jack and Roger gaped. Samneric, who had figured out that getting to the corner and the blind-spot was the safest bet, peered around the corner in disbelief; they were double visions of horror. All audible sound had once again been drained from me; by white noise, by terror. By something I thought may have been called sorrow that wrapped an iron fist around my heart and twisted as hard as it could without ripping the ephereal organ out of my chest entirely.

Bill was dead, bullet holes riddling his twisted, emaciated form, crumpled in the pooling blood.

Only a second later, Maurice rushed forward and they put a hole in his head too. One clean shot. That was all it took to kill a monster.

"Let's just go." I whispered, voice trembling. By some miracle they all still heard me. In a daze, we stumbled out of the main hall and met up with Samneric—pulled only by our legs, and what we thought was right.

What I thought was right.

There's no rules about this…there were never any rules about this…

"We've lost them."

"Take them to the back."

"But—"

Beeeeeee—

Ah...I'm so sorry about character death this early in, but this fic isn't going to be very long, so I have to condense it. Plus, I don't want a whole crap ton of filler chapters of them just walking about in the halls...

Anywho, thanks for reading, and I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while. And clue and note as well...hmm. I need to update that soon. As you probably have seen, I've been a little busy with Epic Party Time, and wrapping that up all nice and pretty. Though, that's not done yet, either...sigh.

Thanks for reviewing everybody, especially this early in! I would thank all of you and respond personally, but...eh...I'm too lazy...and I need to go make chocolate chip cookies and other things...yeah. That's important, right?

hehe.

Well, thanks for reading and hanging in there!

And, please don't hate me...eep...

WRITE YA LATER!