Shadow Escape, the sequence(Book 2)

Chapter 8

♛ Violet ♛

We were still crawling for what felt like days. Yep, days. The tunnel had been constructed by a poorly knowledged architect, I noticed. It was narrow and dark. The material did look good and strong, barely enough to hold us. I could have done a much better job at this, that was for certain.

I was distracted by a grunt ahead of me. My head tilted up only to be met with a kick. I barely dodged the foot and it was my turn to grunt. Jack was in front, crawling and I was brought up the rear.

I couldn't have been in an even worse situation. My regret of letting him take the lead was quickly replaced with irritation as the events from earlier flashed through my mind. I couldn't stop thinking about the attack earlier when we were faced with the intimidating guard. It gave me more of a reason to hate Seth for causing all of this mess in the first place. And the sight of Violet getting hurt made my jaw clench so hard, I felt like it would break. To make matters worse, Jack had something going on. It seemed like he had a thing for Violet. His interest in Violet was quite obvious and to be honest, it spiked my irritation knowing he could win her heart just as easily as a walk at the park. Judging by his looks, the odds of catching Violet's attention were in his favor. My bruised hands grabbed at Jack's feet by their own accord, but stopped when I realized what I was doing. I shook my head before moving forward.

Jack leaned his head my way as if sensing my thoughts. "Oh yeah, I always get the girls". He said it in a way only I could hear. He smirked expecting me to show any sign of discomfort and I did but when I checked behind to see if Violet and Cora were still with us, it went far worse. They were gone.

Were we crawling too fast?

Forgetting about the jealousy, I stopped dead in my tracks."As much as I hate to say this, the girls are gone."

The person in front of me stopped so fast, I almost head-butted him."What? No, of course they aren't!" He looked back and realized that they were in fact gone. Part of me somehow felt like his distress had to do with Violet. Ugh.

Beads of sweat started trickling down my forehead and Jack's mutters faded away as I thought of our possibilities. We couldn't turn back because the tunnel was slowly sloping at a downward angle and the walls were too far apart to climb back up using our arms. Yelling would also do us no good given the material the tunnel was built with — which absorbed the echos. We were helpless. Jack's distraught face turned to me and I could only stare back at him.

"Should we continue and see if we could find anything that could help us climb back up? It's the only choice after all," I suggested, "waiting will just make me more nervous which will lead to making bad decisions."

"Yeah, this tunnel is too steep to go back," Jack agreed. And so, we continued crawling with no sense of direction in the hopes of finding anything that might help the situation. Just our luck.

After a while, I felt like we were sliding down a slippery slide.

"Hey, is it just me or do I feel like we're falling, Mike?"

I nodded. Jack stopped in his tracks, unusual fear creeping up on his features.

"Let's continue. The faster we crawl, the sooner it's over," I told him, in my most reassuring tone.

Jack sighed. In the darkness, I could see his hands trembling and when I looked at mine, they were too. I hated being in these kinds of situations and I couldn't wait to get out of here and reunite with the others.

"Fine," he managed to utter.

We continued with our little adventure and Jack and I were so far along in the tunnel, it was pitch black. No sense of light was present. Suddenly, I heard a long bang and a yell soon followed. All too soon, I couldn't hear the loud scuttling noises of Jack's legs anymore. The guy sure made a lot of noise, assuring dominance. I could have snorted if the situation weren't so bad.