Feral → newt, tmr

Bonus Chapter 2

Chapter 2 ━━ Being Polite

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A loud clank of metal fills in the air when Sonya pushes the door open and the bright light shines into them. 

Chris helps Vera up to her feet. "Yeah, I know you're a badass who could handle the situation-" 

Vera cuts him off with a tight embrace. "Thank you." 

"This is nice." Chris says, hugging back. 

Vera pulls apart the hug with a playful glare. "Don't take it too seriously, newbie. It was a one-time thing." 

"Yeah. Yeah. Whatever." The boy rolls his eyes with a chuckle as they make it out the door. 

They approach a hallway with pipes running on its walls, going to the end of the hallway. Every remaining Springer is covered in Shade sludge and human blood, their clothes rip to shreds. The count of ten is now down to seven. Sonya, Harriet, Vera, Rachel, Chris and Aris are the survivors of the maze. 

Suddenly, a clicking sound echoes throughout the hallway and lights start to flicker on, one by one lighting the entire hallway to its end. 

They walk through the hallway until they come to meet a metal door at the end. An EXIT sign hangs on the top of it in between two shining green bulbs. 

"Is this some kind of a joke?" Chris asks his eyes on the glowing icon. 

Aris slowly reaches the door handle and shoves it open to give a fair view of the other side. 

They walk into another narrow hallway to notice three guards lying dead on the floor, surrounded by their own blood. 

They pass a room with dead bodies on tables and covered with white sheets. 

"What happened here?" Sonya asks as they pass over a dead guy with a gun in his hand. 

Chris takes his quiver that bears an arrow and the bow off his shoulder and drops it beside the dead guy and picks the gun. "Hope you don't mind, handsome." 

Vera notices this and points at the dead guard. "He's dead." 

Chris removes the magazine to check then opens the cylinder, to find three ammo remaining in it and reloads the pistol. "And your point is?" 

"You were talking to a dead man." She says as they continue to move forward. 

"We traded our weapons." He shrugs, shoving the handgun into his waistband without the holster and hides it under his t-shirt like a pro of weaponry. "I was being polite." 

Vera snorts as they move forward to walk into a large room with screens all over it. 

"They were watching us." Sonya says, looking at a screen that shows the Spring from various angles. "This whole time." 

"They probably had fun watching Aris and Rachel sucking off each other's faces." Chris says smugly, earning a glare from Aris. Rachel is blushing in embarrassment. Others snickers in response as Vera elbows Chris in the gut, choking her laughter. "What?" 

Vera moves to look around when a blonde woman in her early forties appears on the huge screen that is in the middle of the room. The woman looks so familiar to her. But with the loss of her memory, it's hard to catch who it really is. 

"Hello. My name is Doctor Ava Paige. I'm Director of Operations of the World Catastrophe Killzone Department. If you're watching this, that means you have successfully completed the Maze Trials. I wish I could be there in person to congratulate you… But circumstances seem to have prevented it. I'm sure by now, you must all be very confused… angry… frightened. I can only assure you, that everything that's happened to you… everything we've done to you… it was all done for a reason. You won't remember… but the Sun has scorched our world." The woman continues as the screen shows recordings of an orange sun burning down into the earth. "Billions of lives lost to fire... famine… suffering on a global scale. The fallout was unimaginable. What came after was worse. We called it the Flare. A deadly virus that attacks the brain."