Nature's Comeback

4- Warning Alarm

The silence of two brothers didn't go unnoticed as Rewa came to check upon them.

"Who...?" She trailed off in question seeing a stranger sitting in the corner.

Others who had followed Rewa were also shocked upon seeing Sameera.

"Oh! Where did you hurt your feet?" Dhruv asked, while trying to go near her, but Sarah pulled him back.

"How can you be so stupid to go near her when you don't know her intentions? She is a stranger and definitely not an employee working here," Sarah hissed in Dhruv's ear.

"How will she harm others when she is the one who is hurt?" Dhruv retorted, as he shrugged off Sarah's hands.

"Still, there's no harm in being careful," Sarah responded.

"The girl is right. You should be careful of strangers. The world is cruel," Sameera said, remembering the dire consequences of her innocence.

As the cat was already out of the bag, she had no choice but to give some excuse for her being on the terrace. "I was running away from someone, hence all this," Sameera said pointing towards her disheveled form.

"I am sorry for the inconvenience. If you all could help me out a little, it would be of great help," she requested.

"What help?" Rewa asked curiously.

"Just let me know where we are and if you could give me the details about the nearby surroundings and where I can go from here...," Sameera answered in an unsure tone.

Sameera looked down, as dread started filling up. She didn't think until now but looking at these kids made her realize a huge problem.

Even if she was free, Sameera had nowhere to go. She wasn't even sure how everything would work out. The kids in front of her looked so different than the kids back then. And this was only the start, the world had obviously changed more than she could ever imagine.

24 years; Sameera had been away from the outside world for 24 years. As the realization set in, her chest tightened. She fought to breathe in between the panic attack.

Her state scared the kids. The elder ones went near Sameera to try and get her out of it.

"You are okay. You are fine. The one you were running away from is far away," Manav, a thirteen year old said, thinking that the fear of that person was the reason behind this panic attack.

"Should we call our parents?" Rewa asked her friends, not knowing how to deal with it.

"Go and hug her. Tell her that she isn't alone," the pink flower growing on the crack of the wall guided Avan.

Avan followed the advice and went near Sameera. Placing his tiny feet on her legs, he tightened his hands around Sameera's neck, and started patting her back with his small hands.

The idea seemed to work. After two minutes of continuous hugging, Sameera slowly started calming down.

She came out of the hug and whispered a thanks to Avan, before apologizing to all the kids for startling them.

"Are you okay?" Rewa asked in concern.

"Yeah, I am fine now," Sameera reassured. Things weren't okay but at least she was out of the clutches of that couple. She would somehow survive. Making a vow to herself to never give up, Sameera again questioned the kids about the location they were in.

"Right now, we are in the middle of nowhere," Sarah answered with a roll of her eyes.

Before the lady panicked again, Rewa added to Sarah's answer, "It is not exactly in the middle of nowhere. Yes, the building is built at an isolated place. But if you go down the road, you will reach the foot of the mountain in about 30-40 minutes. There are several small villages around that mountain."

"Why would they build such a tall building in an isolated place?" Sameera questioned out loud as things didn't make sense to her.

"This is research building. To carry out research and experiments, an isolated place is the best. This way regular citizens won't get harmed if any experiment goes wrong," one of them explained to her.

The word 'Experiment' rang inside Sameera's mind.

'Why are you playing with me?' She screamed internally while looking up at the sky.

After so many efforts to free herself, she was back into the world of experiments. And supposedly a bigger one than her previous capturers.

Sameera ran from the house containing 7-8 people, only to fall back into a building with hundreds of people with the same mindset.

Sameera stood up and stepped back from the kids.

"Wh...what?" The kids were flabbergasted at the suddenness of her actions.

"Don't come near me," she screamed, while moving her head to try and find an exit.

"Is this another type of panic attack?" Sarah asked, tilting her head towards Rewa.

"I don't know," Rewa answered, all the while looking at the panicked lady.

"Run away," Sameera suddenly warned Avan.

"Huh?"

Everyone frowned, looking back to back between Avan and the crazy lady.

"Run away before they start experimenting on you," Sameera said, before trying to jump off the building, hoping that whatever power had helped her escape that hell, would help her fly again.

Rewa, Sarah, Tejas, Laksh ran towards her to pull her back while Manav and Jhanvi tried to pacify the kids who had started crying because of the shock.

Not having knowledge about Sameera's power to fly, the kids thought that she was jumping off to die.

"Oww," Sarah yelled as Sameera's elbow jabbed her.

Sensing that situation was getting more and more tough, all the kids united. Shocked or not, they all ran towards the lady, and tried to pull her back.

The taller ones held her waist and arms, while the younger ones clutched her ankles.

After lots of screaming and getting unintentionally hit, the kids finally managed to pull Sameera away from the edge.

They had just taken a sigh of relief, when the alarm rang loudly, startling the hell out of everybody.

The alarm of warning. Something had gone wrong. The research building was in danger.