Experiment X

19| And so it begins

Author's note: Edited! Should read better now!:D

19 | And so it begins

The darkness is startling: instead of the expected blistering heat of a cloudless blue sky, clouds hang rain-bloated, brooding and ominous over Emberly as she still lays fully upon her back motionless, except for her breathing. Which has steadied. Her heart she still feels radiating within her veins, pounding gratingly behind her ears. Without realizing it, Emberly sucks in the air, tasting it dry and her brow furrows. Where are they? And did she just see a flicker of lightening blitz across the sky?

Blinking and shaking her head, she winces as she pushes herself upright sitting with an arm. “Hey you, kid?” she speaks out in the strange silence, “where are you?” They position teammates together right? That would be logical? But, what if he isn’t anywhere nearby?

“Yes,” she hears his answer, which relieves Emberly greatly, “I’m over here. Headed your way.”

Immediately, turning to his voice, she sees him tiredly progressing toward her, and so Emberly stands to her feet, the forsaken city beginning to reveal itself out of the misty gloom. Looming in the distance like some sleeping giants, overgrown in swallowing moss with shattered windows for eyes are desolate buildings, and towering skyscrapers, their staggeringapexes lost in the swirling thickness of the ghostly fog. The wraithlike mist seems to possess a lurking life of its own, gleaming with the intensity and color of liquefied bone, beyond them, clinging onto the massive, forgotten structures like permanent, sluggish petrified leeches. Draining what little life has been left within this abandoned city, until therewould benothing at all, except for them. But even them, Emberly realizes, wouldn’t last much longer either. At the end of seven days five of them would be dead. What if one of the five would be her? No. She wouldn’t allow herself to think that, let alone believe it.

"Hey are you okay?” she hears Kel calling out to her, as he approaches. Suddenly, her eyes fling wide open, and she asks him:

“Yeah, I'm fine, just a little lightheaded,” she says beneath her breath. Emberly watches the tall, tan boy as he stares out into the damp, dreary distance. He rests his hands onto his hips, then draws them up, folding them, biting his lip. “What are you thinking?” she asks.

“I’m thinking we need to get out of the open, and find cover, and figure out some sort of strategy,” he says, and Emberly nods in agreement.

“Good thinking,” Emberly speaks. “But where should we go first?”

“Good question,” Kel answers chuckling a bit. “There’s so many wonderful choices…There’s either the beautifully dilapidated warehouse—I think that’s a warehouse up ahead…And, whatever that building is beyond it. But we need to get moving, no matter what.”

“Agreed.”

As they begin to move forward, Emberly sweeps her eyes carefully around her, taking in all ofthe busted, broken buildings rising out of the depressing dimness, the shadowing amass of buildings, some houses, some offices, and even restaurants their neon signs still somehow erratically blinking bright fuchsia and electric blue. There are, however, no signs of previous life at all, since it is called abandoned. No garbage. No cars, buses, or SUVs, or trucks of any kind. No litter. Nothing. Just nothing. Empty. How strange, Emberly thinks. Where did it all go? It couldn’t just up and vanish? Or…Could it? What if they aren’t in abandoned city at all…What if it’s all just some bizarre representation of a city and nothing is real? All but a dream?

“I just wish it wasn’t so dark…and I don’t know…This place just gives me a weird feeling.” Emberly looks to Kel to see how he’ll respond: his lips press into a firm line, then a frown, his blue eyes wandering ahead.