Shattered

Chapter 37: Empty

Trigger warning: This chapter has gore, violence, death, and images that may be disturbing, read carefully ❤️

Violet's POV:

"How can emptiness be so heavy?" – Sanjana Roy

I was not planning on killing anyone today.

I wasn't, but I wasn't going to let my entire team stay in danger without a heads up. Chase was my priority because he was alone, about to be surrounded, and the pattern forming in my head worked best starting with him. Pulling my hood up, I tucked one gun away and brought the other up in front of me as I slipped inside. It was darker than I liked, but I focused on deep breaths, making my way down the hallway, following the mental map I'd made in my head.

Mental maps were something I got very good at in the den, the thing that ended up saving me and getting me out. I paused in the hallway and closed my eyes, picturing the cameras on the monitors, visualizing the building's layout, and counting every person I saw on those cameras, placing them in the building. I opened my eyes. The next hall had someone in it. I turned down that hall and fired, watching the body collapse. Another death, what's the body count at now? The guilty part of me asked. A lot less than theirs, I'm sure, I countered, stepping over the body and hurrying down the hall.

I counted in my head to keep track of the doors until I reached where gunshots were going off. Heart pounding, I slipped into the room. Chase was behind a pile of crates, getting shot at by seven people. On his other side, there were three more. He was cornered and I only saw one way out of it. The stairs that should be behind the door cracked open on my left.

I nudged the door open, finding the stairs I remembered seeing on the cameras. I ran up them, not bothering to be quiet because there were too many shots being fired for anyone to hear anything. My ears were already ringing. I crouched down when I got to the top and peered over the ledge that overlooked the room. I could see all of them from there, but it wouldn't matter because they'd start firing on me the second I shot. The best way to do this was using a trick I hadn't used in a while.

There was only one light in the entire room, it was dim, but it was enough to let them see what was going on. Darkness was my friend in this case, so I made one more mental note of everyone's position before firing at the light. In darkness, I stood and unloaded ten more shots, firing lower to compensate for their natural instinct to duck. I couldn't explain it, maybe it was years of spending time in the darkness, maybe it was years of paranoia, but I knew where they moved to, and I adjusted my shots accordingly. Ten shots were fired and silence filled the room.

"Who the fuck is in here?" Chase called out.

"It's me," I said, standing and leaning over the ledge. A light came on from Chase's phone and he walked out from behind the crates, surveying the damage and looking around in confusion. "I'm up here."

He looked up, his brows furrowing. "Did you just shoot ten motherfuckers in the dark?"

"I'm a good shot," I shrugged, heading back to the stairs.

"Good shot..." he repeated. He still looked confused when I reached the bottom of the stairs. "Good shot? Is that what we're calling it? You know, when most people use the phrase 'a shot in the dark' it's because no one can shoot in the fucking dark. Why are you not on my headset?"

"Communication is down," I explained, reloading my gun. "They must have something that wiped it out."

"Fuck," Chase spat, reloading his gun and moving past me. "Message received. Get back in the van and I'll figure it out."

The words coming out of his mouth made sense in theory, they were just so stupid that I snorted and ignored him. I moved into the hallway and he stepped in front of me, glaring down at me. "Did the gunshots affect your hearing? I said get back in the van."