Dinah turned on her flashlight from earlier which she had taken with her downstairs so that the three of them could see better. Chris pulled two folded papers from out of his pocket, handing both of them to the girls. Dinah took the other of them as Lauren started to unfold one, shining the flashlight near the paper. There was no sense of current urgency. Dinah read the paper's contents from over Lauren's shoulder.
It was notes about the broadcast, starting off saying that it was not a regular broadcast. He had written that The Scientists has said not to leave your assigned battery block for any reason or risk termination, and that there were storms on track to hit The City. The storms were speculated to be water and land based and would arrive in a few days or less. The death toll was either not counted, or just not reported.
"What the hell does this mean? There's storms?" Lauren handed the first paper back to Dinah and looked up at Chris.
"Yep, tropical storms, apparently. The second part, about termination- that's why you had to come back inside. They're killing people who don't listen," Chris recounted as Lauren started to unfold the second paper.
"The Scientists said this? They're literally killing people?" Dinah understood how repetitive this was but she was overcome with disbelief. Chris simply nodded and Dinah shone the light to the now opened second paper. Lauren described it aloud.
"It's a list of battery blocks. It's all on the coast of Oceana, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7.... it lists the first three sanctions. And- oh."
"What?" Dinah's anticipation rose momentarily and Chris replied,
"Numbers 115, 117, and 201 were also on the evac list."
"That's us."
"But this is the inlands. What possibly could be going on exactly just here, in our exact battery block, nowhere else, that would cause us to be on that list?" Lauren's voice dropped as the real magnitude of this situation filled the air thickly.
"I don't know."
"Well it did mention land storms too. Maybe this is the epicentre of one of them," Dinah mentally tried to piece together theories for this to be occuring but even then none of it made sense, especially at such sudden notice, "Are you absolutely positive that we were on there?"
"Yeah. One hundred fifteen. I heard it right," Chris replied easily, having been replaying the entire tape in his head for a while to make sure he didn't miss anything.
"What kind of storm only hits one block?" Dinah, upon hearing Lauren openly ask that question, realised exactly what was going on.
"There's not going to be a storm here. They are going to kill us," Dinah turned off the flashlight and sat down on Lauren's bed, shaking her head, "They said anyone who went outside would be terminated. We went outside, so they're going to kill off out entire battery block and those other two as well," She paused for a quick moment, allowing the other two to catch up with what she said, "We have to leave."
"They can't do that, can they? I'm pretty sure they can't do that," Lauren and Chris sat down next to Dinah and Dinah shrugged,
"We don't even know who they are Lo, let alone what they can do. Of course they can. They don't abide to human nature, this isn't their reality."
"That's not how any of this has ever worked."
"Honestly I don't think anyone knew how it really worked. They kind of proved that by sending out that broadcast. We just have to leave."
That's all it took. That's all it took for the to reach a point of abstract destruction. That's all it took for the ground to start shaking at such a high velocity that trees were being uprooted in seconds. That's all it took for people to start screaming yet all it took for people to become deafened- for The City to sound like nothing but death. And death has such a silent but violent sound. That's all it took for the Battery Blocks to begin zapping and immensely trembling. That's all it took for people to break every rule they had just been told, for it all to be for naught. It took a moment's space of four words.
It sounded like pure macabre; rocks millions of years old cracking in two, coupling with the screams, Chaos so loud that you couldn't even hear it anymore. The overstimulation of sound was super sensing. The feeling was so out of body that Dinah wasn't even sure what she was doing and the only sensory input she could take in was the constant feeling of Lauren's hand in her own as they attempted to not be buried under the toppling buildings. A sudden downfall, so suddenly traumatic that every hour felt like seconds. There was nobody else around them at the moment but then again they could not be sure where they were exactly. The shaking began to stop after eight hours. It wasn't as loud anymore but then again, who was to say it was loud before? Who was to say that where was anything before? Right now all you could see for miles was dust raining from the sky.
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AN: okay so it's been way longer than I said it would be but it's because I hate school and now it's basically over so I will actually tru from now on. - Avia
