ꜰᴇᴀʀꜱ (ᴸᵉᵒⁿ ᴷᵉⁿⁿᵉᵈʸ ˣ ᴿᵉᵃᵈᵉʳ)

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 8

She added the battery to the countdown. "Okay, you'd better go to the libraries now, it should be safe there. I'll light it and then follow you," said Nikola, casually looking at Leon's way. He had his eyebrows drawn together. "Would'nt it be better if...-" he began. She stared at him in disbelief. The guy was deaf. "Right, sorry... I'm leaving, good luck!" he corrected himself. Self-knowledge is the first path to improvement, Nikola thought. "Okay, see you".

He turned around and she stared at his broad back as he left the room.
What a whore. Doesn't matter...
 She turned her eyes back to the countdown. The battery was a little too big but that didn't matter, she knew exactly how to connect the plus and minus poles so the whole shit would work. She plugged the cables together with fingertip sensitivity and a red '10:00' second display flickered on. She placed the countdown and looked around at the door again. The path was clear. She pressed the button and ran. A few seconds passed, no misfire that tore her into thousands of pieces. Already a good start. She pushed the door open and then immediately shut it again. Leon stood with his back to the wall, his weapon drawn. "Yayy, survived," he said quietly with a sarcastic tone and the charge exploded. A massive pressure wave passed through her body and Nikola faltered. Leon held out his arm and she grabbed it just before she could fall over. She immediately let him go again as both her soles were safely on the floor and she smoothed her jacket.
Oh man, that was Conspicuous. She had a lot of contact with men, mainly because of work, but she had normal, friendly, funny relationships with them. You could almost call it casual. None of them were... like Leon. Yes, how was Leon? Her brain immediately asked her. She didn't know why he made her nervous.

That was a lie, she knew it soo well.

 But still she had to act like she didn't, for at least a little while longer. Just for ego and pride reasons. Well, probably because he looked so good. What a shit. What a person's looks can matter, hmm? Doesn't matter. He was an asshole, it didn't matter what he looked like. "Is everything okay?" Leon asked. "Yes, thanks"

"Let's go inside".

He went ahead and held the door open for her. Inside, the zombie was still hanging from the ceiling, which surprised her. It really has to be stuck up there. Well, that's fine with me too, she thought to herself. "That he didn't fall down?" Leon read her thoughts. Or did he really read them? Well, that's probably the first thing you notice when you come back into a room where an explosion happened. "Well don't you say", she said ironically. He looked at her. It seemed to annoy him that she had to comment on everything with irony and sarcasm. Yes, maybe she was a little too hard on him.

"It worked," he said, and I stood in the aisle to give Nikola a pat on the back. "Sweet," she remarked and smiled. He returned her smile and her heart melted. Why was she being so mean to him again?

Right, the Statue. With Leon at her side, she really made progress, maybe he would continue to be of help to her. Perhaps. Then she wouldn't have to kill him.

She went behind the bars that she looked trough so much, approached the Statue and her eyes rested on Leon's back. He seemed to sense it because he turned around and Nikola looked away frantically. Caught, she took out her notebook where she had written down the combination. Woman, bow, snake. She put her finger on the cold iron scrolls with the figures engraved on them and then it hit her.

If she were to get the medallion now, then she would also open the secret passage, then they would go somewhere else and suffer even more suffering. And if we were to get out of the situation then we would suffer more somewhere else and even if we could get out of here completly and escape, where would we go? Where would we have to go to stop suffering? Or we simply no longer give the suffering a chance to continue. When will the spiral of suffering stop?

 It could stop right now.

She looked at the riddle's engraved gold switches. She would just have to stop the causality. "Why are we doing this?" she asked lost in thought, more to herself than to this world. "Sometimes there's not why, we just do," Leon replied. She raised her gaze, looked up at Leon and saw him looking over his shoulder at her already, gun still drawn. He made her feel safe about this desicion. She nodded slowly. He was right.

Sometimes we just do.

 She entered the correct combination, and it made a rattling noise as if a mechanism was working. 

"Works?" Leon asked and Nikola looked intently back and forth between the medallion and the exit. Something will happen, this place won't let us leave so easily. "Yes, seems so"; she replied, her voice uncertain. "Grab that thing and then get out," Leon shouted, directing his sharp gaze forward again. Then it was open, the medallion fell out of the holder and Nikola just caught it. Suddenly there was a crash and Nikola's eyes shot to Leon. The zombie he had fallen from the ceiling. "Don't worry, I've got this," he said and shots were fired. Nikola ran outside and suddenly something fell from the celing. She couldn't help it and a high-pitched scream escaped her throat. "Nikola!" Leon shouted and there were many more shots. Nikola opened her eyes and her stomach twisted. Her bowels noticeably churned. In front of her was a kind of mutated creature that brought with it a very disturbing atmosphere. The skin was pale and stretched tightly over the conical frame of this deformity, giving them a gaunt and emaciated look. They lack any visible eyes, with their brain exposed and pulsating on the top of their head.

Wait! Those had to be lickers, she read a note about them. They're  blind but their exposed brain is higly sensetive to sound. 

It's mouth was large and filled with rows and rows of sharp teeth. The chance that she would feel what those teeth would feel like when they pirced her body was higher than she would have liked. This thing had a huncheed posture, she knew that those things could use their clawed armes to crawl on celings with ease. Thats the thing that made them unpredictable (like in this situation) and extremly dangerous. She looked at Leon who stared at this thing in disbelieve, the gun pointing at the licker. A thick layer of blood or other body fluids covered them, which added to the already gruesome appearance. 

She almost forgot what she had learned, wrote and almost started to run, but she managed to pull through and calm her racing heart.

 Leon was already opening the door, but Nikola gestured to him to stay calm. "Are you crazy," she could read from Leon's lips. "Just wait," she answered tonelessly and Leon seemed to be able to read her lips because he looked at her in disbelief.
She took a step back, her notebook in one hand and the medallion in the other. The blown away Concrete crackled quietly under her feet and the licker immediately turned in her direction in alarm and panted so badly that one could almost assume he was suffering from unimaginable pain.
Leon's expression was horrified. She could see herself in his eyes and there she was no longer in one piece but being torn apart by the frighteningly huge claws of this monster.

She tried to calm down and made another big step and this time she didn't make any noise. She told Leon to go to the door and continued forward. They both made it to the door and Leon opened it quietly. Then the lock clicked and the licker shot towards her. Nikola got a terrible shock and in her mind's eye she was already in two halves, bleeding on the floor and dropped her notebook. "GET OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW!" Leon shouted and picked her up. Nikola couldn't understand the situation at all. The only thing that was recognized was her notebook with ALL the information she knew and all the drawings, poems and pictures on the floor far away from her. "NO!" she screamed and held onto the shelf in front of the door. She escaped Leon's grasp and fell to the ground. "Nikola!" Leon shouted in horror.

She groaned in pain and then crawled on the floor towards her notebook. Suddenly there was a crash all around her and a shadow towered over her. Leon was no longer there, he was already through the door. What a asshole. But that didnt matter. Atleast not anymore...

Above her was the licker. She could feel his throbbing intestines above her and warm, licky blood was dripping into her face and running under her shirt. Her notebook was a few centimeters away from her. She took a barely audible breath and slowly crawled forward. The licker screeched and jumped to a nearby wall. Oh holy god. Oh holy fucking shit.

She crawled a little further and could already touch her book with her fingertips. Then there was another crash. A body covered in bloody skin reared up in front of her. It was right in front of her and of course you would think the licker hadn't heard her move, but Nikola knew it; felt it. She would soon have 3 holes in very unhealthy places of her body. 

 She just looked up, her hand still on the notebook. That's it, what stupid shit. And all of this just for this book. "Nikola, get down!" a voice called and she ducked away. An iron sound permeated the air and it made the sound of something sharp penetrating something soft. 

She looked down at her, she was fine. Then this thing in front of her screeched. She looked up. A knife was stuck deep in this monster's brain. "Get out now!" Leon shouted and dragged Nikola by the arm. She resisted for a brief second, grabbed her notebook and then let herself be carried away. Oh god bless Leon. Oh God. Oh. He opened the door and pushed her outside.She tripped over and fell onto the floor with a hash noise.  She groaned from the impact.

Leon waited in the open door and grunted as he tried to knock over the shelf to block the way. He pulled on the shelf as if there was no tomorrow and it slammed against the wooden gap of the door with a loud noise. Then the lickjer jumped towards Leon. But he closed the door before he could push his long, deadly claws through the cracks in the shelf. There was a bang and Nikola let her head hit onto the wooden floor.