"𝐰𝐡𝐲'𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤?
𝐈𝐭𝐬 𝐆𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐦."
❝ ── We all know friends can betray you in a snap of a finger, but what happens when your own powers start turning against you, slowly driving you to insanity.
...
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CHAPTER FIVE, Where It All Started
Dormitories 11:04 AM
It was late when she got back to the empty corridor. Astra knew that. She counted how long she'd been at that dreadful office. Thirty minutes, to be exact.
Ms. Darcy won't stop rambling on and on about good behavior and manners. She felt the urge to confront the odd behavior displayed by students and the teacher at the schoolyard, where Bianca lay bleeding. However, she hesitated, realizing her inaction mirrored theirs.
Ashes of burnt cigarettes flew in the bitter air, and she carried the scent with her back to the dorms.
The walk back itself wasn't the thing that creeped her out; it was the fear surfacing inside of her. Everywhere she looked, Astra could see the reflection of that thing, lilting its head to the side and the face she busted up.
The condition of that thing was so familiar to her. She'd seen it before—not at school—back at the lab, the first time it started spreading. Holes are placed in similar areas.
The creature must have popped it. Wrong move. It'll only get worse.
Stage three, or what she liked to call 'the most disgusting phase'.
Have you ever seen those tiny flowers that come in clumps or groups? Yeah, that's what the third stage looked like. Skin boils into tiny, clear skin-tinted bumps, like bubbles. The bubbles come in groups, chunks, or whatever you'd like to call them.
Usually, it would start from the nose, then the cheeks, then the neck, and eventually everywhere.
Visions of the initial outbreak poked holes in her head, eating her from within. She was a glowy red apple, and the image was a hungry worm draining her.
The cold, sullen hallway sparked a forgotten memory; it brought Astra back to the lab. She had a lot of very first things there.
The very first night she slept on the frozen floor, an icy feeling crawled its way into her spine. At the far corner of her cell, she hurled up into a ball, clinging to her thin fabric clothes for warmth.
Doctors would peek into their cells, holding a clipboard and jotting nonsense down, then walk away as their so-called patients had frozen to death. Astra knew she wasn't a patient here, nor was anyone else. They were test subjects, experiments, and human trials.
Terrible wasn't enough to describe how badly it's gotten since then.
The very first time she felt real fear was on the second day.
Astra saw it in the morning. Outside, the lights were on and screams rippled through the encapsulated walls. There wasn't a single breathing human that didn't hear those agitated cries for help, pleading to be spared from a long and painful death.
Screeching—she thought it sounded like a nail on a chalkboard—of finger-dragging and clawing at the marbled floor rang loudly as the girl continuously begged.
The word 'clawing' made her mind flicker to another core memory.
Again, it was set back in the lab. Astra remembered sitting behind a glass door, rocking from front to back over and over. Her friend sat on the other side, singing a tune to herself.
Across their hideout, there was another glass room, whose white walls had blood splatter drooping onto the floor.
Her friend abruptly stopped singing, when a bone-chilling scream shattered the silence.
Astra rushed to move out of her position, settling back down in front of the glass door. Her hands were fogging up the glass. Opposite her room, a girl panicked, moving uncontrollably.
Her friends circulated around her, asking her what was wrong. More shrieks of horror emerged. As the others moved out of Astra's view, she saw it in all of its glory.
The girl sat in the middle, shaking as her fingers clawed and dug inside the tiny holes, making them even larger. She couldn't resist it anymore; she had to pop those tiny, itchy, uncomfortable bubbles.
But unfortunately, popping them is like opening a gate for insects to scurry into the inside of her face. A worm raised a part of its body out of a hole; it hung above her mouth before wiggling back inside. They were feasting on her rotten flesh.
"Astra!" A person suddenly shoved her back outside her dorm's door, snapping her back to reality. "You need to get out."
It was Alyssa, and she was holding a duffle bag, reluctantly forcing it into Astra's hands. "What, Alyssa, what the hell is going on?"
Alyssa turned back to look at her. "Listen to me, Astra. You need to get the hell out unless you want to die."
What the fuck.
"What are you on? I'm not going anywhere." Setting the bags down on the carpeted floor.
Alyssa picked them up and stuffed them back into her hands, this time more angrily. "Can't you just listen to me?" A deep breath was taken "Ms. Darcy is going to kill you if you don't get out right now."
"I just talked to her! She said she'd sort it out and that it's fine."
"And you believed her!?" Rage is fueling her blood.
"What else was I supposed to do?" The same level of fury flowed.
"Just hear me out, okay?" She paced back and forth, her hands gripping her hair in frustration.
"I already called your friend; she's coming to get you out beyond the bridge; you know where that is, right? Doesn't matter. My point is, you have to get out now because, I swear, I've seen this happen more than once. It's brutal, Ast. They'll skin you alive, then-"
Astra quickly interrupted, "I don't need to know that! My gosh."
"Then you better start running if you don't want to experience that."
"Okay."
"Okay? Good."
Astra was going to turn away but stopped. "Before I go . . . why didn't anyone help her?"
The answer was bleak: "We aren't allowed too. No one's allowed to."
"Now please go. I can't watch you die."
At least yet, she swallowed the words back to a lump blocking her throat as she watched Astra climb out the tainted window.
