My Last Hope (Truth Series 4)

9: Abandoned

Third Person POV

Clash, Double, Bodil, and Sly make their way to one of the locations that may or may not be where Clash's sister is held. They stop occasionally to eat or rest. They finally reach their destination some time after noon. They rest for a few minutes, exhausted from the half-day journey, before exploring the area.

They split up to look for clues but make sure to stay within the other's sight. This way if something happens to one of them they will all be aware of the situation. They area they are investigating is a dense dark oak wood roofed forest. There's obvious evidence that someone has been here before but it hasn't been anytime recent. "Guys!" Double calls "I found something over here!" The three men run over to Double.

"What'd you find?" Sly asks.

"That." Double points to something directly in front of him. Through the gaps between the trees they can just barely make out a building. They carefully pick their way through the forest, cautiously approaching the structure. The building is large in width but only two stories high. It looks abandoned. There are vines covering it and a large hole in one side. Bodil easily traverses the debris surrounding the hole and parkours his way into the building. "Be careful, Bodil!" Double calls after him. Clash, Sly, and Double follow after Bodil, although it takes them a bit longer to traverse the hole in the wall.

"What the fuck!?" Sly exclaims upon seeing the inside of the building.

"What the Nether is this place!?" Clash glances around.

"It looks like some sort of jail." Double observes. The bottom floor of the building is full of rooms made of cracked stone bricks. The doors to the rooms are made of iron and operated with levers. Some of the rooms have iron bars for windows. Double walks over to one of the doors and flips the lever. The door opens with a creek that sounds loud and obnoxious in the eerie silence of the abandoned building. Double looks inside. He gasps and backs away from the room in shock and horror.

"What is it, Double?" Bodil asks curiously. He makes his way over to Double and the room along with Sly and Clash. Bodil looks in the room and immediately looks away.

"Oh my Notch," Sly mutters in shock as he stares into the room.

Clash looks inside. His eyes widen. All four walls, the ceiling, and the floor are covered in blood. In one of the corners of the room is a body. A headless body. The body has clearly been left here for quite a while as it is far into the process of decaying. Parts of the body are just bone while other parts are just thin layers of decaying flesh attached to the bone. Tattered clothes cling uselessly to the corpse. And in the center of the room is it's head. It sits there black from decay, eyes still wide open in terror as they stare at whomever killed the poor soul. Clash closes his eyes and turns his head away, trying to erase the scene from his memory but unable to. He swallows thickly, opens his eyes and walks away from the room. "Let's keep looking."

Clash heads for a stairwell he spots. Everyone slowly turns and follows him, the sight weighing heavily on their minds. Double closes the door to the room as he leaves. The creek from it seems to echo through the silence in a way it hadn't before.

The rooms upstairs are different than the ones downstairs. These ones are made of regular stone bricks and have wooden doors. There are no windows. However, there are a few walls that seem to have been blown up. The group enters one of the rooms through a hole in the wall. This room contains a somewhat better sight than the one downstairs. Along one of the walls is a long counter with a bunch of cabinets above it. Countless glass bottles, syringes, needles, and strange liquids litter both the counter and the floor. Most of these objects are broken and the ones that aren't are growing strange funguses. Also on the ground is a white lab coat. Sly picks up the coat and reads the name tag. "Professor Jett Void. ESC official."

"ESC?" Bodil asks.

"Evil Scientist Corporation?" Double suggests trying to light the mood. It doesn't work.

"I don't think we're going to find anything else here." Clash sighs in defeat. "Let's get out of here. We can set up camp for the night in the valley we saw on the way here. Then we can go back to Chim's in the morning."

Everyone agrees and the four men leave the old creepy science lab. They exit the same way they came in. They set up camp for the night in a valley not far from the building like Clash suggested. Then at the break of dawn they start their trip back to Chim's house in order to rejoin the rest of the group.