"What do you mean it's abandoned?" Ian snapped, spinning around to face them. "It was crawling with the damn bastards earlier".
"Look around you Ian," Charlotte hissed, pointing to the looming prison, its windows black. There was not a sound to be heard but that of a passing owl and the soft whisper of wind in the trees. "There's nobody here".
"How can you be sure?"
"I can sense people, their fears," she snapped. "There's nothing or no one here".
"But what about Ramsey, you couldn't sense his fears? You know, you're not always right," he growled. His disbelief had turned to anger, his helplessness mirroring how Charlotte felt too.
"It's not like that. They aren't here," she breathed, trying not to think too hard on what that now meant.
"Ian, she's right," Wallace whispered.
"How can we have messed this up?" he groaned.
Charlotte closed her eyes. He was right. How could they have messed it up? They had been so close to gaining the upper hand. It had been their first lead and now they were right back at the beginning. She had come so close to finding James, to making sure he was safe and now...
"What do we do now? Go back and start again. They must have seen you. They must have known we were coming back," she breathed, the thought of James slipping through her fingers choking her with panic.
Ian kicked at a stone on the ground, the speed of the strike sending the rock stuttering across the cracked concrete surrounding the prison. It echoed, highlighting the eerie emptiness of the place. "This is ridiculous..."
But Charlotte cut across him, raising her hand for silence. She felt a tremor of fear, weak and distant. It called to her like a lone ship lost on a stormy sea. Her alteration, stirred, buffering its wings, excitement and desperation plunging it forward to find the source.
"There's something... somebody..." she breathed, scanning the silhouetted prison, trying to locate the tremble of distress. Her alteration was hunting, prowling for that little spark.
"What is it?" Ian breathed. "Good or bad?"
"She doesn't know yet," Wallace whispered, but Charlotte was hardly aware of them.
She stumbled forward, following her alteration, not looking to the real world about her, but to the hammering heartbeat, the solid, racing heartbeat that seeped fear and panic. She looked past the grainy, unclear memories of fear, the recollection of pain, to the conscious, living, breathing person. She tried to dismiss the knowledge that she only felt one person.
"There's somebody in there and they are terrified," she whispered, dragging her alteration back, afraid that she would slip up and make everything worse.
"Are you sure there's only one?" Ian asked, gazing at the prison that was growing to dominate the darkness.
"I can only sense one," Charlotte replied.
"And you don't think this is a trap?"
Charlotte frowned and looked to Wallace who seemed to be contemplating Ian's question.
"I don't think we have a choice. If we don't secure those taken, our problems are going to get far worse," Wallace breathed.
"Where do you sense it? Did you recognise it?"
Charlotte lifted a trembling finger and pointed towards the end building, nestled back against the fence and forest beyond. "Down there".
"You don't recognise the person," Wallace frowned.
YOU ARE READING
Feared
Fiksi Ilmiah'Play the game, she thought, remembering the only three words that had helped her to survive at Kingston. Only back then she had known the game, she had known what they wanted her to be, what they had wanted her to do - this man was different. She d...
