Phonetic

Tempt Not a Desperate Man

Romeo.

You'd think going to the police would be the right thing to do... right? Like, I'm meant to be in the back of a massive van with cuffs around my wrists sat opposite two men with firearms longer than their actual arms.

It's the most moral of all my options, though, right?

It's like I'm going to die because they won't listen to me. Oh, wait.

And it's not like the last letters, which that police officer and I agreed we needed, are dying out or anything. Unless they're already dead.

I can't even find the power to speak.

During the destructive fight between Charlie and Delta, I was slipped out the back and told to follow these gentlemen, now comfortably sat in unstirring silence. I have no idea who won said battle - to begin with I didn't even realise Charlie was there.

Officers were all over the police trying to hold up the fort for me to escape apparently. Suddenly, I was some sort of priority. I was shoved through the back exit, and could just make out the sound of Charlie's voice against the cacophony of the collapsing city.

Whoever won is without a doubt coming after me, wherever I'm going.

Not quite sure why they cuffed me - I wanted to get out of there desperately anyhow. It wasn't until I refused and then had my own pistol held to my head and screamed at, that I caught the feel of the environment I was about to enter.

I'm a priority but not as a human being.

And in the meantime, everyone is dying. We had a plan. I actually thought for a second there we were developing a plan. I thought this was going to turn into some kind of action film where some hot guy would emerge and need saving and just maybe I'd save him and the policeman would be my assistant.

Back in the warehouse, that's all Papa, Oscar and I used to do. We'd plan for the zombie apocalypse, and discuss which heroes would win again each other, taking into consideration assets the films would never even consider. When we were young, it was all about pretending to be those heroes. Oscar, as the fastest out of the three of us, would always be about speed and agility and run around the warehouse, accidently tripping up the Crazies or over his own shoelaces. That's probably how I fell in love with Oscar at such a young age.

He was dopey as hell, and funny. Shy, but entertaining. He always manage to brighten up the day, even if he didn't mean to and it was due to his clumsiness.

We all just... we all just pretended we had not idea what was going on around us, even up until our last few weeks in the warehouse we blocked everything out up until a time came where we couldn't. We pretended we didn't know that Zulu was pregnant, or that Alpha kept sneaking out to go see some girl who wasn't apart of the twenty-six. We pretended the top four weren't killing people on the outside.

Where most simply didn't know at all, we just blocked it all out.

Everyone might wonder, how did three so low down such as Oscar, Papa and Romeo find out about such things. Because my sister told me - not my 'twenty-six, as close to as can possibly get' sister. My biological sister.

All I wanted to do was play heroes and pretend we were all running away from dragons, and take pictures. The only thing my sister ever brought me back from the outside was a camera she stole from a window display. At the time, she told me a man gifted it to her for her stunning looks, and so I took it without pity, thinking she definitely didn't deserve it then.

If I had known so much at the time, I would've slapped it from her hands.

If I had known of what she was to become, and now is, I probably would've tried to kill her, but she wouldn't have given me the chance. Only a year apart in age, we started off so close - literally clinging onto each other when we were first adopted. She was three, and says sometimes she gets glimpses of an orphanage, and even remembers our parents, or tries to.

All her life, Bravo has been so desperate for parents. She'd draw our family as she remembered it across the ceiling with combat knives. She needs that feeling of someone to guide her, and lead her, ironically enough.

Without it, she kind of, loses herself.

The van stops, and I slide along the bench slightly as gravity tugs me back. One of the men pulls me up by my arm and pushes me out as soon as the van doors open, exposing my soaked eyes to fresh sunlight.

"Keep silent."

"Okay," I mumble, mesmerised by the miles of empty fields, the grass sparkling as it sulks with the prevous downpour.

There's a shocking slap over the back of my head from one of the men.

See, it's this moment right here, where I'm walking alone with these two men, about to go into the field, that I wonder if I should actually utilise something I've learnt over the decade and a half. And it's as I'm planning what the best move to make is, as one of the lowers, but still considerably faster than your bog-standard, that the barn doors open and there's four more of the goons inside.

I would've preferred if cows had come out.

Roughly tugged, shoved and then kicked into the barn, the doors are closed. I lay face down in hay, coughing on the surprisingly dry dirt finding its way up my nose.

Bravo, I've really done it now.

I wiggle in cuffs, pulling on the links and scratching away like there's a possibility I could actually break these things. Tears absolutely explode from my eyes and I begin squealing. Who knew I'd die by a hand less than Zulu's.

"Stop crying," one of them demands.

The sunlight seeps through the beams making up the barn, and I trace the light in an attempt to calm myself down. The miasma of shit and the clouds of dust clog my nose.

I'm yanked up into a sitting position by my already short hair, and he stands in front of me in all kaiki and his hands begin his back.

"The military?"

"Shut it!" He screams. "Tell me what you are."

My jaw drops and I begin to completely seize up. "I - I don't know - "

He kicks me across the jaw like his primary school football, tumbling me back onto the floor again. He grabs back onto my hair and wrenches me back up again, eyes briefly scanning the blood trickling from my mouth.

"Don't seem like much of a superhero to me."