"The basement of the building serves as a bunker!" KC shouts over the winds, which are quickly getting worse.
She shoos us down the stairs. Once we're in the darkness, with the faded wail of the siren, Nora begins to sniffle.
"I'm scared and hungry and tired and Juliette is still captured and that stupid noise is hurting my ears!" She cries, choking on her words.
"Okay, it's okay! Don't cry, little flower. We will find Juliette. I promise," I tell her, picking her up and hugging her.
"The tornado can't get us down here," Ryith tells her, smiling.
"There's a t-t-tornado?!" Nora starts crying even harder, bawling and blubbering.
"Get her to stop crying, or someone's gonna hear us!" Nox hisses at me.
"You can't just make her stop," I scowl at him, rubbing Nora's back.
"We're safe down here, you don't have to worry," I say, holding her hand.
KC starts to lead us through the halls, until we get to a crossroads with a staircase going up, and a staircase going down.
"Okay, this is where we split up. So Gray, Nora, and Oakley, you're with me, and then the other group is Nox, Leila, Autumn, Mercedes, and Ryith, and here's a walkie-talkie so we can keep in contact," KC says, handing Leila a walkie-talkie.
"No, I'm staying with Autumn!" Nora pouts, sniffling. At least she stopped crying, but now she's pouting.
"Fine, come with us, but please, whisper!" Nox whisper-yells, frustrated.
"Wait!" I say, pulling Gray back.
I give him a quick kiss, and I smile.
"You haven't seen the last of me!" He says faux-dramatically, winking goofily at me. I giggle, then I head back over to the grumpy Nora.
"Come on, Nora, it's okay," I tell her, and the five of us set off down the stairs.
"Still want to come with us? We've got the basement," Mercedes asks her as we descend.
I can see that Nora wants to just be scared, but pride keeps that little pout on her face.
"I'm not scared!" She declares, trying to sound brave.
Quite the shift from a couple of minutes ago.
After a few minutes of descending in silence, with the light levels getting lower and lower though, she timidly grabs my hand.
"Hey KC, why aren't there any lights on in the basement?" Leila asks confusedly into the walkie-talkie.
"I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's an emergency procedure to save power. I remember the same thing happening in really bad storms," KC answers, and her voice crackles with static.
"It's okay, I'll be our light," Leila says, her body illuminating like the soft light of a candle.
We finally reach the bottom of the stairs. A maze of different hallways span out in front of us, barely visibly in the dark.
"Where would you recommend we check first? There's kinda a lot of options," Leila asks.
"I'd say head down the farthest on the right, first. That's where the Board of Confidential Practice is. Fancy name for saying that's where they keep stuff that they don't want people to find. That's where we were first kept hostage, and it's likely your friend could be there too."
As KC speaks, her voice gets more and more crackly, and harder to understand.
"Was...was that just me or is the signal getting worse down here?" Nox asks.
YOU ARE READING
Anomalous
Teen Fiction{COMPLETED!!} Autumn is ordinary. Completely ordinary. She goes to school, gets yelled at by her mom, comes home, gets yelled at more; normal. One day, the chain of mundane breaks, when she comes home to find two teens with a pitch in her house. ...
