Rebel: A Monstercat Fanfic

059 - Despair

Song of the Chapter: Crave - Tristam (Electro)

(Noisestorm's POV)

Somebody - I don't know who - tells me to quit pacing. I ignore them. I ignore everything. Braken's caught. Aero Chord's caught. Nitro Fun is still missing. And now Phantom is gone, too. My best friend is MIA. I don't know how to react. My heart is pounding wildly, my stomach churns nervously, I'm sweating uncontrollably, and I can hardly breathe.

Someone else tells me to calm down and I tell them to shut up, and then turn and push away from our camp, deeper and deeper into the forest. I'm by myself now. I resume pacing and dig my hands through my hair. I'm angry, I'm annoyed, but mostly, I'm terrified. Is Phantom still alive, on the run, hiding, or caught? Or is he already dead or dying? I let out a ferocious and frustrated yell and slam my fist against a tree. Afterward, the forest seems eerily quiet.

Somewhere, I can suddenly hear branches snapping, coughing, someone moving carelessly through the trees. "Phantom?" I call, my voice cracking. I don't get a response, so I break into a run and call again. "Phantom?"

"Noise ... " someone gasps, erupting into a fit of coughing.

I come up on him a second later, and my heart sinks. It's Nitro Fun, and although I'm glad to see him, I'm disappointed - and embarrassed for thinking that. "Where's Phantom?" I whisper.

He shakes his head weakly and takes a step, collapsing and grabbing my arms to stay upright. "I'm sorry," he breathes.

"Where is he?" I demand.

"Jensen - not MI," Nitro says and coughs violently. He adjusts his grip on my arm, revealing a dark bloodstain on my hoodie sleeve.

I look down below his pale face and the setting sun illuminates the glisten of crimson spreading across his body, starting just above his waist and spreading up and around, staining his clothes. I almost stop breathing. "You've been shot." I raise my voice and frantically call for the others. "Tristam! Nitro's been shot!" I pick him up gently so he won't have to walk and he lets out a weak cry of pain.

I get him back to camp and Tristam, Danyka, Fij, and Monstercat begin to work on him, pulling his shirt off and exposing black and purple bruises across his chest - as well as the bullet wound in his side. It wouldn't have been all that bad if he hadn't been running alone for almost a day, they said. The bullet only grazed him - but it grazed him just deep enough.

Once I've passed him on, though, I suddenly find myself in a blank silence. Jensen has Phantom. Nitro figured out that Jensen isn't with the MI. From the condition the kid's in, I'd say he's worse. "We have to go back," I hear myself say.

"We can't," Tristam says regretfully. "Believe me, if I could, I would."

"Why can't you?" I demand.

He avoids my question by telling me to calm down again.

I'm shaking in rage. "Calm down?" I yell. "My best friend could die and you're telling me to calm down?!"

"I'm just as worried about Braken as you are about Phantom," he says. I can see in his eyes that he's telling the truth, but I don't care.

I let out a sarcastic laugh. "Braken? More like Broken."

Tristam's eyes harden. "Don't you ever call him that again." His voice is as threatening as I've ever heard it.

"Oh, yeah? Why not? The first question they ask, he'll spill everything." The look in his face tells me I've hit a soft spot, but I don't care. "Phantom, on the other hand - they'll have to kill him before he tells them anything." At first, I was screaming, and while my voice doesn't soften, it starts to shake and I feel tears in my eyes. "It won't be a pretty death, either. It won't be fast, it won't be painless. It'll be worse than running through a forest with a bullet hole in your gut."