Shadow Moses [Fransykes]

Chapter 14

A/N: I survived the first semester and goddammit I'm so glad it's OVER  like THANK FUCK. Anyways, this chapter is like so cliche but also like ZERO empathy went into it, so yeah weird combination lmao, enjoy I guess!

___

"Oli?" Hannah's voice was steady, but full of emotion. "Oli is that you?"

My heartbeat was too fast. The ground seemed to sweep away from my feet. If Josh hasn't been holding me, I would've already been scattered on the floor as wide and long as I was.

"You're alive?" I chocked out.

"Goddamn right I'm alive," she said, sounding confident as ever.

"I don't get it... Where? How?"

"It's a long story, and if you're hearing this, you probably don't have much time," she said.

"I... don't care," I said.

She chuckled. "Aw, my typical care free Oli."

"Shut up," I snapped. "Don't you dare joke... How the fuck? Where the fuck?" I paused, my tone softening as I spoke again. "Are you okay?"

"Oh, I'm as fine as one can be," she tweeted.

"Hannah, I don't get it..."

"I'm alive, Oli." Though I could still hear the smile behind her words, her tone fell serious. "The outside world is healed - well mostly."

"Are you alone?" I asked. "You need to take care out there, there's these clans-"

"The Phylumins?" She chuckled. "Yeah, I know, I'm one of them now."

"You're what?"

"Chill, sweetie," she giggled.

"Don't sweetie me, what the fuck?" I struggled not to yell. "Hannah, I thought you were dead!"

"I'm not thanks to the Phylumins," she said happily. "They want the same thing we do - justice."

"But... they've been killing the banished for years..."

"They had no choice," she said. "The President has been regularly sending out his men to kill them and since they'd always presented themselves as the banished, after some time they needed to start eliminating everyone who seemed like a threat."

I blinked. "Wait, what?"

"Yeah, we just managed to defend ourselves from the last group that hunted us," she said. "The President sent a lot of them after us in the past month."

"Sight Keepers," Josh muttered and I shifted in his arms to look at his face.

"They call themselves Sight Keepers," Hannah said, and I held my gaze on Josh's eyes, stirred by an emotion I couldn't recognize. "They've been regularly checking up on the outside world almost since the very beginning of the realm. Under The President's orders they've been taking whatever was good back to the realm, and eliminating anyone they'd stumble upon."

"Wasn't the outside world toxic?" I asked. "Apparently it's still supposed to be..."

"In the beginning it was, but nature healed itself with time. It's still not how they say it once was, but it's not a deadly environment," she said. "If you want to know more find The Book of Sights. Sight Keepers have been noting all their observations about the outside world and bringing them back to The President throughout the years and everything has to be written in The Book of Sights."