The Implant Variable

Left Behind

           

"We call 'em Blades." Minho spoke, his voice reverberating between all the rusted metal structures. He didn't offer anything else besides the fact, leaving the trio to walk in bewildered silence.

            They slipped between one pair of parallel Blades, moving to the next row over. Rachel spotted something slumped on the otherwise-barren ground and jogged forward to investigate, crouching down to get a closer look.

            Picking up what she now recognized as a limp fabric, the girl narrowed her eyes. It was the same maroon color as the shirt she'd woken up in, only for a much different reason. Hearing the boys' footsteps slowing to a stop just behind her, the teen let out a small puff of a sigh, using her other hand to straighten out the item of clothing and hold it up correctly. A tank top. And some parts of it were more pink, even a dirtied white in a few spots, but the rest was a stiffened, deep red.

            "It was Ben's, wasn't it?" Rachel looked up at Minho and Thomas, still holding the shirt up as she came to her own conclusion.

            "Yeah," Minho breathed out, a little nauseous at the finality of the sight. The tank top was caked in his old friend's blood, pants ripped to shreds on the ground beside it.

            "A Shade got the best of him?" the Icer asked, dropping the dirty tank top back to the ground, not really wanting to touch it any more than she had.

            "A Griever must've pulled him down here," the stocky boy replied, hooking his hands on his harness. It was a tick of his- something he tended to do whether in deep thought, awe, anxiety, any of it. Minho made eye contact with Thomas, who was awfully quiet, to make sure the boy hadn't gone into shock or something.

            Griever, Rachel mentally rehearsed, trying to pick up on their lingo. Right. That's what they call Shades. Little did she know it was a different monster entirely.

            A mechanical whirring kicked on, catching all of their attentions. It was at an uncomfortable frequency: not low enough to be deep, but not high enough to be pitchy, either. Fell just right within that unfortunate overlap, and eerily so.

            They all looked around slowly, until Thomas suddenly grabbed Minho's shoulders and whipped him around. "Woah, hey!" The older boy instinctively muttered, catching his abruptly-shifted weight with his footing and trying desperately to look over his shoulder to see what Thomas was doing. The paler of the boys ripped the metal cylinder out of Minho's small backpack, mulling it over in his hands as the Keeper turned back around, intrigued. It was clear now that that was where the sounds were coming from: the clicks and constant buzzing were emitted from the extracted Griever piece itself. Thomas took a few steps in one direction before halting, as the thing grew silent. Never tearing his eyes off the machinery, he turned around and started back towards them, which made the noises jump back to life, and more fervently as he passed the other two. Now the clicks were pretty constant, more responsive to whatever location was triggering them.

            His lips agape, Thomas finally looked up from the cylinder, the boy's eyes darting about in thought. "I think it's showing us the way," he stated, words echoing endlessly off the thousands of metal structures that surrounded them. He looked back at Minho for agreement, who nodded curtly. Rachel was still convinced "the way" didn't mean the way OUT, as that was through The Cliff, but she'd be lying if she said she wasn't curious as to what this thing was trying to lead them to after all.

            They began to move once more, giving their aching muscles a break and just walking briskly instead of any sort of running. Thomas was up front, his attention solely on the Griever part as he blindly weaved between Blades. He stopped abruptly, muttering "wait, wait, wait wait," quick and under his breath, leading Minho to pipe up.