FULL OBLITERATION (Book #3)

𝕾𝖎𝖝

"Um, do you want me to leave?" Carmen sorta cringes. "I can leave if you-"

"No."

She forces a smile but the whole avoiding it thing has made it awkward. It's better to just talk about the elephant in the room and get it over with. What I did was wrong and what she did was wrong.

"Sorry, Dean," she apologises. "I kinda overstepped my boundaries. I know you have eyes for another – regardless of which dimension."

"I'm sorry too," I look at the ground. "I keep telling myself it's your fault but no one forced me to kiss you back at the warehouse or what happened in the showers."

"So... Did you mean any of it?"

"I'm not sure what answer you're looking for, Carmen, but I do regret it."

"Right," she scoffs, "but you didn't in the moment though."

I can tell it wasn't the answer she was expecting from me but what was she expecting from me?

"Sorry, doesn't matter," she shakes her head as if to shake away some thoughts. "It's just this 'jump' thing. I feel some sort of a connection to you... Then I feel a push in the other world."

"It forces us to repel in the safe world and attract in this," I word it more clearly. "I kinda caught onto it too. That's why I always felt like a slight buzz when I'm here with you and the opposite when I'm in the other dimension."

"Why is that? Do you know?"

"No, I don't know but as soon as we jump again, we're gonna find out."

"I guess now that we know this energy is something out of our hands," she notes, "we should have boundaries, so we don't do anything we don't mean with, like, each other."

"Yeah, that'd actually be helpful."

She nods, her eyes drifting away for a bit. It's like she's unhappy about something but I'm not quite sure what. Carmen looks past my shoulder at Bray before heading towards the glass where she can commemorate him like me. She almost misses a step when she goes past me though.

"Woah, you okay?" I wrap my arm around her small waist, helping her regain her balance.

"Yeah, I'm fine," and she stares at my arm, frozen a lil at the site of it.

I clear my throat and step away.

"I know we have boundaries now at whatnot," Carmen expresses, "but you're pretty good."

"'Pretty good'?"

"Yeah."

"At?"

"At..." her scan drifts down my body. "At-"

BRAYNK! BRAYNK! BRAYNK! BRAYNK!

The PIR sensor flashes bright red in the corner of the room.

"What's happening?" Carmen looks up at it, frightened.

"No idea but it don't sound good," I walk up to the door and put my ear to it. "Something's not right," I glance over my shoulder at Carmen. "I'm gonna go check it out."

"Dean, no, what the fuck?"

"Carmen, just stay here, I'll be right back."

"B-b-but what if it's the lurkers?! Or-or-"

"Carmen, it's okay, I promise. I will be back. Stay here with Bray, okay?"

"Be careful," she squeezes my arm.

I head down the quarantine bay and into an L-junction. One end leads to the auditorium and the other end right next to me leads to the rooms. I decide to head down to the auditorium because if the rest are gonna be anywhere, it's probably there.

Some raised voices come from the auditorium, so instead of walking, I start jogging to it. The voices turn to shouts and I pause altogether. The doors of the auditorium smash open, silence, followed by a soft breeze that flutters through my hair. In comes a stampede of civis trying to get away from something. I swiftly step to the side, letting them rush past me.

"Hey! Hey!" I grab a kid's arm. "The hell's going on?!"

"One of the crazies jumped a man in there!" and he snatches his arm away, running through the other end of the doors where all the rooms are.

"'Crazies'?"

"Bro!" I stop another dude, he's about my age, maybe a bit older. "Did you see a man in there in SWAT attire?"

"What?! I don't know, dude, but shit hit the fan in there! Run!"

"With a swallow neck tattoo on his neck?!" I urge, pointing to my neck and sweat dripping off me because if my dad's in there, I ain't running away.

"No, bro!"

"How about a blonde boy and a blonde girl – she's pretty short, yay-high?!"

"Jace? That white kid?"

"Yes, him!"

"He's in there, man! But no blondie with him."

Fuck! But if I know any better, Jace can definitely take care of himself. I gotta get myself to Carmen and Bray in the quarantine bay because they will get trapped if I don't.

"Bro, we gotta go now! I'm Sterlin, by the way!"

"Dean."

Sterlin has a dark skin complexion, cornrows, and a big diamond stud in one of his ears. He surely plays a sport of some sort, just, "what sport?"

"Rugby, brother. You?"

"Baseball."

"How cute," he grins in the chaos.

What's that supposed to mean?

I come to a halt when I reach the intersection again, taking a left.

"The hell you doin'?!" Sterlin stops. "That's the quarantine bay! We needa head into there!" he points at the doors in front of him.

"My friends are in one of these rooms! Needa get them first!"

"Bro, you crazy?!"

"Insane, actually." So many people have said that to me, at this point, Ima just own up to it.

My father barges out from the doors in front of Sterlin with a bunch of armed men. "Good god, Dean!" he grabs my shoulder. "Get inside! We've just got the news a civi attacked another in the auditorium!"

"AHHHHH!"

More screams erupt from the other end. Dad holds his weapon up on alert. Jace finally comes into view. He's got another injured girl's arm over his shoulder, the same girl with the fiery red hair that was at the soup station, and he's helping her out. But he's way too slow because right on his tail, I can see the pair of arms of not one, not two, but three lurkers trying to pry through the doors.