Alternate (Phan)

27*Hearts alike

Phil

I rested my back against a crumbling brick wall, centralising my mind back into focus. I took a few deep breaths, allowing the silence of the world to seep into my ears. I just wanted Dan. I wanted his touch against my body, his sarcastic jokes, his eyes that say a million words in one movement. The entirety of my body was aching. There's no way to describe the feeling to someone who's not experienced loss of extreme sorts, but it's as if all your organs are leaking out of your skin pores, your muscles are screaming and you feel so tired. I would do anything to hold Dan right now, I'd do anything just to have the thumbs up that he was okay. But he wasn't, I knew that because despite being an optimist, I have common fucking sense. If you're with the hunters; you are not going to be okay. Ever.

I picked at a loose piece of skin on my thumb, thoughts washing past me in waves. I neither ignored them, nor paid them any attention. They just were. Sometimes that's okay.

I sighed, prepared to continue on, when a flash of conscious awareness shook my body, yelling at me to check my connector. So, I flicked it in front of my face, scrolling through the minimal notifies that displayed themselves on the screen. But from Dan, nothing. Again, I sighed and clicked the screen off with a button, but just as I did so, the light flashed signalling something had passed through. I re-opened the page of notifies, glancing at the new one.

Danisnotonfire posted a picture.

I vomited.

There's a feeling of dread that shuts your entire body down and makes your cheeks feel hollow. Tears trickled down my face as I pulled the image to my face again, carefully re-living the horrific moment. A picture of Dan's hand and body was displayed, taken from first person. It was as if he was trying to get the best angle possible, while being tied up and in excruciating pain all over. As if to say 'look, I'm alive. But barely.' His skin in the photo was red and raw, scars cascading all over his tanned skin, nails bitten to nothingness. From the photo, I assumed he was only tied by one hand, seeming he must have accessed his connector from one hand, the same taking the image. The floor he lied on was black concrete, which still couldn't mask the sheets of blood that dripped around my love's body. If seeing your partner in this condition wasn't bad enough, out of the corner of the image was an unintentional capture, made obvious that it was captured by a mistake from the angle it was at. There, written in his own blood, was two letters: D+P, surrounded by a heart, with a split down the middle and a sad face by the shape's side.

I drummed my fingers against the screen.

Danisnotonfire, There isn't darkness where the sun doesn't set.

By this point, I'd not bothered to read, let alone reply, to any of the replies to my comment on Dan's photo. Our followers knew as much about Dan's condition as I did, but we could all agree that I needed to find him. I needed to find him now.

The sky had darkened into a misty-blue when I reached the widely-known location. I expected an abandoned-looking house, hospital maybe, some kind of shaft or building, could be a farm. But there was nothing spread across the empty field. There was nothing at the location, apart from tiny white daggers mocking the sharp pain in my chest, mocking my desperate despair.

I screamed, my voice bellowing through the distant trees. Jogging out into the field, my eyes darted around the place, desperate for any sign of anything at all. My breathing became irregular as I gasped for breath in between whimpers and whines, my voice strained with each outward cry. My legs collapsed underneath me, allowing myself to fall to the ground. I began to hammer my fists against the ground, pounding against the grass as I punished the surface of the world, barely making a bruise in comparison to the crater on my heart.

I held Ev on my lap, cradling his body for comfort as I regained myself enough to stand up. My vision cleared, as did my mind in search for my next move.

But then I saw it.

The ground was marshy from the recent downpour of rain, but this time it was nothing of an annoyance. I noticed in the marsh, there was recently trodden down ground, making footprints too small to be mine, leading up to a point just in front of me. Another pair walked away from the same spot. I breathed in, holding the air in my lungs as I fumbled my hands around the ground. The sound changed from my fingers drumming against the Earth. The once solid, almost inaudible thump of my palms against the grass now echoing into the distance, almost as if I were to be drumming on metal-

A clasp. Hidden in the mud, dug under the soils, was a small hoop. I tugged on it, heaving it upwards into the air, gasping as I viewed the inside.

Of course I saw no building, no farm, nor hut. What is there to see when all is underground, tucked away and hidden a spit away from blind-sight?

I peeked in, in return receiving a glare from unwelcoming darkness. The pit smelt like rotten corpses; a smell I'd only grown too familiar with over my lifetime. I heard faint chatters in the distance, speeding my heart rate up, but rationalising it to realise there was nothing I should really fear.

Something yelled at me to stay above ground, to wait, but I knew better in these incidents than to trust my gut instinct. The gut instinct keeps you alive, dragging yourself away from situations that could reduce your chances of living. But when you have to rescue the actual point of your life himself, you know to ignore those instincts and trust your heart.

I cling on to Ev, guilt erupting in my body at bringing such a helpless life form into such a dangerous situation, but it was safer than to leave him out here where he could be mauled to death by both nuked creature and human alike, or be washed up in the rain and find himself with an illness too severe to cure. So, he was coming with me in the safety of my arms that I could trust. Not much, but I could.

I pulled a leg over the side of the pit, shuffling myself closer into the hole. I kept reassuring myself all was fine, that what I was doing was right for multiple people.

Then I heard a voice shouting after me, my heart audibly thumping at its sudden halt in movement...