A Threat to All

Prologue

Prologue

3rd pov

A sharp groan splits the air as the smell and taste of blood drifts around her. An ominous rumbling fills the silence as she rolls over onto her stomach, her arms aching from where they had tied her so roughly.

The engine stops and a harsh thumping echoes from the front of the truck as the man climbs down from the front seat and walks around to the back, wrenching open the back of the truck. The sight that greets them is a brutal one. The girl's arms are tied tightly behind her back and she lies curled on the floor in a foetal position. Blood drips down her face from her mouth and nose and pools beneath her, combining with the blood leaking from her arms where the artificial rope dug its spikes into them. Her arm seems to be bent at an unnatural angle,

"Oi! Brock! What's takin' ya so long? Hurry up, we got other ones to nab. Better to get it out of the way fast than sit here thinkin' 'bout nothin'."

Brock steps up into the back of the van and reaches across, grabbing the girl by her hair and yanking her out of the van, colliding with the ground with a resounding crack and scream muffled only by the cloth tied around her face. Brock yanked her up of the ground, waiting only long enough for her to find her feet before pulling her towards the dark, inconspicuous building

pushed back from the abandoned backstreet. A shiver runs down the man's back as he turns his back to the girl and start walking her up to the door.

The steps creak and groan as the heavy set man lugged her up them, seeming to scream and cry out in protest as they passed.

Standing at the top of the steps, a woman with harsh features and a thin mouth watches impassively as the girl is brutally yanked up the stairs. A hard light waits in her eyes when Brock pulls the girl up the last couple of steps and distributes her onto the ground at the womans feet.

"Well then? I assume this is the next for the bunch of brats? God, it's a good thing i'm being paid well to take care of these imbeciles. Honestly, they all have something wrong with them, may as well just forfeit them all and leave it at that. " sneers the woman, thin mouth seeming to jump about on her face as she speaks. Brock grunts and hands the end of the tie into the woman's hands. She looked down with the sneer on her face growing larger with every drop of blood leaked onto her front step. Brock turned to leave and walked down the steps with great lumbering strides, all semblance of finesse striped from his hulking form.

"Hurry up, girl, get up already," she sneers before yanking on the end of the plastic rope tied tightly around her wrists and cutting off her circulation.

They walk rapidly through the empty halls before coming to a door at the far side of the house that opened into a large room full of people, some wailing and crying, others silent and rocking back and forth. A harsh shove between the shoulder blades pushed the girl into the room before the door closed with a resounding crash, leaving the room engulfed in darkness.

The whispering and whimpering grew as the door closed, people surging forward, touching the girl with groping fingers or huddling away in the blackened corners.

"E- excuse me Miss, do you know where my mummy is?" a child tugged lightly on the edge of her torn skirt, looking up at her with wide eyes, before being ripped away from her by the rest of the horde crowding around her and pushing to try and get to the front.

"Do you know how my son is, please, tell me how he is!:

"My friend, he doesn't have anyone else."

"Mum! Mum!"

"Help me! Please help me!"

"They're here! In this room! They're here!"

The girl huddles back against the door, flattening herself as much as possible as the people flood around her. Finally a hand reaches in from the side and yanks her away from the rest of the crowd and pulls her into a dark corner where no one will find her.

Her shoulders slump into herself and she lets out a near silent sigh.

You should have fought back. Killed them, kept them from hurting us.

You're weak, useless.

Should have hidden, you betrayed us. We're all going to die now.

It'll be okay.

She shook her head, trying to shake their hold on her thoughts. Her heart rate increased, her thoughts jumbling as she scrambled back further into the wall, her eyes flicking blindly back and forth in the darkness searching for something, or someone.

"Hey! Girl! Are you okay? Snap out of it." the person beside her, whoever they were, shakes her shoulder, and she snaps around, flinching back from the person in front of her.

"Hey hey hey, it's all right, just calm down." Their concerned voice cut through the panic and her breathing gradually calms down. After a few minutes, when her breathing had calmed completely, she turned to the person beside her.

"Y-yes?"

"Oh thank goodness, you're alright. Hi! I'm Lyra, and i have bipolar, so if i suddenly have some kind of fit and start throwing things and breaking them don't worry I don't usually tell people this on our first meeting, however in this hell hole it helps to what everyone's up to." lyra sits there obviously waiting for some kind of response.

"S - Sona. and i am- i mean, i have schizoaffective disorder." Lyra looked at her in bemusement. "It means i hear... voices in my head and sometimes have random mood swings. Apart from that, there are alot of other bad things such as memory- memory loss, insomnia, and difficulty in focusing my attention."

"Oh, sounds pretty bad. I have to say i'm glad i don't have that. I really like your name though, it sounds cool and kind of like something you'd expect the hero of a story to have. I really like books, i just wish there were more government approved ones, all of the ones that they have allowed are really boring and i've read all of the ones that are even mildly interesting. My favourite was the one with all of the people that got out of the thing, but they all ad to work together or they were going to be forfeit. Honest;y, i find that terrifying. The thought that one day the government will decide that we aren't worth life any more and will forfeit us when we stop being useful." Lyra looks down where she guesses her hands are and sighs. "I never thought it would be this soon though."

They sit in silence for a while, just letting the darkness submerge them in thoughts that were just as dark as the black room surrounding them.

"So. how'd you end up here? I mean, you had to have done something to stand out or you wouldn't have ended up with the rest of us in this hell hole." Sona looks up at where she guesses Lyra's eyes to be and gives an empty smile.

"He betrayed me."