Black as Day (ON HIATUS)

Chapter 6- White Bandanas

After I’d returned, avoiding the guards all the way, I’d been stopped with an alarming sight. The perimeter was swarming with guards. Workers, with guards also standing over them, were quickly filling in the hole in the wall. The fence I had jumped over was being re-fitted with barbed wire. Looking down at my hands, I realized that there had, in fact, been barbed wire on the fence beforehand. My palms were cut and bleeding, my ankle burned, and various parts of me hurt for no reason at all. I gritted my teeth against the pain and looked around once more. Where was he?

From what I could figure out, I was being held on the fourth floor. Jay had lead me down to the first, and that’s the level he was caught on. I’d overheard the man telling him to be taken to the basement. How in the world was I going to get in there?

Retreating back into the cover of the trees, I jumped up and perched on a low branch, wincing as my ankle rubbed against the bark. And by low, I mean about ten feet up. The thick foliage hid my form well. I sighed and leaned back against the trunk, dejected. Closing my eyes, I finally had a chance to stop running and think for a moment.

First of all, my hearing. What in the world had happened back in the lab? It was like… like… almost as if my other senses had been dialed back, and my hearing was superhuman, even. I couldn’t see when I had been eavesdropping on Avery, my body had gone all numb, and I couldn’t taste. The antiseptic smell of the lab had been gone as well, now that I look back on it.

I’d somehow been able to snap it back to normal, and all my senses had returned. It was like I’d thought before, selective hearing or something. There was also another thing I was concerned about. Why had I seen those numbers in my head? And why did they make sense to me? It was like a report that only I could see in my brain. And when I’d broken that wall, there was an orange light that flowed into me. Then again, when I’d made that door open except it went out of me instead. What had happened there?

Opening my eyes, I looked down at the busy grounds before me. The sounds of machinery filled the air, and it was because of that that I almost missed it. A faint whisper of a voice, barely there. I sat up straighter, surprised. None of the workers below seemed to have heard it. I listened harder, trying to block out the hustle below.

Shira... I gasped as I realized it was my name being called.

Where are you? I looked around frantically, trying to find the source of the noise. Where was it coming from? Nobody else looked like they heard something out of the ordinary.

Come and find me… Quick… it faded away and left me more confused than before, even a little scared. It seemed I was going insane. Could this be a side effect of the experiments they had done on me? I tried to shake the weird feeling off and concentrated on the problem I faced below.

 They were everywhere, guards, builders, overseers, the ground seething with a mass people. Everyone had a gun. Even the builders- slaves? The builders, upon close observation, actually had thick metal collars around their neck. As I watched, a young one glanced around suspiciously.

Now this was interesting. The slave reached down to his belt, and with shaking hands, pulled the gun out of its holster. He loaded it, then started shouting at the people around him. Everybody stopped what they were doing and turned to stare. He gestured wildly, than grabbed the person closest to him and pointed the gun at the guards head. I looked down, frustrated at the scene below. I couldn’t hear the words he was saying.

It was obvious that he was angry about something. The other guards looked at each other, then one of them shook his head and started laughing. They obviously didn’t believe that he was actually going to pull the trigger. I watched carefully as the scene played out, yet something suddenly moving in the corner of my eyes triggered my peripheral vision.