Breed and Burn: Faceless

chapter 27- game of survival

Someone gently shook Axel awake but he pushed him away fiercely. Claws replaced his fingernails and fangs replaced his teeth.

"Axel...it is just me. Can you hear me? We let you oversleep but you should really get up," whispered Trent. Although his voice was still calm, he had withdrawn his hands from Axel.

"Get away from me," growled Axel with his eyes shut. They were pooled with the ink that was the colour of thundercloud ready to wreak havoc. "Pack everything you can. I can break through the door...Just let me be."

With a squeak that was somewhere between excitement and dismal, Trent hurried off. With what he assumed to be his final breath of silence, Axel felt the world differently. He refused to open his eyes but everything he never thought about became apparent. The pain that once burned in his head succumbed to an icy numbness. Quiet days never came no matter how hard Axel longed for them but somehow, he managed to block out the frantic sounds below. There was an absolute stillness in which the only sounds were large, leathery black birds whose beating winds would feel like a breeze in the quiet. It was like the stillness of the air had sucked all other sounds dry. However, this tranquillity was eerie and made Axel become watchful and heightened his senses. Even the trees seemed to rustle as if they were tense with nerves for what was to come.

He had to be brave. He wanted to live but not in a cruel world like this. Some may call it his way of giving up but Axel thought of it as a pleasure to end all torture. So, he swallowed the stone that was lodged in his throat and when the fear of death began to trickle through the disquiet, he reminded himself that his death was nothing more than a sleep he would never wake up from.

Minutes passed by like shadows, waxing and waning like the edges of the moon, drifting by like the endless stream of voices Axel could hear. He couldn't help it. They hurried by like they were going to accomplish something because today was the day. Or so they thought. Even Thorne and Seven were too scared to tell the others they had no home to go. Home to them was where their families were, not some group of Faceless working against the Facesmiths.

Axel strained his ears until he could even hear the ragged breaths of the few who hadn't completely recovered from the hypothermia. He could not shake the feeling that something was just not right. Like everything would go horribly wrong.

Finally, the thick static noise in his head diminished allowing him to make out the voices.

"...bother. We are both to die in the next few hours. It could have been twelve but the transformation Will leave him weak."

"He's going to turn into a fracking bird? I'll believe it when I see it."

"Shut up Archer and tell the last few to hurry up. They're showering like they have nothing else to do," snapped Thorne.

"Whatever you said," said Archer, "respect the leader, innit. Wise and..."

Axel furrowed his eyebrows and waiting for the conversation to take a turn.

It was Trent's voice that made Axel stiffen. "Can't we take him with us? He deserves to at least know what's on the other side."

Thorne sighed. "Look, the last thing I want to do is leave Axel behind but you heard Seven. He'll be unstable and Seven can use his weird mind powers to talk to him." Thorne paused. "That idiot told me he stopped hearing voices in his head. Shit, man."

"I still don't get why we're trusting Seven," said Sage. "We didn't need Axel to tell us about how to get through the door. Seven already knew. Doesn't the sound suspicious in the slightest? Besides that, what are we going to do once this train stops? Kill ourselves by jumping off and politely asking whatever Facesmiths is driving this train if we could stop so that group can pick us up?