Enemy Basis | COMPLETE

38| invisible brook is calling

I didn't want to understand what was happening, be conscious of the reality threatening to drag me down and never let me up again. My father had been shot.

The horror, however, was far from over. I knew that more casualties loomed, that there were more deaths to come. As the first rays of dawn pierced the gloom, offering a false sense of hope, despair washed over me. This wasn't a dawn of renewal, but a cruel mockery. Even if some of us survived, we would already be behind, irrevocably altered and burdened by the weight of our losses.

As I stood in Mathew's grasp, I couldn't comprehend what had happened and what was yet to come. I was stuck in a dazed sort of limbo, too shocked, too horrified, too anything to move, to even try and escape, leaving me paralysed. Everything around me had been moving too fast and I couldn't gather my bearings. I was lost in the sea of violence.

But in the next second, another booming sound of a gunshot brought me out of the daze, reminding me that I shouldn't have let myself get lost in my head, that I couldn't forget that the danger wasn't over yet.

Only, it was too late.

Almost instantaneously, the horrifying sound was followed by a sharp unbearable pain in my gut, something I had never felt before.

I opened my eyes and white blinding light surrounded my vision as I gasped in pain.

My hands reached the place where it felt so unbelievably wrong and when they came away, my eyes focused just in time to see the copious amounts of red that lingered on my hand.

At first, I was just confused, too shocked at the sudden event. But then clarity came through in spades, in rhythm with the blood seeping from my shirt, knocking me off balance. Mathew had turned his weapon on me. He had shot me.

It seemed as if Mathew was not holding himself back anymore. He wanted us all dead and he'd see it done. I was just his next victim.

My mind reeled, the gunshot still echoing in my ears, the violence of the attack leaving me disoriented. It was impossible to concentrate on anything. Shock and horror swirled within me, threatening to consume me entirely. I teetered on the brink of oblivion, the world blurring around the edges.

But then, a voice cut through the haze, insistent and urgent. My ears, ringing painfully, strained to hear him above the chaos. Yet, somehow, his voice pierced through, a beacon in the storm. Dorran...

He was running towards me, his eyes wide with urgency, a silent plea etched on his face that urged me to come to him. The intensity of his gaze, the raw fear mirrored in his own eyes, began to pierce through the fog of shock that had enveloped me. Yet, my body remained stubbornly rooted to the spot, my legs trembling beneath me, too weak to respond, too fragile as blood seeped steadily from my wound.

Then, a sudden surge of adrenaline, raw and primal, coursed through me. No longer held captive by the gunman's terror, my limbs began to stir, propelling me forward to safety. I stumbled, my movements a grotesque parody of a run, my hands instinctively clutching the wound. My body, however, betrayed me, sluggish and unresponsive to my desperate will. Frustration welled up, tears stinging my eyes.

I didn't want to die like this.

But I had to remind myself that this was not the time to break down.

I continued to limp to Dorran, so close to his warmth but there was something that knew deep down I would never make it that far. Mathew wanted Michael dead and he wanted me dead and there was no stopping him.

I was almost a step away from Dorran when the urgency in his eyes tripled in fervour. With one final pushing stride, he made it to me but before I could walk into his arms, he savagely pushed me to the side as the third gunshot sounded out in the night.