Castaways

Chapter 2

tw//gun violence

***

I struggled against the bonds that held me down against the stainless steel chair in the interrogation room. From what I could tell, it looked like an operating table that had the ability to fold and become upright. The metal felt cold against my skin, and there was something worryingly clinical about it.

"I'm going to detain the Raveks," Bashir said from the corner of the room. I couldn't see his face entirely. It was obscured by shadow. But somehow, the fact that he was there felt perfectly natural, and I didn't question it.

"But... I want to come with you!" I said, pushing against the rope that was beginning to chafe at my wrists. Everyone else was dead. He was the only other human around. "Don't leave me alone, please—"

"You're tied down, you can't come," Bashir said, as though it were obvious. I frowned. And yet, I didn't question it. Something about his observation felt perfectly natural. In fact, I felt like the idiot for suggesting such an idea.

"Be careful," I said. Though his body was still obscured by shadow, I could see him moving towards the door.

"I will," he insisted, and then he opened the door and disappeared through it. I leaned my head back against the chair, wondering how long I would have to wait before he came back. But then I heard it. That popping sound. The one that had killed the others.

Immediately I stood up from the chair without thinking. For a moment I was confused as I remembered my bonds—but when I looked down, I realized I'd ripped right through them as though they had just been made of grass the whole time. It was strange, but my mind didn't dwindle on it. I had to investigate the popping noise.

I darted out of the interrogation room and into the main entrance, where I found the lift and got on. I didn't know how the control panel worked, but I pressed a random button and I shot up towards the ceiling at a frighteningly fast speed. I quickly threw my hands over my head, fearing the ceiling would come down on me, but suddenly, the lift doors opened and it was like nothing bizarre at all had happened. As if the lift had gone upwards at a normal speed, and opened without issue. Cautiously, I stepped out and into the cave.

The walk to the clearing was short. The infamous clearing. While at first it looked just as I had expected it, once I stepped out of the cave, I was filled with horror. Bodies were piled at the edges of the clearing in awful stacks of limbs and flesh. Flies buzzed around the rotting corpses. It looked like an arena, or a shooting range to hunt game. And it was made of the very creatures they were hunting. Humans.

On either side of the clearing, there were two outcroppings made of piled people, and I saw the shifting of leaves behind the both of them. The Raveks, Leek and Falk. They were waiting for me to come through so that they could hunt me like they did the others. I fearfully clutched the rock face at the mouth of the cave.

"[Y/N]," a ghostly voice moaned from the mouth of the arena. I squinted in the direction it came from, and then I realized. It was Doctor Bashir. He was splayed out like a tangled marionette doll, his legs spread out in lazy angles. His arms, however, were on his stomach—trying to apply pressure to a bullet wound.

"Doctor Bashir!" I called out, my chest sinking as I realized what short a physical distance was between us, but what lay in my way. Fear gripped my heart and almost paralyzed me, but at the sight of Bashir's body, it dissolved and a sudden rash drive filled my chest. I ran out into the clearing towards him.

Bullets flew the moment I stepped out of the cavern. I was hit, one, two, three, four times. I stumbled at first before I realized that while I could feel them, they didn't hurt anymore than pinpricks on my skin. I could ignore them completely. Soon I caught up with Bashir and I pulled him outside of the clearing and behind the brush.