i. crawl. // epa day 2.
Oct 30, 2023 21:02:23 GMT -5
Post by ✨ zozo. on Oct 30, 2023 21:02:23 GMT -5
I sleep in the vents.
It's nothing personal. Well, maybe with Jack it is. Barely made eye contact with him since we all met up, my handiwork strapped to Emerson's legs and most of our wounds stitched up. There's just something comforting about being in there, tucked away in a false sense of safety. I've never been claustrophobic, used to finding the small nooks and crannies to hide in. Crawl spaces mapped out and always with an escape plan - the pessimist's essentials to combat anxiety.
A tiny part of me, tucked away deep in those vents, hopes Arcadia finds me in here. A silly sentiment, totally uneccesary - and yet. And yet. I just want to know she's okay. I want to know I helped. I want, I want, I want -- impossible daydreams and memories of my hand in a blonde girls' own tumble into sleep. How foolish. We are going to die.
no,
not we.
just me.
not we.
just me.
Hours later I kick through the vent cover with my good leg and it clatters into an empty room. No time to hesitate, my hands push against metal and force my feet forward through the new gap until the rest of me follows, sliding and landing with a little huff on the floor of the Medical Wing.
It's clean in here, much like one side of Three's floor - but the stark bright light is enough of a change from the vents and hallways to cause me to grimace, shapes and colours flashing through slow blinks. Emerson follows suit, then Mac, and finally Jackson. I don't linger, striding forward once my vision adjusts and look in the more obvious of places for supplies to treat the more complicated of wounds between the four of us.
Splitting up isn't the wisest of ideas, but it seems I'm the brains of this operation and my brain is telling me to stay out of Jackson Reeves' peripheral whenever the opportunity strikes. Halfway through opening now-empty drawers and shunting away supply racks stripped clean I come across somewhere familiar: the same bay where I was treated after the disaster that was the tournament of last week. Those careers did a number on me that I could not comprehend, and the memory makes me glower at the now empty, spotless mattresses stripped of sheets and sanitiser.
Something topples over in an adjacent bay. I don't hear the heavy, trademark footsteps of Mac, the gentle huff of surprise from Emerson, or even the guffaw of Jackson. No - this is something else. Someone else.
My eyes dart to the empty beds. I see a broken, battered version of myself lying there - then gone. Back to the source of the noise. No 'sorry!' from Emerson, no admission of fault from the other two, no foul words from being caught by surprise. Not a yelp, not a drop of blood hitting the linoleum, not a thud of a body against furniture.
I press my lips together and walk slowly, slowly on the balls of my feet. Crawl spaces, escape plan - the vent is too far away. Gloved palms each find the handle of a knife and I hold them close, poised to strike at the person who loiters mere meters from me. Closer, closer, they don't dare make a move. Maybe they're waiting for me. Maybe they're hoping to catch me off guard.
Well I'm not falling for that again. Three steps, two steps, one - and with a twirl and a flourry I whip my body around to the adjoining bay and fling a knife toward the source of the noise.
A gasp leaves me. My knife lands deep into the back of something incapable of making a sound. Not a tribute, not an ally, not even a creature from the minds of the Gamemakers. Something I cannot compute. Something else entirely.
"What the hell is that?"
The boys round the bend to join me, my eyes wide and mouth gaping. The strange concoction of dummy parts stitched together turns to... face us? An unnerving mass that twitches and skitters. It seems alive, almost. Impossibly so.
And yet.
wolf attacks the training dummy mutt, throwing knives 1/10
xK7kclIy56throwing knife
deep gash, 9
throwing knifexK7kclIy56throwing knife
deep gash, 9
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