I stood panicked, my eyes darting around the dimly lit shower block, looking for any sign of the arrival of my brother. Icy tendrils of fear clawed at my heart, sending sharp sensations throughout my upper body.
I started to tremble, I didn’t want to lose Roderick too.
Reese jumped up and grabbed my shoulders and looked me directly in the eyes. Her own were slightly watery with tears but she held them at bay and blinked them away.
“Ariah, it’s okay. He’s okay. There wasn’t enough time for him to get out too so he was going to wait until after the next wave.” She said calmly, her voice steady and soothing looking me in the eyes as she spoke, her words bringing a calming reassurance helping to ease the tension I felt in my chest.
“Okay.” I breathed, feeling the tight knot of anxiety loosen the hold it had on my throat.
“He’ll be here soon.” Reese said as she looked out into the gymnasium past me.
“I hope he’s alright.” I whispered softly, my voice quivering with the pent up emotions that I was feeling. The grim reality of our situation began to weigh heavily as I suddenly thought about all of our friends and family and the unknown entity that was causing the malevolence.
“I’m sure he’s on his way now, the wave has subsided so he’s got time to get here.”
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Just as Reese finished speaking, the ground shook beneath our feet sending tiles falling off the shiny shower walls around us. We stumbled, trying to keep our footing and I reached out grabbing onto the shower head to stabilise myself.
“What the hell?!” Reese exclaimed, widening her stance to keep her balance, her years of skateboarding helping her to stay upright.
Another massive shake and low sounding rumble followed, sending me to my hands and knees on the dirty floor.
As I fought for control, the shaking stopped then what seemed like only a few seconds later, it started again.
“It looks like the tactic has changed. Light and sound were weird enough, now it’s rhythmic earthquakes?!” I yelled out to Reese above the rumbling, realising that this was no ordinary seismic event. The tremors weren’t random, they were like pulses just like the light attacks - calculated in their execution and deliberately timed to cause the most damage.
Bits of the ceiling started falling from above and fell smashing onto the floor around us. The mirrors above the sinks cracked and broke, shards falling into the hand basins, shattering into even smaller fragments, littering the sides of the white porcelain.
The wall separating the showers in the locker room crumbled, falling into a large dusty heap, sending debris across the tiled floor towards our direction. Broken wooden framework, concrete and steel protruded from the pile of destruction as the earthquake continued.
Just as I thought I was wrong about my pulsed earthquake theory, the tremors stopped once more. I felt my muscles relax and I took a breath and counted, hoping to get a rough idea as to how long we had between attacks.
I looked up to see Reese doing the same, silently mouthing numbers as we counted up.
We got to two minutes before the floor started moving violently again.