May stumbled back at the impact. When she didn’t go down, the woman fired again, but she only took one more step back. She dazedly touched the holes in her chest.
“What the hell, May?!” Leah yelled, sprinting down the hallway towards her. “We leave you alone for five minutes and you get yourself shot!?”
“Stand back!” the guard commanded, adjusting her aim towards Leah. She ignored the threat of the weapon, only stopping once she stood beside her injured friend.
“Oh, excellent,” Noah murmured. The four of them still hovering around the door began cautiously making their way down the hall as well. The vacuum was left forgotten by the door.
“I will fire,” the guard warned.
“Jeez, trigger-happy, much? What if I just wanted to grab a snack?” Leah said, pointing at the vending machine innocently.
“You’ll have to wait until morning. Curfew was two hours ago.”
“Curfew?” Brian laughed. He turned to Noah. “Nobody told us about a curfew. I would remember being informed about a lethally-enforced curfew.”
“Whoever brought you to your rooms should have ensured you were aware of the rule,” the guard said neutrally.
Elias glanced at Noah knowingly. “It must’ve slipped the doctor’s mind.”
Noah stared at the guard, standing with the pistol braced in her hands, her eyes cold. “Do you know what we are?” he asked curiously. Not that I’m complaining, but shouldn’t she have a syringe gun rather than a pistol? Did she skip the daily briefing? And if she’s completely clueless, which seems to be the case, what kind of sicko do you have to be to fire at an unarmed kid?
She deserves what’s coming for her. As does the rest of Insight.
“Yes. You are disobeying company policy.” The woman narrowed her eyes when none of them made any move to clear out of the hallway. She shifted the gun to a single hand, keeping it trained on them as if they had given her any reason to suspect they would present a danger to her, then grabbed a radio on her hip and held it to her lips. “I’ve got a couple of kids making trouble on four.”
Noah almost laughed out loud. Nobody had eaten anyone yet and she was already calling in reinforcements. This is fantastic, he thought, grinning. There’ll be plenty to go around.
Clarissa leaned towards Leah and May. “How’s she doing?”
There was no response from May, but Leah laughed mirthlessly. “She just got shot twice in the chest. What do you think?”
May’s eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the guard, though she still made no move towards her. She simply stood there, growing more gaunt with every passing second. Noah was impressed with how long she was fighting her instincts, but he knew it would inevitably be a lost cause. Two bullets were lodged somewhere in her chest; the damage they caused was surely extensive.
“Go get ‘em, captain,” Noah encouraged. “You can have this one, but I want the next.”
“Speak for yourself,” Elias said with a lopsided grin, practically bouncing in place with his barely restrained excitement.
“Holy crap, shut up, both of you,” Brian growled. He pulled off the pendant. “May, I know it’s tough, but just try to hold on for a moment. Let’s see if getting some dust into you can make you feel any better.”
“Oh, good thinking,” Clarissa said.
May’s eyes snapped suddenly to Brian and she gave him a look of immense disgust. “That’s only for emergencies. This isn’t an emergency.”
“Oh?” Brian said, squinting uncertainly. “You’re okay? You don’t seem, uh-”
“There’s a person right there,” May interrupted with a wide gesture forward. “You can keep your dust.”
The security guard, watching them from a short distance down the hall, seemed to reach the limit of her patience. Revealing an astounding disregard for life, she lifted her weapon once more and fired.
Noah didn’t see if anyone had been hit. The sound was like a starting pistol for May, and she bolted forward without hesitation. Elias shrugged apologetically at Noah before giving into his own hunger and racing after her.
“Wait!” Leah yelled, reaching out impotently.
Noah patted her on the shoulder. “This is for the best. The guard isn’t going to leave us alone until we’re back in our quarters, and I don’t ever plan on returning to that room. They’re hungry. Let them take care of her.”
Leah turned to her brother for support, only for her eyes to widen in horror. “Brian! Seriously?”
“Did- did I get hit?” he asked incredulously, then murmured to himself, “Is that what that was?”
He brought his hand to his neck to brush against the dark red mark, glancing around fearfully, until his neck finally began to mend itself. It was as if a switch suddenly flipped within him; his eyes went hazy for a moment, and then, as if by magnetic pull, shifted to the guard. “Sorry. I’ll be right back.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
He hurried after Elias and May, shoving the pendant in his pocket as he went. Leah slumped and watched him go with a resigned grimace.
When May had gone after her approximately fifteen seconds ago, the guard had only been able to fire off four ineffectual shots before the girl’s jaws fastened themselves onto her shoulder. In the next moment Elias had arrived and immediately set to chewing on her arm, narrowly avoiding three more shots before the gun fell from the woman’s hand.
The guard now seemed an equal mix of bewildered and horrified. She scrambled to push them aside and extricate herself, but then Brian came flying out of nowhere, and upon impact she simply collapsed, the collision force too great to stand against. She was wearing some sort of blue body armor, but it only covered her vital organs, and ultimately did little more than to prolong her suffering. Her body was hidden from view, but the sounds carried far too well.
“That’s just plain disgusting,” Clarissa mumbled, turning away with a gag.
Noah glanced at her. “If it’s bothering you, a small wound would take care of your discomfort.”
She scowled. “I don’t want to be comfortable. I’d rather not be a zombie, thanks.”
“Hmm.” Noah couldn’t disagree more. The woman’s uninfected presence called out to him like a siren’s song, but he held himself back with the knowledge that she wouldn’t last much longer. Besides, if her brief message on the radio was indeed a plea for backup, he would soon have more people than he could possibly eat.
Noah was aware of the exact moment she passed. The pressing urge withdrew into a more tolerable prick at the back of his consciousness, and he nudged Clarissa and Leah. “It’s over.”
“How can you…?” Leah trailed off. “Okay. Thanks.”
Their three friends slowly pulled back from the body, revealing an unappetizing mess.
“That was fantastic,” May said, beaming. Brian and Elias looked equally satisfied.
“Isn’t it?” Noah enthused, any lingering regret squashed at the sight of their joy. It always felt good to see someone come around on your favorite activity.
“We need to move,” Leah said. “I’m so glad you all had fun, but there could be more workers showing up at any moment.”
“Maybe we should wait,” Noah protested weakly, but despite his best efforts, he couldn’t come up with a convincing reason to stay.
Leah glared at him. “We’re here to blow up some dust, and nothing more.”
Noah glanced around. “I’m just saying, if an opportunity were to arise… the world would be a better place with a few less of these people, right?”
Leah didn’t favor him with a response, merely sweeping past him towards the stairs.
“Come on, Noah,” Clarissa sighed.
“Oh, wait!” he brightened. “The vacuum! We should probably take care of that now, right?”
Leah slowly turned around. “What?”
“Er, we can’t just leave it here, full of dust as it is,” he began. “And I don’t really feel like carrying it around, so wouldn’t now be a good time to blow up its contents?”
Brian came trudging forward with the pendant in hand. “Or we could use this; it won’t take much longer, and we can decide later what we want to do with the dust. Take off the vacuum’s lid and I’ll hold the pendant close.”
“What about what that woman said?” Leah asked.
Brian dipped his head. “We’ll probably end up destroying it, yeah. But it’s a decision better made when we’re not in a time crunch.”
The group retraced their steps to the abandoned vacuum.
“Alright, let’s see,” Noah murmured, bending down to look at the release mechanism. “This looks highly complex. It could very well take all night to get this open.”
“Oh, shove off,” Leah snapped, pushing him aside and flicking the twin spring latches on each side of the container. The lid lifted easily off. Beneath was a disk-shaped filter, which also came out without any trouble.
“Oh…” Noah said sadly.
Leah paused to give him a dark look. “What’s wrong with you? Do you not want to get out of here?”
Noah swallowed, realizing that watching his friends eat without him had perhaps roused his appetite a bit more than he had realized. “Of course. I’m- I’m being dumb. Sorry.”
She shook her head and looked back at the vacuum’s contents. “There’s a bag here that I doubt I’ll be able to open properly. Clarissa, you still got that knife?”
“What do you think?” she said with a grin, passing it over.
Leah took it and smoothly ripped it into the fabric vacuum bag, sending dust streaming up into the air. “Brian! Your turn!”
“I’m right here,” he said, leaning over her shoulder to dangle the metal square over the torn dust bag. “Give it a minute.”
They all watched as the dust spread seemingly without end, expanding to fill their section of the corridor.
“You don’t mean an actual minute, do you?” Elias muttered.
Despite their fears, the pendant was doing its job, albeit at a slower pace than the rate of release from the vacuum. A familiar vortex formed around them, dark tendrils waving wildly about as the suction force of the pendant overcame the dust’s natural proclivity to spread far and wide. Even the far-drifting particles could not escape the pull, finally being drawn inward like a stray dog on a leash.
The pendant’s power slowly picked up, gradually overcoming the amount pouring from the vacuum and eventually tearing the dust straight from the bag directly into itself. The fabric began to tear beneath the force.
All at once, the air was still once more. Brian lifted the pendant to drop back around his neck.
“That thing doesn’t have a storage capacity, does it?” Elias asked nervously.
Brian shrugged. “How would I know? There’s already so much more dust in it than seems plausible, so I don’t think it’s worth worrying about. As long as it doesn’t break, we should probably be fine. And it’s literally a metal square; I think we’re safe.”
Noah gazed at the disassembled vacuum for a second before opening the door beside them and shoving it inside. “There. We’re all set to head downstairs.”
“What about the body?” May asked. “Aren’t we going to clean that up, too?”
“Nah, there’s too much blood,” Noah said as they walked towards where it lay beside the stairwell entrance “It would take forever. And Leah’s absolutely right that we have to leave. My dad’s waiting for us outside.” And if anyone were coming, they’d already have arrived by now.
Brian paused by the remains. “Anything worth taking from the body, you think?”
“Maybe the radio,” Clarissa suggested. “I’d leave the gun, though. We don’t need it, and it’ll only bring us trouble.”
Brian poked at it for a moment before turning away with a faintly nauseated expression. “Actually, I think I’ll just leave everything as it is.”
“You do realize you made that mess,” Leah pointed out.
“Yeah, but it’s dead now,” Brian muttered. “Come on, I’m sick of this floor. Let’s go blow shit up.”