POV Jacob
Undead screams echo around the empty corridors as I sprint away from the mutated corpses of my parents and friends through the empty distorted corridors of school. Acid drips from the ceiling melting away the roof to reveal a bloodied Sky lurker trying to entrap me within its countless tentacles so it can drag me into its waiting bloodied maw.
I try to duck and weave through the electrified obstacles but my body feels like it's submerged in sand with none of my powers working, I'm a sitting duck. Vivid colours swirl around me blurring the edges of my vision. Distorted shadows stretch out and become tangible, blocking my escape.
‘Not…real’
I try to dart to the side only to trip on a blurred figure that comes into focus as Logan, his arm still in the floor he tries to bite into my leg with his elongated fangs. “You killed me!!!” He screams out as he starts gnawing on his arm to free himself like a rabid animal stuck in a trap.
‘Dream…wake’
I try to will myself awake but find myself back at the start of the corridor face to face with an undead Ella. Her clothes were shredded revealing grotesque tumours leaking a sickly yellow puss, and her golden hair was matted with chunks of flesh and dried blood. A low snarl escapes her dry cracked lips “You killed me.” She manages to rasp out before she lunges forward.
“...Wake…”
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POV Sam
I head back to our temporary camp after confirming the location of yet another Cave crawler that lived a few hundred metres down another side tunnel. While Ella healed Jacob in his sleep the rest of us decided to slowly map out the immediate area with Twitches and my enhanced senses as we tried to limit the use of flashlights as much as possible to save our limited supply of batteries.
So far we had found 9 more tunnels that branch out from the one we were currently inhabiting, giving us 10 potential routes if we wanted to move forward. Within seven of the tunnels, we have located what we believe to be Cave crawlers or something that produces a harsh clicking that echoes softly off the stone passages.
I stopped by Mai, looking at her dark silhouette sitting cross-legged on the cold stone floor. I let her know of my findings so she could add them to the map she was slowly drawing out. Continuing to walk down the passage I pass Ava and Noah who are both practising their respective abilities a little way down the tunnel to not disturb the sleeping Jacob.
‘Jacob,’ I stop and glare into the darkness as guilt worms its way into my heart. ‘I was useless, he almost died trying to save my life.’ I clench my fist and take a deep breath before I continue down the dark tunnel, my soft footsteps echoing within its confined space.
Rounding the bend of the dark passage I see faint outlines of Jacob sleeping on the floor tossing and turning as he mutters incompressible words in his sleep. I turned to Ella who was sitting beside his sleeping form with her back against the wall. Walking over with quiet footsteps and squatting down next to her to ask in a hushed voice if he is okay.
“He’s having another nightmare, he needs his rest after fixing his shocked nerves, burned skin, cracked ribs, several burst blood vessels, stretched-out respiratory and digestive system, plus all the pulled muscles. Otherwise, I would wake him. Maybe I should wake him? I have no idea what I am doing and I am panicking slightly.” I see the darkened outline of her hand running through her hair and hear her let out a long sigh.
“Shit.” I let out a soft curse and looked back over at Jacob. “He made it back, I’m sure he can get through some nightmares so his body can sleep off the healing. Is he healed?” I ask the last question tentatively.
“Mostly, it took 3 hours and I’m out of whatever powers my abilities but he should be fine in a couple of days even without my help.” She whispers into the darkness as she turns to face my general direction.
“Well…” I start but am interrupted by Jacob suddenly sitting up and grabbing what appears to be a knife from under his pillow, the metallic blade scraping against the rough stone floor as it is drawn. His rough outline quickly moves into a half crouch, blade at the ready before he stubbles slightly as his feet get tangled in the blanket he was using. Ella begins to look around but can't see much of anything due to the dark.
“Jacob, it's okay,” I tell him, now talking at a regular volume.
His head snaps towards me “We are in the tunnels.” He states before asking “Are we safe?”
“Yes and yes. I’ve healed you as much as I was able to for now but there is still a bit of damage so take it easy for now.” Ella says as she stands up carefully to not lose her balance in the dark.
“I see, thank you for helping me, it is appreciated.” He says while straightening up his posture and reaching out with his arms until he touches the stone wall of the tunnel. “Looks like I will be trying to develop a budget echolocation a lot earlier than planned.” He mutters under his breath but my enhanced hearing picks it up without an issue.
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“What?” I ask in mild confusion, developing echolocation was not something I thought he could do with his skill set and would have been something that my powers would have allowed.
“Ah, yes, I have made lists of what sub-skills I think I can develop…” Jacob starts but is interrupted by Ella and I.
“Not the bloody lists again, don't get him started on his lists.” She groans.
“Sub skills?” I ask in confusion wondering when he did all this.
“Yes, the lists Ella, they help me focus the jumbled thoughts in my head.” He says slightly defensively. “I’m calling techniques that we can do with our powers/abilities sub-skills because I can't spell techniques when I’m writing stuff down.”
'Oh... that sounds annoying.'
“Ah, makes sense?” I say but my slight confusion makes it come out sounding like a question.
“Anyway, I got things like trying to make things elastic, affecting air so I can suffocate people, and have invisible weapons…” He starts listing a variety of things he plans to try and do with his multiple powers until he gets to echolocation. “While I can't affect air at the moment, I can send whatever powers my matter-shifting abilities into atoms, or at least I think they are atoms I may not be able to go that small yet so…”
“Jacob,” Ella says gently, which seems to snap him out of his tangent.
“Right, I haven't been able to affect air yet, I struggle to put my energy into it to map out my surroundings because it moves around too much on the surface. But down here the air doesn't move much and we are surrounded by dense matter that is significantly easier to interact with…”
‘He has put a lot of thought and energy into these new abilities huh?’ I blink rapidly as I try to process what he is saying but it doesn't make all that much sense unless you can actually interact with substances as he can. ‘I kind of understand why Ella didn't want him to start but it is quite interesting to think about.’ Ella just sighs which leads me to believe that this is not the first time she has heard this.
“...So by saturating my surroundings with energy, I should be able to know where non-living matter is in a spherical radius and locate the living matter from the dead zones that I can't interact with. Which will let me know where living entities are. I just need to build up the reserves and train my brain to handle it.”
‘That was long, but an interesting perspective, I think. But stuff like this is properly how he was able to survive the Sky lurker and even kill it.’
“You have put a lot of thought into all this huh?” I asked him while being hesitant on how to provide my apology and ask for his help in developing ideas for my own ability.
“Yeah it's finally something interesting we can do that we don't need to pay for. I mean we have literal superpowers that allow us to alter ourselves and the world around us and we can be as creative as we want with it. Plus if we don't put at least some effort in then we are likely to be brutally murdered.” He laughs at the end in a carefree manner while Ella just lets out another exasperated sigh.
“Yeah, about that, I um, feel like I should apologise to you, Jacob…” I pause slightly to collect my thoughts.
“Why, did you touch my stuff?” he asks in confusion.
“Um, no. You have adapted to our situation faster than I have and I took it as you treating it like we were in some kind of story and not taking it seriously. Because of that, I lashed out at you and I didn't help out with the threats surrounding us.” I take a breath before continuing “Although I still think you can still be a bit too extreme I recognise that it has helped us get this far and that I have not been helping as much as I should have. The sky lurker knocked some sense into me…”
“Zapped some sense into you? There was a lot of zapping but that might not work in the sentence…I am interrupting your apology. I am sorry, please ignore me.” Jacob quietly mutters. ‘Guess he still doesn't like people apologising or complimenting him.’
I start again “The sky lurker zapped some sense into me,” I hear Jacob and Ella snort slightly. “And I realised that I couldn't do anything against it and you had to save me and get taken in my place. We thought you died until Mia saw the bastard start shaking like it was having a seizure. Hell, we had to hold each other back from trying to go after you and kill it ourselves but I don't think we would have done much.”
I ran my hand through my hair “My point was that I felt useless and don't want to be a liability for anyone ever again. I’m going to try and help with the fights and train my power better, and if you had time I was wondering if you had any ideas on what I could do to improve?” I finish and lower my head to look at the floor even if it was too dark for anyone to really see.
“Yeah, you weren't very helpful in the fights and clearing out the area..” Jacob starts and I wince slightly at his unfiltered honesty. “But everyone's different, right? I don't mind tearing myself apart training my body and abilities so I can experiment with what I can do and fight. But I hate people, the skin tubes confuse and annoy me. You are great with people though you had loads of friends and most people loved you and if you are willing to put work into getting better with violence and your own abilities you will be quite the catch.”
“Um, thank you?” Not sure why my apology had turned into Jacob completing me. ‘Not sure I want to get better at “Violence” though.’
“As for making a list for you? I can try, Ella said I was being annoying by mansplaining her powers and backseat healing so I stopped trying to ask questions and come up with ideas for people.” Says Jacob in an annoyed tone.
“I won't say some of your ideas couldn't be useful in the long run or even now but it was very difficult to focus with you there and you kept asking me things that I had no idea how to answer,” Ella mutters.
“Well, I would like some ideas to start and we shall go from there?” I hesitantly asked not sure what I was getting into.
“There's not enough time to annoy you too much given we have now started the events but I was thinking you should try and turn into a cat,” Jacob says like turning into a cat was the logical solution. I hear a slap and turn my head to see Ella’s dark silhouette face palming.
“I’m sorry what?” I ask in mild confusion.
“Cats are pets? You know the little fluffy guys that act like assholes…” Jacob starts.
“We know what Cats are, Jacob please explain why You think Sam should become one.” Ella interrupts Jacob to try and bring him back on track. ‘I’m starting to understand why he said he wrote all this stuff down, his thought process is all over the place.’
“You guys should really start reading my mind, this would be so much easier. Anyway, Cats are very successful predators with natural grace and all that. When we trained you could inject us with your power and affect our senses. If you could do the same to a cat you may be able to mimic whatever allows them to always land on their feet, have so much grace and be natural born killers."
He takes a deep breath before continuing "Also, echolocation, seeing different wavelengths, pheromones, maybe? improving your balance, reactions, and your eyes' ability to react to movement…” Jacob started to explain and list off things that I wish I had thought of before but It was beginning to become too many things to focus on so I quickly told him it was enough for now and thanked him.
At some point during our conversation, the others joined us with Ava and Noah saying that they were glad Jacob was alright while Mia also apologised for not noticing the Sky Lurkers tentacle until it was too late. Mai then turned on one of our lights to show us the map she was working on with Twitches and my help. She also asked Jacob if he could make symbols on the walls by melting the rocks so we would know which direction we came from.
Jacob agreed but insisted on making the marking barely visible on the ceiling of the tunnel junctions in a code that meant we would follow the second shortest symbol he came up with to make our way out the way we came. ‘He may be feeling better but he is still incredibly paranoid.’