Chapter 7: 7.exposition mmmm maybe

My head hurt. My legs hurt. My arms felt sore.

Everything was a blurry mess. 

My head was ringing and someone was dragging me somewhere by the shoulders. I could vaguely hear their labored breathing as they dragged me at a surprisingly fast pace. My eyes felt really heavy, but I kept trying to open them. Through my hazy vision I could see dim lights flickering.

The one dragging me was a girl. I noticed because she sometimes leaned her face over me as we moved with a slightly concerned look on her face. She looked oddly familiar, but in my state I couldn't quite remember where I saw her before.

My butt scraped along the carpet which covered the corridor floor as she dragged me at a surprisingly fast pace. I kind of wanted her to go slower cause my butt sometimes bumped up against some stuff on the ground and it kinda hurt. I tried to voice my opinions to her, but all I could manage was a weak "mnh."

She slowed down for a bit, presumably to examine me, but after a while she eventually just continued on her previous pace.

This continued on for quite a while, with her turning around corners and backtracking around sometimes.

Wait.

Corners? 

Backtracking?

Something didn't feel right.

Before I could think about it any more though, my ass bumped into a table as we turned another corner and something placed on it started to tip over.

I leaned to the side and looked straight at the night lamp that was about to fall into my face.

Glass shattered all over my face as I was knocked out unconscious. Again.

…

…

…

My head felt groggy. It felt like quite some time had passed after my head got smashed in by a lamp, and my body didn't feel as bad as it did a while ago. I opened my eyes.

"Hey, you, you're finally awake." A man to my right said with a slight grin, his rectangular glasses glinting brightly in the dark. I was sitting with my back to the wall.

"You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there." He continued, gesturing to nothing in particular.

Confused, I blinked.

And opened my eyes to the sight of the girl from earlier staring at me instead.

What the fuck?

I brought my hand up to my eyes and rubbed them vigorously. Then looked back at her. Everything came rushing back.

"He-" She started to speak, which I stopped by holding my hand up.

"Can you give me a moment?" I murmured.

The girl tilted her head slightly at me. After a brief pause, she nodded.

I looked around. It seemed that we were at the foot of another stairwell. I was sitting next to the stairs itself, with the doorframe leading to the corridor there in front and a little to the left of me. Leaning my head to the left to be able to look into it better, I saw that it was dark and I couldn't see anything inside. That was nice. I think.

The girl was sitting on my right, with her back to the wall as well. She had a large backpack next to her, and above here was a sign glowing dimly that said [6th floor].

I didn't look like I was hurt anymore than I already was. Nothing felt broken, though I still felt sore all over. I touched my head to answer something bugging me and sure enough, there was a gauze wrapped around it. Hmmm. I tried to think about my current situation, but hitting my head one too many times dulled me.

All the fear and desperation that I had was gone. All that was left was just... confusion.

Why the...

who... how... uh. when...

…whuh?

 The girl cleared her throat, which broke me away from my thoughts.

"You done?" the girl said, looking slightly amused.

Giving up on trying to gather my thoughts, I let out a dry "Yeah."

"I think so at least."

The girl nodded, content. She settled further into her seat and started rummaging through her backpack. After a bit, she pulled something out and tossed them to me.

Me being me, I held my hands forward to catch it and it hit my face instead.

It landed on my lap and I heard a faint snicker.

"Why the hell did you think that making someone with a concussion catch something was a good idea?" I said, laughing a bit too.

Hearing my response, She fell silent and gazed at me with a weird look on her face.

"I uh, mmm." I felt my ears get hot.

I focused my attention to my lap and found that she tossed me a bottle of water and a granola bar. Feeling grateful but extremely embarrassed, I scrunched up and tried to make myself look as small as possible as I picked up the bottle. It had a different colored cap.

I opened it up and started to put it to my mouth before halting to a stop. All shame I had gone in an instant, I looked back at the girl still watching me with sudden coldness.

"You first." I held the bottle of water towards her.

"What?" she asked, confused. I didn't answer. After a brief period, a look of understanding crossed her face.

"You sure man?" The girl raised her eyebrows at me. I didn't let up and continued to stare at her for an answer. She opened her mouth to say something, then decided against it. Looking somewhat disappointed, she reached out and took the bottle.

"Put your lips to it. There's a possibility that you laced the outside with something while leaving the water itself clean." I continued. "Drink a sizeable gulp too. About a fourth of it. I don't really drink water much, and its better to be safe than sorry."

She looked at me with eyes narrowed in annoyance, but didn't retort. She started to take a sip. It really seemed that she wanted to gain my trust.

As she started to gulp down though, I mustered up the dopiest voice I could and said,

"Heh heh. You just allowed me to give you an indirect kiss~"

She choked on her water, dropped it, and doubled over coughing as I laughed, which made my head ache more. It was worth though.

"You-cough- You motherf-cough-" she tried to say, hurrying to get up. 

I braced myself thinking that she was going to smack me upside the head or something, but to my surprise she started to zip her backpack up and slipped it onto her shoulders, still coughing a bit.

She staggered as she started pulling me up. I was kinda still laughing but all my laughter drained away as I saw the look in her eyes.

Those eyes, filled with tears from choking, were unfocused and filled with terror.

Confusion and fear descended onto me. All the relaxation she had was completely gone away as she hurriedly started to pull me up the stairs, struggling to rein in her coughing. I started to go along with her pace and helped her move up the stairs as she hastily pulled out her knife.

Another pang of fear struck my heart as I thought that she was going to use it again, but I couldn't think about it further as my attention was diverted by the sound of something moving in the dark corridor now below us.

Many somethings. 

And they were fast.

Hearing that, we both started to move faster.

We raced upwards the stairwell again, our arms supporting each other.

The thought of running up the stairs again made my legs shake, but I steeled myself and pressed on. I couldn't drag somebody with me down.

We started to go faster and faster up the stairs, nearly in sync. 

The sounds of hurried not-quite-footfalls followed us relentlessly as we hurried as fast as we can.

We passed landing after landing, steadily gathering pace. After a while, we stopped supporting each other and ran separately.

Pushing down my rising fear with all my might, my legs pumped as I matched her pace with my own.

Without realizing it, we reached the next floor. As we ran into it's doorframe, I started to shake harder.

It looked exactly like the corridor where I first came from.

Moonlight shone to our left through the corridor and cast rectangular shadows as its light was sectioned apart by concrete beams lining the balcony at set intervals. Our footsteps reverberated loudly throughout the large corridor.

By now, the girl had recovered enough to be able to speak.

"You idiot!" she shouted at me, her hair streaking behind her wildly. "What were you thinking!?"

"I was just trying to get you back for spooking me and shit, man!" I wailed. "I didn't know there'd be corpses there!"

"Well, you should've gotten me back when you were sure we were at a safe place you fucking dumbass!" She said, her arms pumping as fast as they could. "Were you seriously observant enough to wonder if I spiked your drink but still dumb enough to think making me choke while drinking wouldn't attract any attention!?"

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"Hey! I wasn't the one who scared me like, twice and dropped a vase on my head! Hell, I'm still not completely sure if you're even real!" I retorted, looking back at her.

"I- fuck- dude, let's talk about this later! How many are there!?" She said, gluing her eyes back to the road ahead of her.

I looked back.

Holy-

Holy shit-

"A- about five or so!" I shouted. I pushed my legs harder as I realized we didn't have any chance of escape if we got caught. My arms started to get goosebumps as they remembered the corpse's cold, iron grip.

"Fuck it! Follow me!" She said, pulling at my arm.

"Follow you!? There's only one corridor where the f-" I exclaimed as she suddenly turned a sharp right.

I closed my eyes, thinking that my hallucinations finally got the best of me.

I thought that maybe I'd finally wake up on my bed, safe and sound.

None of that happened.

I was still running, and I opened my eyes, bewildered.

The girl seemed to drag me to a turn that didn't exist a split second ago.

Now, doors lined both sides of the walls and as I looked behind, the moonlight from the balcony illuminated the nearly jumbled mass of corpses crawling at breakneck speed towards us. The light started to change from natural to manmade as dim overhead lights illuminated our surroundings a pale cyan. The walls were about two meters apart, but they nor the floor didn't change from the smooth concrete of where we came from.

"Ho- How!?" I uttered, completely bewildered.

"Well, I was going to tell you about this, and a lot more other stuff, but you just had to be a smartass and catch me off guard!" She retorted.

"Alright, alright! I'm sorry, okay!" I said, sweat stinging my eyes once again. "Wh- where are we -pant- going now?"

"I can find roads where there shouldn't be! We're gonna run around until we lose them!"

"Dude, Seriously!?" I shouted, my legs starting to burn.

"Why, do you have-pant-a better-pant-idea, huh?" She responded, looking more tired by the second.

I didn't have anything to say to that and we continued to run in silence.

It sucked, but it was the best we could hope for. I held on to that thought as I kept running, eventually having to slightly drag the girl with me to keep up with my pace.

My hopes started to rise as the girl kept doing sharp turns into walls, which always ended up opening into new paths at the last second. Whenever I sneaked a look back, the corpses seemed to be a bit farther each time.

With our escape feeling closer and closer and our bodies feeling more and more fatigued, we turned to another corner.

Straight into long corridor which lead to a dead end.

I looked at her as we ran and I saw her face starting to look more and more desperate.

We were a couple meters inside already.

Her face didn't relax.

Halfway inside.

Sweat poured down her face as her eyes darted frantically side to side.

Two thirds of the way inside.

Nothing.

No.

Dammit.

We were so close.

We looked at each other and I could see from her face that we were caught.

We never stopped running though, not until we reached it's very end.

We slowed down to a halt in front of a blank wall.

Both of us were too tired to speak.

I started to feel lightheaded as the lack of oxygen started to reach my head.

I sat down heavily, my vision turning into tv static.

I could vaguely hear the girl beside me murmuring something.

"Seriously? Again? Like this?"

The sound of the corpses chasing after us which was slowly getting quieter started to get louder and louder with every second that passed.

My eyes feeling better, I looked towards the girl desperately.

She looked exactly how I felt.

"Could we just..." I heaved.

"Could we just go into one of the rooms?" I said, gesturing weakly at one of the many doors that lined the walls.

"No."

"There's just more of them in there."

I sunk into despair.

Both of us leaned on the blank wall as we waited for the corpses to turn around the far corner and reach us.

But they never came.

We suddenly heard the sounds of struggle as inhuman gurgles and noises were heard over the sounds of numerous heavy impacts and what sounded like crunching bones. This continued on for a couple minutes, then ended just as abruptly as it started.

A long time passed.

Both of us, tired from exhaustion, eventually got up and looked at each other.

We both silently agreed to check out what happened.

Sleep deprivation was a hell of a drug.

As we reached the corner again, we slowed down and carefully peeked past it.

There, in the middle of the corridor, sitting crossed legs on a pile of slightly jittering corpses, was a guy with a shaved head.

"Why hello there. Didn't think I'd run into ya here, Soph." He said, greeting the girl with a placid, yet somewhat unnerving smile. His glasses glinted and shined, covering his eyes. After staring at her in silence for an uncomfortably long while, his gaze landed on me. "Heyy~ I know you too! I saved you from one of the hangers didn't I? Heh."

Both of us didn't move an inch. We stared at him, dazed.

"You guys seem to be getting along well! I never thought you had it in ya SoSo. Anyways, New Guy! Hey!" He snapped his fingers at me, which he really didn't need to do as I was still staring at him dumbly. "My name's Bob!"

"I... I thought you were named Lester..." The girl muttered weakly.

"Well, to you I'm Lester. To him, I'm Bob!" He said, his unnerving smile getting bigger. "Anyways, my job here is done. They won't be able to move much anymore, so you'll be safe if you guys just stay here for a while. I broke their legs, among other things, so they really can't do much. Don't take too long though! I may not know much..." He trailed off, standing up and brushing his shorts. He... he wore grey shorts and a red and black jacket over a muscle shirt.

"But... ?" Asked the girl.

Ignoring her, he turned around and walked away, his flip flops squeaking as he went.

We stared at his back for a long time, more confused and tired than ever.

The girl let out a really heavy sigh.

"I really hate that guy."

…

"So...

your name is Soso?"

…

Now she really did hit me upside the head.