Day 106

Day 106. We found what we were looking for. The artifact needed to stop the war between the government and its community. No one had told us that it would be a child.

After being called on to take these matters into my own hands, I left the safety and warmth of my underground bunker for the danger of the streets.

Thick smoke snaked through my nostrils as soon as I opened the door, like a faded grey hand slowly closing around my throat. I took a quick, shallow breath and marched into the abandoned city’s streets.

While walking carelessly near a pile of bodies, I cut my bare foot on something sharp, and scarlett blood pooled from my ankle. A sharp, petrifying pain overcame my senses. As I walked, I tried not to make eye contact with the corpses.

But something about their grey, lifeless eyes had a story behind them, some sort of unreachable sadness. With my good foot, I pushed a stone-cold, unmoving arm out of my path and disappeared into the dark, unnoticed outskirts of the town.

Gunfire echoed through the streets, but we were all so used to it that the screaming of children and the desperate, pleading cries of the mothers and fathers were so normal and so boring that it acted almost as a lullaby to the survivors. In the dark alleyway in which I was standing, I pushed open a mysterious door with no handle. Darkness coursed through my veins, and I was greeted with cold, eerie silence.

Even the shootings and the bombings had stopped, which was never a releif. Suddenly, a woman stood in front of me, a bulky, jet black gun pressed against my forehead, a cold, malicious look planted in her eyes as her fingers closed dangerously around the trigger. How unoriginal. I gave her a bored expression and didn’t even attempt to escape. “Beatrix Hollins. I was called here to deal with the child.” I said in a toneless voice. She hesitated, her finger trembling underneath the trigger with the weight of which decision to make. To shoot, or to … not. Finally, she lowered the gun, but she did not move out of the door frame. “How do I know you’re not lying? It wouldn’t be the first time.” She accused. “Well, I’m not pulling out a well-hidden gun from my coat pocket, shooting you in the head, chucking your body out with the others, claiming to be your identity while I walk inside and smear the blood off my hands and onto the wall, am I?” I say in a amused tone. The lady paused. “Fair enough.” She grunted, and moved to the side so that I could enter. The room was dark, with another room inside it. The second room was small, and in the corner of the first room, with the walls, floor and ceiling all made of glass. A child sat inside, a small boy with sandy blonde hair and chartreuse-coloured eyes. Around his neck was a heart-shaped necklace. The woman gestured me forward, so I walked up to the glass box . I tapped gently on the glass, and the boy inside turned his head warily. He looked about eight years old. I walked inside through a little door and stared at the boy. “Hello.” I began. The boy said nothing. Suddenly, I became very interested in the locket he had placed around his neck. I reached forward to grab it, but the boy struggled and let out a wail. . I managed to snatch it off him, and prise it open.