Man Hunt

Chapter Twenty Two - Time is Ticking

I turn to Aaron, hoping for him to assure me somehow that things will be alright. Surely he has a plan. However instead of his usual comforting look; he seems to be just as worried as I am. If what Kate is saying is true, we don’t have long left until the bracelets around our wrists do to us what they are doing to Kate. Surprisingly enough, I don’t exactly warm to that idea in the slightest!

‘’What do we do?’’ I question frantically, my heart feels as though it is going to burst from my chest and I can actually hear my pulse in my ears, as though the blood is trying to escape from them.

Aaron can’t muster up a sentence, he tries to speak but his words jumble together instead. He shrugs his shoulders and a look of genuine fear spreads across his face which I instantly feel spreading to mine. For once, he really doesn’t know what to do. Kate looks at the two of us and laughs hysterically once more.

‘’Kate!’’ I yell, ‘’what can we do? How do we prevent it?’’

She giggles crazily, she has completely lost it.

‘’Kate!’’ I scream again, picking the girl up by her jacket and glaring at her in the eyes – which have a vacant look in them.

‘’Well if you guess the word, the bracelets come off,’’ she explains after a moment whilst chuckling to herself.

The fact that her face is bloody and bruised from what I done to her a few minutes ago makes her laughing seem even crazier. She really is a lunatic! She looks like something out of a horror movie set in a mental asylum. Blood from her nose has run down past her lips and over her teeth – her smile is sickly and quite bloody.

‘’What?’’ I gasp.

‘’The bracelets come off you when you win, so you have to guess the word right.’’

‘’What happens if we guess the word wrong?’’ I ask.

She grins, and stares right into my eyes, ‘’if you get it wrong, it kills you!’’

‘’What?!’’ I shriek in horror, how can she be so casual about this?

‘’Mmhmm, so you better get it right!’’ she yells and shrieks with laughter.

I drop Kate onto the floor quite carelessly. She falls in a heap on the ground. Then I turn to Aaron, ‘’put in Alex’s letter!’’

He turns to the keypad and I stand beside him. He pushes ‘S’ and it appears in one of the two empty boxes on the screen before us. Now just one box remains empty – the one where Niamh’s letter should be going. I glance at the letters and try to unscramble them, desperately thinking of the possible words it could be.

The word dyslexic comes to mind. Although somehow I know that I am not dyslexic, something in the back of my mind hints that someone in my life was. This is how I feel now. The five letters jumble about my head, although none of them make any actual words. Despite how much I try, my brain refuses to cooperate and I curse angrily.

‘’Any ideas?’’ I ask Aaron.

‘’Shh, let me think,’’ he replies, sounding impatient and under severe pressure, although I don’t take offense, his snappy reply is understandable.

The letters float around my head, although I cannot seem to make any words with them. P, H, C, Y and S.

What a difficult group of letters. I think to myself. Surely there should be more vowels.

‘’Hmmm,’’ Aaron says, although he doesn’t continue.

I glance at Kate; she has begun to shake although somehow she is still giggling. She has curled up and has her head resting on her knees; her arms are wrapped around her legs. She is rocking gently back and forth against one side of the LIS building.