Can You Hear Them Calling

Chapter IX

3:47 am

The dead savannah that was my lips barely moves as dust swifts its way to the cracks. My eyes fluttered---lime green balls of light hovered all over, it was dense and slow. I sense no---life, within me, but just a hollow cascade of bones.

I sat upright from where I lay, my bones crackled out of its stiffness yet I felt nothing. My flesh stretched to the thinnest as my bones outlined every part of me, I see no muscles nor veins and even hair, just skin on bones. I felt like butter, spread on too much bread.

My uniform was of ashes by now as my body exposed and parts of my legs as well. I certainly felt weak---weaker than ever before. I was in some huge white room filled with glass windows as dirt, overgrown vines, and wet moss were about. 

It looked like an old abandoned lab---of some sort. In the middle lies a straight hall with broken down doors and windows from left to right. On bare feet, I aimlessly wandered, while a shrunken sized sphere rests in my palm. puddles of stagnant water filled the floor. 

I knelt down as I scooped some of it filtered with dark features and green moss, gulping down a couple and brushing it on my lips---somehow I thought that would make me feel relieved but it didn't, I still felt nothing. 

The sphere grew once more in the size of my swollen palm. It vibrated a little and sounded similar to the gnarling whispers at the back of my head. Strange, I thought hearing again would make me feel at least better, but nothing came of it. It was calling---something. 

I stood up, then my feet moved by itself---following where the sphere would take me. At the end of this lab was a highly contained room, it says so on the door that was broken down. Inside was a small glass vile, it was---something that I've never seen before. A spontaneous liquid in a hue of great black. The liquid has even more life than I as it frolics inside the vile by my presence.  

By the other end of the lab where I came from, burst out Reins and Rio. They shut the door as fast as they got in, seeing them would've at least cast a grin of me, but there wasn't. Reins was holding back the door as Rio tries to find something to hold it shut. 

My hands quickly shoved both the vile and the sphere at my pants as I waved a hand at him and pointed at the broken-down door. He managed a smirk while rushing towards me, "QUICK! HELP ME WITH THIS DOOR TO THE ENTRANCE!" 

I was too frail to even lift leaving Rio and Reins all by themselves, I'm of no use to them as much of myself. They made use of the door to make somewhat a blockade to prevent something from breaking in.

Whatever it may be that blockade won't last long. We meet halfway the hall and they stopped upon seeing me face to face. Their eyes shifted up and down---it was later that I realized what they were doing. They were identifying me.

I shifted a glance as heavy as my eyes could be, it was painful, but what they felt about me was even more than painful. Still, deep down I didn't felt a thing. "Schneider? comrade is that you?" Reins mumbled, Rio emphasized that this isn't the time for this and that we need to find a way out of here.

That was the top priority, as if we're soldiers all over again...but we weren't. We're no longer who we use to be. Seeing Reins and Rio together without Xiao leaves me to conclude that had he already met his inevitable demise---just as we would too.

Whispers of dreadful noise came ushering in my ears while Reins and Rio find themselves a way out. There were chanting and screaming words of things that I wouldn't even think about nor understood the slightest.