Smells Like Winter

19: Is It Really Game Over?

Mia snorted, but then she fell on her knees next to him, examining the decking with her hands like he did. Sia knelt as well, doing the same, although her hands were shaking as if she was suffering from Parkinson's disease.

Maddy was as confused as a homeless man on house arrest.

What the heck were they doing? Was this a freaking joke to them? Some sort of game? She looked at the extremely focused faces of her four idiot companions. Her moving gaze stayed on Carter, who was still pressing a death-red palm against his left upper arm to slow the blood stream.

"Did you get shot?" she asked again, her whispering voice thick.

"It's just a scratch," he answered coldly.

Logan ran his hands through his ruffled hair in despair, looking like a madman. "I can't find it, man. It was here somewhere, I swear."

"Find what?" asked Maddy, losing her patience with those four bloody psychopaths she had gotten herself mixed with.

Then someone kicked the French door open, and a man dressed in black SWAT-like uniform stepped outside, gun in his hands, trained straight on them.

Maddy froze, heart rising up in her throat and choking her.

"Hands up where I can see'em!" yelled the man, his voice a smoker's voice, hoarse and rusty from the blackness of his lungs.

Another man appeared, and then another. Maddy raised her hands up, palms out facing the armed men in front of her, dread glistening in her eyes.

The others stood up and did the same, looking desperate. Maddy caught Carter wincing when he lifted his arms up, the wound on his left biceps probably pulling at his flesh. They all exchanged communicative looks, the hesitancy clear in their rebellious eyes.

"Give it up, kids," said the first man as if knowing what they were thinking about, as if telling them to quit thinking of ways to escape, because there simply weren't any. He made a gesture with his weapon for them to surrender. There were now four men in front of them, all holding guns.

Come on, Maddy. Think of something.

But she couldn't think of anything. They were doomed.

Stupid.

Her shoulders dropped helplessly. After everything she had been through, she just got... caught?

Hell, she had jumped off a window, nearly got her skull crushed by the school gates, defied her mother, got chased down by the police, threw a considerably heavy wrench at a cop car and broke its windscreen, drank water from a field of freaking sprinklers, had her injured feet treated by a doctor's sister and ended up at a filthy-rich stranger's cottage in Lancashire, all in two single days.

And now she had a gun pointed her way, as if she was some sort of high-level criminal instead of a 17-year-old girl.

She had gone through so much to avoid this, and yet everything turned out to be in vain. It was inevitable, just like Clarke had said. It was a dead end from the beginning, and she knew it.

What would her mother say if she saw her like this? Maddy looked around her at the pale faces resembling hers, one by one. Her mother would most probably ask her what in the ever-loving hell she was thinking when she got herself involved with those four bad, extremely bad influences. And she wouldn't know what to answer, because, if she was being a hundred per cent honest with herself, she had no idea what she was thinking.

But, somehow, looking at those four crackheads right now, with a gun trained on her, she didn't really regret it. Two days ago, they were just four strangers to her. And truth be told, they still were. But they were the type of strangers she would like to get to know until they were not strangers anymore.

Well, except for a particular ebony-headed idiot bleeding on her right. She wouldn't mind never seeing him again.

And Mia might be a bitch, but Maddy had to admit, she kind of liked it. The bitchy attitude and all.

Amongst all her mixed feelings, Maddy could feel a tinge of sadness shrinking her heart. She would most probably never see them again. Hell, her only chance at seeing them again would be in a cell behind steel bars, if they were lucky enough to end up in the same prison, or juvie or whatever.

This is goodbye, she realised. Her life was over. She'd get vaccinated, and if she didn't die like that other girl from yesterday, she would have FROST running tests on her like a laboratory animal, and then she'd have to walk inside the court and face charges. Her mother would be crying, because she would end up locked up in a reformatory, and no prestigious college would accept her after that.

"Give it up, kids," repeated the armed man in front of her. "It's over."

She nodded to herself, her head drained and empty of thoughts.

It's really over.

Maddy took a step forward, ready to feel the cold metal of cuffs around her wrists.

That was when the decking crumbled beneath her feet, taking her gut with it.