Red The Maximus Holder *Book 1*

Chapter 2

"We need to get to the cart." Laurence whispered, his eyes never leaving the Forest.

"And leave Trent?" Keiser asked in a trembling voice.

"For all we know he's dead." Laurence argued, "And if he's not he has a better chance at surviving than we do."

"Shhhh!" I prompted them, my eyes on a specific part of the Forest. It seemed darker than the rest of it as if someone was standing there watching us. I tried to blink my focus onto it and my ears perked when I heard a branch snap under someone's feet, not ours. A feeling of awareness crawled up my spine.

Shit!

"Run-"

A loud ear-numbing explosion resounded around us and before I knew it we were in the air, the dirt of the ground and pieces of slabs around us as we soared above the site. I could hear everyone screaming in agony as I went to close my eyes just after I saw myself rushing headfirst back into the ground under me.
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"What a fucking mess." A playful woman's voice came. By the lilt in her tone, she was amused and by the quick-paced clicking of heels on the hard floor, a bit agitated.

"We weren't aware that there were harvesters ma'am." Came a chivalrous voice that was met by a scoff.

"Which is why it is protocol to secure the area first, dimwit!" The woman growled.

I groaned as my head began to throb from the many sounds in the room, the feeling of my heavy limbs slowly coming back in succession.

"Oh? Well, this one is still alive!"

"Well ma'am... the thing is..." Whispering could be heard and I opened my eyes to a dull gray ceiling.

Where am I? Slowly, I turned my head to look beside me and instantly met the brown irises of Solomon. My breath rushed out of my lungs at how far away his head was from his torso, indicating that he was dead. His eyes were dull and stared lifelessly into mine.

A gasp brought me back from my internal horror which was followed by an astonished breath.

"Well you don't say.... so this is the one you were talking about." The woman's voice murmured.

My body jerked from a muscle spasm and with a quick click of her heels, I could feel her presence on the other side I was faced away from. A gloved hand grasped my cheeks in a firm, gentle grip before turning me to look into coal-black smiling eyes and red lips.

"Can you move?" The woman asked me. I couldn't make out her face due to the dullness of the light but I could tell she was smiling in delight by how her bright red lips parted to flash her strikingly white teeth. I opened my mouth to speak, my tongue a dry stone. A gurgle formed in my throat and I swallowed back the thick copper tasting liquid that suddenly climbed from the back of my throat.

"I'll take that as a no." She sighed and looked behind her. "Be gentlemen and help the girl sit up!" She ordered and immediately I was sat up by numerous hands until I could fully see the room.

Everything was dark gray with dull lights. There were iron tables lined up in the room, four of them with bodies on top of each one including me. A blood-stained blanket was pulled over two bodies in front of me and I couldn't mistake the familiar fire red hair that poked from under them as the twins. I looked beside me again to Solomon to see his head and left arm was detached from his torso and half of the skin on his face was peeled downward until you could see his muscle. I threw myself over the side of the table to vomit from the sight of him.

What the fuck happened to us? Where am I? 

I was again sat back up with eager hands from the soldiers and I could finally see the woman's cringing face in my view. I could see her clearly now and instantly knew who she was. She was the vice president of The Scientific Discovery Team; Giselle Veryer. The overly jolly but masochistic wretch who lived to torture the lower factioned people within The Core and Jail. She is always running experiments but we never hear about what the experiments are and for what good it would help with the District. Whenever we would see her on the television she was tremendously vague and always promised the lower factions that she was making vaccines to help eradicate some of the viruses that plagues us. That promise has yet to be fulfilled. Something about her uncanny cold eyes always made me shiver when I was younger and now that I am seeing her in the flesh I could barely repress the one that itched to crawl up my spine.