The World's End | ONC 2024 ✔

ੈ✩‧₊˚ |𝟭𝟭| 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀

"Keira, are you okay with this?" I asked, taking her trembling hand in mine. "If you don't want to do this-"

"I'm fine, I can do it," she nodded, reassuring me but it almost seemed like she was reassuring herself.

With bated breath, we approached the door. Keira reached out and pushed it open, revealing a dimly lit room beyond.

Inside, there was a single flickering bulb. The air was heavy with the scent of disinfectant and something more sinister, like the stench of decay lurking beneath the surface.

In the center of the room sat Keira's brother, his eyes dull and lifeless. He was hunched over in the chair, his body shaking with each breath. His clothes were tattered and stained, and I wondered how long he was chained to this chair.

"Miles," Keira whispered, her voice cracking as she approached him. "Miles, can you hear me? It's me, Kee. Miles?"

Miles looked up, and I jumped back. Axelle covered her eyes from the sight but Keira stood there, perplexed, her eyes widening as she took in the state of her brother.

His skin was pallid and stretched over his bones, making him look almost skeletal. His hands were unable to stay still, clutching at the arms of the chair as if they were the only thing anchoring him up. His face was sunken, his skin peeling in places but it was his eyes that sent a shiver down my spine. They were black, empty and where white should've been...it was hollow. There was the vacant emptiness in his eyes and I couldn't fathom what happened to him and that frightened me.

"Miles. Miles. Can you see me? Can you...can you hear me?" Keira repeated in between sobs. "Please, tell me. Can you understand me?"

Miles' response but nothing more than a low, guttural moan, his words lost in a sea. It was as if he was trapped in a nightmare from which he could not awaken. He was lost in the maze of his mind.

Tears welled in Keira's eyes as she reached out to touch her brother's form, her heart breaking at the sight before her. Axelle looked away entirely and she couldn't take it in at all. I wanted to know what was running through her mind right now.

"We have to get him out of here," Keira whispered, her voice barely above a whisper. "We have to save him. He can't just...we can't leave him here to rot."

I exchanged a worried glance at Axelle, unsure of what to do next. We had come all this way, risking everything to find Keira's brother, but now that we had him, he was more lost to us than ever.

Suddenly, a passing janitor halted in his tracks, his eyes narrowing as he took in the scene before him. "You shouldn't be here," he muttered, his voice low and gravelly.

Keira was normally composed, but in this moment, her desperation too over. "Please, you have to help us," she pleaded. "He's my brother, he's not...he's not well. We need to get him out of here."

The janitor looked around warily outside ensuring that no one else was passing by. "I've seen what they do to people here so if you know what's good for you, get out," he said, his voice low. "They put them here as a punishment. Then they just use them for their experiments."

"What experiments?" Axelle asked, her fingers fiddling with her bitten nails.

He glanced around nervously again. "This place...they say it's an institution to help them. But it's not. They punish them all like this."

Given the janitor's willingness to share information, I presumed he knew more than he was revealing. "What about the Death March? Do you know anything about the people who were brought in?" I questioned him and he hesitated.

"They brought them here before the Death March, and once again after the Death March. They haven't left since. I think that they did something to them before the Death March."

My blood ran cold at his words, the implications sinking in. This was far worse than anything I had imagined. Keira's brother wasn't just sick, those robotic speeches on the March weren't organic, they were all victims of something far more sinister.

"We have to get him out of here," I said, my voice firm. "We can't let them keep him here any longer."

Keira flashed a grateful smile at me, her eyes shining. "Thank you," she whispered.

We got some answers that confirmed what I was thinking. This world was not to be reborn, it had to be destroyed entirely. I thought that we needed our old world back to be happy, but it seemed to me that this world had to be gone or we should be gone from it.

The janitor stood inside, perplexed as we watched us. "I was eighteen when they brought me here. I've been here since. The air here is worse than the air outside. I don't have a choice. I either starve or die from the Disease. You kids need to get out of here. Quickly."

Axelle stared at the chair that Miles was chained onto. "Could we release him from those chains?"

He nodded, pulling out a key from his pocket. "Yes. Here. May you live as long," he replied, his voice hoarse, tears falling from his eyes.

I hadn't realized that he would most likely get killed over this. "Are there cameras here?"

"What they do here is evil, do you think they want to record it?" he scoffed. "I'll be fine. You go, there should be no one around now. He should get better once he's not experimented on."

He pointed at Miles who was muttering something inaudible, and incomprehensible.

Keira held onto one shoulder and I rushed to hold onto the other. He was barely awake, or drugged but we couldn't tell. He seemed to be in an intense trance or something. Slowly, the janitor moved us out of the room and walked away, showing us to the shortcut outside.

Keira and I pulled our weight to drag Miles out while Axelle kept watch and told us where to go. That's when I heard it, in a blink-or-miss moment when Miles murmured to himself, or his sister. I couldn't tell.

"They're watching. They're always watching. Nothing is real. They're lies."

He was saying nothing was real, but I couldn't help but wonder: was what he was saying true? Or was it all orchestrated?

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈

𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙿𝚃𝙴𝚁 𝚆𝙾𝚁𝙳 𝙲𝙾𝚄𝙽𝚃: 𝟷𝟼𝟹𝟺 𝚆𝙾𝚁𝙳𝚂

𝚃𝙾𝚃𝙰𝙻 𝚆𝙾𝚁𝙳 𝙲𝙾𝚄𝙽𝚃: 𝟸𝟷𝟽𝟹𝟻 𝚆𝙾𝚁𝙳𝚂