***Disclaimer: I would love it if you listened to Infected by Sickick while you read this story. That's the vision for this story. Fun fact: The song inspired this story. Enjoy!***
Rena:
Five years ago:
There's a distant ringing splitting my ears.
Blood drips from my forehead onto the ground, mingling loudly with the beating rain.
I hack into my hand.
A figure scurries across the street from our burning house.
My eyes follow it as it enters a van.
Ignoring the blood pooling at my back and Rose and Theodore under our crumbling house, I seize my car key.
Let's find out if that's the swine that did this.
I nearly brush a car as I swerve between it and the car before me.
The driver honks.
I barely catch the sound, determined to catch that swine.
The windshield wipers are pathetic as the rain falls hard and fast.
My eyes droop.
I cough again.
I swerve behind the van and flinch when I notice the familiar emblem of an organization I once worked for.
Crap.
I was sure I'd escaped them.
My finger flounders to open my phone camera, my eyes lingering on my phone far too long.
When I look up, my car is rolling.
Glass, blood, and my body rolling with it.
A waning clicking sound is the last thing I hear once the car settles.
Present:
One after the other, the guards before me fall.
A gaping hole in their chest.
I press the key card of the guy to my right on the monitor and use his, now, decapitated finger for scanning.
Same entrance.
I gesture toward the door, continuing with the others.
We meet an unfortunate group of guards as we round the corner.
I nod, then aim a karambit at the forehead of the one in front.
He falls.
Blood stains my cheek as I wrench out my karambit.
I avoid staring at the hole; at the body altogether.
When I look up, Ethan is standing in the middle of the branched hallway, holding an electrified pistol.
Same hair.
Same annoying puppy gaze.
The crew leaves.
He shoots.
Still a terrible shot.
I slide on the bloody floor, between his legs, pulling out two knives from my boot.
His next shot singes my hair.
I tsk.
I sink a knife into his inner thigh and the other in his nuts.
He lets out an awful sound, plunging to his knees.
A chilling vigor floods my nerves as the world around me narrows into red, and I point my silencer at him.
