Backstreet Boy

|Chapter 60: The Race to Escape|

Isabella

I looked down at my hand that Jason was tugging me with.

The ring glimmered on my finger, though my hand was clammy and whitening from Jason's grip. The ring looked pure and untainted. Then Jason's hands looked tarnished and callused and like warrior hands – though that is quite ridiculous. My arm was violently trembling because of Jason. In my other hand, my shoes were weighing my arm down, despite being quite light.

Everything was getting to me. I could see Lizzie and Matt weaving through the crowd, though Lizzie was still wearing her black heels, and it was slowing them down. Matt's mouth moved every time he turned to her, but she never said anything back.

"Issy!"

Snapping me from reverie, Jason tugged on my arm one last time before I darted out in front of him, yanking him this time. He caught up in no time and a moment later, I was thrust to the side. Luckily Jason's grasp on my hand was so tight that he flew with me and we landed on the floor near a burning stall which previously was the ring toss.

"What happened?" he breathed, gasping and crimson in the face.

"Someone pushed me as they ran past," I said hastily. "Sorry."

Jason got up and pulled me up without much warning.

Tensions were running high as we continued darting to the end of the pier. The boards were ceaselessly creaking and the flames were bigger, brighter and hotter than ever. They were blisteringly hot whenever you passed one, and it was only fortunate that moments later you could escape the perilous flames, but you'll end up next to another thing burning moments later.

"We need to catch up with Lizzie and Matt!"

It's like Jackson and his minions just wanted to have complete and arrant deletion on the whole of the pier. Either to insinuate something or just to be brutal, it was inconclusive. But the whole approach was wrong. People were lying on the floor unconscious and unmoving. Some had burns forming on body parts and others bruises. Some even more unfortunate souls had blood pouring out of their stomachs.

"They're killing people!" I breathed to Jason. The breath was already knocked out of me and running and talking were becoming quite a task.

The imminent and foreseeable future for this pier was evident. It wouldn't be long until it would surrender under the weight of everyone and the boards and flames would perish into the water below. Then again, so would the innocent people and I have yet to witness a man dressed all in black unconscious on the floor, amid in the bodies of innocent people. I was already aware and conscious of Jackson's certain proclivity for danger and mass destruction, but this was beyond anything I could have ever imagined he would do. There seemed like an insufficient amount of people actually fighting back. But then sirens were heard in the distant. Faint as they were, they were growing louder by each passing second.

The severity of everything was overwhelming. Jason and I had almost made it to the halfway point of the pier, but a man dressed in black suddenly jumped us. He brandished a gleaming knife in his hand, stained with crimson blood. The blood was dripping down the knife to the trailing point and onto the boards like cascading tears. Some even fell through the cracks, thus contaminated the water below us.

Tactlessly, I stayed paralysed whilst Jason let go of my hand and pounced forwards to the man in black. Pugnacious, the man was already ready for a jump. But Jason was crazier this time. The man drew the knife back as I felt my throat constrict, my stomach churn and my lungs lose all the air they already had. He was too slow bringing it down because Jason reached up and punched his wrist.