Darkness {4}

Chapter 17

Besides a few flickers of light here and there Leena couldn't see or feel anything, and that made her extremely nervous. She swallowed hard and walked forwards, her wide eyes straining to see anything that could help her.

"Are you afraid?" A voice echoed behind her, and Leena turned around to see herself standing limply. Except it wasn't her; it was a twisted, pale, yellow-eyed version of herself.

"No, I'm not." She responded calmly even though her heart was hammering in her chest. Her dark form took a few steps closer, and Leena stayed still so that once she stopped the two were only a few inches apart. Her eyes burned a bright yellow that looked hauntingly beautiful and simultaneously terrifying. "Yet." She hissed. "Not yet. But you will be."

Leena's heart sank. "And what makes you think that?"

The dark Leena suddenly looked down at her hand, and Leena looked down at it as well to see it vanishing. Leena then looked at her own hand, and saw the darkness growing. "You can't hold out forever, and even if you did, you could never escape me."

Leena's arms and legs grew veiny and pale as she took desperate steps back, trying to distance herself. But it was too late. She could feel the dark blood coursing through her veins and morphing her into something foreign, and the problem was that it wasn't as foreign to her as she'd liked it to be.

"No." She breathed as the dark Leena completely faded, and a mirror appeared in front of her.

Leena's bright yellow eyes stared back at her, and she realized that it had been a mirror the whole time.

As soon as Leena jolted awake she looked down at her arms and legs, feeling ecstatically relieved that they were her normal orange give or take a few hues. She blew out a long breath and wiped the sweat off of her forehead, and looked over to see Taber sitting against a tree looking at her worriedly. "Bad dream?"

"Something like that." She lied, standing up and stretching. "Can I see those?"

Taber gave her a look of suspicion and handed her the binoculars, and she grabbed them and climbed up the log separating them from the hidden motion sensors on the ground. She looked around to see absolutely nothing, and that bothered her.

"It looks clear." Leena commented, lowering her binoculars and frowning. They were right where the underground base entrance was, and besides a few cameras popping up every now and then neither of them had seen anyone walking around on patrol.

"What's our play?" Taber asked after climbing up next to her, sliding back down the log and sitting down against it. Leena joined him and thought.

She peeked over the side of the log to the entrance, completely unnoticeable unless you knew where to look. "We used to have numbers on our side, and they definitely know we're here now."

"Yeah, that complicates it a bit." He frowned worriedly. Leena turned to face him, and in the split second their eyes locked they both recognized the danger they were in by simply being here.

But both resigned themselves to the possibility of death, and Leena grabbed a thermal detonator out of her pack. Taber breathed in and held his breath, nodding.

Leena held her breath as well as she threw the detonator out onto the ground, hiding behind the log and covering her ears. The explosion wasn't as loud as others, but they both knew that it would attract unwanted attention. Which was why she had a plan.

"Follow me." Leena murmured, sliding across the ground in order to climb up into a tree that looked like it's foliage was thick enough to mask her orange skin. She climbed up quickly, turning around to help Taber up as well. Together the two sat until troopers came to investigate, and on Leena's mark Taber shot them both down from the tree in the span of maybe a second.