➵ 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐭

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When the sun came up the next morning the group woke to find their bags surprisingly light.

“Where the hell are our guns?” Jonas demanded.

“Our clothes are gone too…” Sapphire observed. “And our food… our beans…”

“They stole all our supplies! Let’s go fight them until they give it back-” Toph started toward the door but Jin took her arm. “They’re the ones with weapons now, right? They could shoot you if they wanted.”

“That’s fair.”

“We have to do something,” Violet said indignantly.

“They let us live for one day, I don’t think they’ll be any kinder than that,” Jonas said.

They all walked out of the door to see nothing but empty houses and streets.

“Wow, they really know how to make a run for it,” Jack said.

“Well, they’re not going to help us take down the facility now. We just have to keep moving and hope that there’s something else out there,” Jonas stated.

“Or we find them again. They could've gone far,” Sapphire pointed out. “We could fight them with our bare hands.” 

“That’s not an option because we’d be outnumbered,” Toph added.

“You are correct.”

“Can we get going now?” Jules cut in. “I need to give Jorge some water- if we find a river or something.”

They all started to leave, once again, looking for people, places, really anything to give them hope to keep on running. It soon turned night, the sky dark. They continued to run with their lightweight backpacks and no supplies. Soon, they found sources of light a couple feet away.

“There,” Jin pointed out as they all ran to see what was over there. 

“A bridge,” Toph said.

“That leads to where?” Jin asked.

“Let’s go find out,” Violet insisted as they persisted to run on the long bridge. It wasn’t a regular bridge, it was different. Around the bridge was a blue symmetrical pattern overlaying the seven of them. lights on the sides, illuminating their narrow path. After traveling in the gloomy night, this light cleared a way for hope, and so they persisted to keep going straight down it.

“Wow, this is amazing,” Sapphire said in awe.

“Yeah it is,” Jules added.

They came closer to the end of the bridge. see the same as they did before, nothingness.

“There’s nothing here. We traveled all this way just to find emptiness,” Jin said.

“You don’t know that,” Jules stated while petting Jorge.

“Do you see anything?” Toph asked.

Violet studied the darkness looking deeper into it, still seeing nothing but a street under their feet.

“Well I guess we should turn back around-” Sapphire said as she soon disappeared.

“What the- Where-” Jack asked as he soon left into the darkness. The rest soon disappeared not knowing where they were going or what would become of them.