The patrol returned empty-handed to the police station. Sure, a lot of blood had been spilt but none of that blood was the kind they were looking for. Sam was there to watch his comrades kill an elderly couple in their own home, all because they were suspicioned harborers of the two hybrids that had escaped the soldiers the other day.
It was sick. It was a sight that would chill someone to the bone, make their stomach twist and churn or maybe even render them unconscious. Sam was unfazed, though. As uncommon as it was for the community to not witness such brutality and cruelty, for him it had been as simple as brushing his teeth in the morning. He could hold a gun, aim at someone's head and it would feel like opening an umbrella in rainy weather. That simple.
That didn't make murder any less horrible. He felt like a monster each time put his finger on the trigger but he'd learnt to detach himself from his feelings in those moments. It was horrible, it was cold, it was inhumane and above all, it was completely unneccesary. Perhaps that was the worst part; it didn't need to be done but Sam couldn't speak up.
One wrong word and he could wave his life goodbye. Being in the policeforce before the Hybrid Purge begun had its perks and one of them was not needing to hide like his kin. One of the downsides was that he couldn't help his own, lest he was considered a traitor to those who had the upper hand in the world: the humans and more specifically, the government.
That time with the child in the electronics shop had been one of weakness, one that could've landed him in a lifetime of torture and pain had someone called him out on his bluff. It had been years of cooperation and team-building that got him out of that one and for the child, it had been luck that it was Sam who had decided to clear the backroom personally. Then, again, at the house of the escapees –the only people who had been prepared enough to leave through a window when the soldiers came knocking on the door– he'd been relieved to hear that no one in the block had seen them run away.
Some furniture had blood on it, though. In the bathroom trash there were bloody tissues and discarded sutures that had been collected for blood tests. Regardless of the results, Sam knew that whomever had been wounded was a hybrid.
"Hello, Commander Quackity." he greeted the captain of the department.
The commander was a stand up guy, kind and friendly with the ranks above and below him. With his natural charisma, he had plenty of connections outside of the police force, making him quite a valuable yet dangerous man to keep an eye on.
One such contact had been President J. Schlatt, who had been one of the first hybrids to be purged. His children hadn't been found in the Schlatt Manor, so they hadn't followed the same fate –not in Sam's knowledge, anyway.
Sam wouldn't say they were close enough to be friends; no, not quite. They'd known each other for a long time, though, and they respected each other. Plus, Quackity didn't look at him any differently than he did anyone else, as most humans in the building did.
"Lieutenant Dude, good afternoon!" Quackity acknowledged him with a sharp grin and equally sharp, dark eyes. "I heard you didn't find them."
"They left through a window before we could catch them." Sam simply responded, keeping his voice nice and even. "We searched the house and brought back some blood samples, though. "
Personally, Sam wasn't one for formal speech. He didn't care for it as much as the higher ranks did and while it was considered beast-like and risky, when it came to Quackity, it didn't really matter. As long as the job got done, the man didn't care how you spoke to him –it was another story if the words were an outright attack, though.
Quackity shrugged.
"We're still trying to track down the avians. Phil, Wilbur and Thomas Minecraft and that other one."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "The unregistered avian?"
"That one. Bastard took out half of my men and flew away." The commander's tone was decievingly calm, bringing a hand up to aggressively chew at his thumbnail.
Had it been any other hybrid, they would have been killed before they'd lied eyes on any of those soldiers. However, avians were a rarity and almost always, they were considered to be one big family. For whatever reason, the department had received orders to keep the exotic species of hybrids alive; avians, creepers, shulks, endermen. Sam dreaded to think of what would happen to him, as a creeper hybrid, when the Hybrid Purge would end.
He thought back to the kid in the electronics shop; What was his name again? Thomas? He had seen the fear in the boy's baby blue eyes that were plastered on every wall of the city and plagued every TV channel. The lack of wings on his back had confused Sam; why chase a human?
The answer was that he was born to an avian father. Or, that's half the answer. The other half would be that he had been sighted with an avian at the beginning of the purge.
"I'll look into the other reports," Quackity dismissed him quickly. "You go rest, yeah? The rest have yet to return, so I might need you later."
"Yessir." The Commander left with the same sharp grin and an underlying aura of anger and frustration. Sam didn't ponder on the man's feelings more than he had to.
As much as they knew each other, as much as they respected one another, Quackity was still dangerous with hundreds of cards up his sleeve. A good strategy was to keep him at arm's length.
---
The neighborhood had been flooded with blood and misery. The sun seemed to shine less, half-hidden by sorrowful clouds, the wind tasting metallic and stale. Dead leaves littered the ground, swirling in tiny cyclones around the ambulance parked by the neighbor's house.
Grocery bags dropped from Mumbo's hands.
Every house's door was broken down or pried open. The elderly lady who lived in the house was being transported on a stretcher, her clothes stained red due to bullet wounds. Her husband was nowhere to be seen but an ambulance siren could be heard in the distance. There were no officers around, even though there had been a murder.
"No..." Mumbo mumbled under his breath as he slowly connected the dots. A bunch of burgled houses, his neighbor hanging onto life by a thread. "No, no–" a breath steals his words.
The lack of police. The hurt children he welcomed into his home. The Hybrid Purge raging in the streets.
"No!"
He ran to his house, plastic bags forgotten at the side of the road. He saw the broken door before he climbed onto the porch. It had been bashed and pushed off of its hinges, the frame splintered beyond repair. The man stepped over it, entering his broken house.
"Tommy!" his call received no response. There was no pat-pat of Kubo's steps either. The living room had been turned upside down, furniture and decorations carelessly misplaced or tossed aside or broken. He proceeded to search the rest of the house for the children, panting with panic as he went from room to room.
The bathroom trash had been riffled through but nothing seemed to have had been taken. Tommy's room was untidy and books and clothes were strewn around the floor like a tornado had stirred up within the four walls. His room was far worse. The door, pushed to its limits, was missing a chunk of it along with the handle. The part of the wall that had part of the lock was broken, revealing grey concrete and ruined plasterboard. The nightstands and the desk were lying on their sides, a bunch of trinkets and his camera films were in a corner or somewhere else on the floor. The window was wide open, the curtains flowing with an innocent breeze.
Panting, panic clawing at his throat, Mumbo looked around the room. There were no signs of struggle that he could see; there was no blood despite Tubbo and Dream's injuries and the floor was clear of stains. The house had been searched, then. The kids had been smart enough to lock themselves in Mumbo's room but what happened after that? The panic subsided slowly as Mumbo thought the scenario over. Looking through the window, around at the shaded green area beneath the sill, he saw trampled plants.
He had never run so fast before, especially to take a closer look at a plant.
The greenery was heavily depressed like someone had fallen on it and then gave it a good kick for good measure. There's a piece of fabric hanging from one of the thorny stems that had been snagged from... Mumbo didn't know. The piece in his hands was white, the material fine and reminiscent of his dress shirts. Had the boys taken clothes from his wardrobe? And if they did; if they got a couple shirts and Kubo and then jumped out of the window to escape the soldiers, had they managed to get away? Had they been chased farther down the street? Maybe they didn't escape but they were detained somewhere farther away.
Mumbo didn't want to think of the implications of that scenario. He had made a promise to Grian and he was intending to keep it for his sake.
Backing away from the window, he returned to the pavement. There were other people around the neighborhood, standing at the side and staring with hollow eyes. The second ambulance sped to the aid of another house, sirens blaring loudly and wheels almost squeaking as the driver stepped on the brake. A stretcher was then unloaded and carried into the house in front of which a couple was standing gazing upon its broken door.
A little hesitantly, Mumbo approached the couple. What else was he to do? The police wasn't coming, he couldn't ask the soldiers for answers directly had they caught the hybrids hiding in his house and standing around doing nothing wouldn't give him any leads.
"Hello? Excuse me!"
The two people, both appearing human, turned to face him. Their faces were grief-ridden, their eyes not quite meeting his as they regard him with their sorrow.
"Do you-" Mumbo cuts himself off at the sight of them but shaking his head, he continued. "Do you know what happened here?"
A moment of silence, a shy glance at the door, and then the woman turned her attention to him. "The soldiers came and searched the whole neighborhood." she said, taking a deep breath before adding, "Apparently, they were on a hybrid's trail but they left after going through that house over there."
Neither of them had seen where Mumbo had come from and Mumbo wasn't very close to those two for either of them to recognize. He had trouble remembering when he'd last seen his neighbors in the past week even! He nodded at the woman's words and then looked at the man too.
"Did they catch them?"
The man shook his head, whilst the woman squeezed her forehead. A buble of stress evaporates off of Mumbo's shoulders, letting them relax if only by a little. There were tears and sobs and there were other people collapsing in the street. A sad sight for a sad day. Mumbo couldn''t begin to fathom where the kids had gone if they'd escaped. Tubbo had mentioned that they were heading to a safe space, somewhere in the city but he hadn't disclosed where such a place could be.
The first ambulance left, speeding down the road. The stretcher was being loaded into the second one with a pair of paramedics trailing it.
"Thank you." he said to the couple, bowing his head a little before withdrawing himself from their company. He had to find the kids; he had to find Tommy and keep his promise to Grian, who was flying somewhere or had been captured alongside the rest of his avian family. He was gone for the forseeable future regardless.
Walking to his house, Mumbo only reached for his bicycle, his wallet and his phone. He would find them even if it'd take him days to track them down. As he pulled his bike on the road, he swiped through the contacts of his phone. A little help would be nice, though he hoped that he wouldn't asking much in the apocalypse that was happening.
The phone rang once, twice... it went on for a long time until it went to voicemail.
Hello! This is Ren-diggity-dog! I'm not home right now but I can take a message!
The beep blared into Mumbo's ear and he stopped in his tracks. Ren wasn't responding and the earth below his feet was threatening to swallow him whole. This isn't good. He was alone in his mission and he was losing friends by the minute.
Mounting his bike, he took a deep breath. Determination flooded his mind as he set his goal: he had to find Tommy and fast.