The house seemed empty as they climbed from the basement. Steeped in silence and tension many would have been fooled into thinking it was vacant. Charlotte however, could sense those hiding beneath the darkness and the quiet. They were waiting for an ambush or a battle. They hoped to ensnare them or just hoped to catch them unawares, but it was a foolish thought.
Charlotte could sense the enemy around the corner and Wallace nodded in a manner that confirmed her thoughts.
"They know we're here," she whispered. "They aren't planning any clever tricks. They just want a bloodbath".
"Let's give it to them then," Ian hissed excitedly. Charlotte took a steady breath and readjusted the gun in her hand. Her alteration was roaming, searching for James, for Ethan, for Cary or Annakiya. She ignored those waiting inside and instead hoped to find a way to locate her missing friends or at least the traitor among them. It didn't matter about sneaking around the corner. The enemy knew they were here and unless she got them out of the way she knew she would never reach James or The Mimic. It was with a wave of nausea that she remembered this was about more than just James. There was another villain, a villain who had started all this and she had to destroy him too.
With a sudden jerk, Ian catapulted himself and Charlotte around the corner, the others moving as fast as possible behind them. Charlotte ignored the wooziness that threatened to overwhelm her at the movement and held her gun aloft. She scanned the room for James, fearing she had missed him, seeing as she was not entirely sure of the person she was looking for anymore. She only found strangers. To her surprise there was no sudden rush of movement in the room at their arrival. Instead the enemy seemed hardly willing to notice the five young intruders at all.
The hall's blood red walls swam in flickering candlelight. Shadows and enemies stalked among the candelabras, about the piano and the oversized vases. They were waiting for them. For her. That much she could tell and, for a moment, this allowed her anger to dissipate and be replaced with cold, calculated excitement. With bloodlust.
Her alteration flickered and soared as she lifted her gun, ready for an attack. The others moved too, each rushing forward ready to engage in battle. One of the shadows turned towards her and stepped into the dancing light. A hideous, menacing smile stretched too far across his pasty, pale face. Pointed teeth, stained red, glistened in the candlelight. Despite the disquiet caused by his grin, Charlotte smiled and lifted her gun, ready to sink a bullet into his flesh.
Yet just as her finger inched to the trigger, he too moved towards his own attack. His torso twisted sharply and began to rise higher in the air. His legs changed and lost their form only to become twisting, writhing tentacles that slithered across the floor towards her.
Charlotte's stomach clenched in disgust as they moved came at her. With an unsteady fright, she stumbled backwards as one snaked around her ankle. It dragged at her, pulling her of balance and ripping her feet from under her. She twisted as she fell, catching the impact on her side. The gun snapped from her fingers as the wind was knocked from her lungs. With all her strength she fought to reach the gun, but the altered soldier's grip was unrelenting and he began to drag her back towards him. She clawed at the ground and tried to halt her progress.
Desperate for help she glanced around. She could see the others, her friends and enemies, engaging with others in the shadows and twisted candlelight. They couldn't help her. They were caught in their own battles, unaware of her plight.
The tentacles continued to wind up her legs. They pinched around her knees and thighs. Throbbing and covered in a slimy ooze, her legs were constricted and of little use to her. The writhing, black limbs entwined around her waist and dragged her closer and closer to her attacker. She grasped and tugged at these binds in an effort to loosen his grip on her. She pinched and clawed, but her efforts seemed to only cement his strength.
The tentacles slipped up her skin, entwining her torso and constricting her chest. They slid up her throat and pushed against her lips, trying to find a way into her mouth, to choke her. She clamped her lips down and tried to pushed the panic from her mind. Her alteration was lashing out blindly, her panic enough to make it incoherent, incontrollable and ineffective. She whimpered trying to twist her body away from her attacker, but his grip was too tight. She inhaled through her nose and exhaled, focusing only on her alteration, her last and only means to defend herself.
Screams and bellows suddenly filled the air, a voice more animal than human. The tentacles twitched and shrank, loosening their grip on her. Charlotte gulped at the air, pushing and ripping at the slimy limbs until she was making some progress at freedom. Other sounds now began to reach her. An occasional gun shot. Yells and grunts. Cries of agony. Crunching, squelching, screaming all filled the air in a cacophony of destruction and pain, and yet she could only focus on her own release from the slimy grip.
Her alteration bared down on her attacker. Charlotte scrambled round, searching the ground for her gun, trying to kick the last tentacles from her ankles. She caught sight of the glinting metal beneath the large piano now punctuated with bullet holes. She stretched towards hit, but she was jerked back by a cloying, slimy limb. Charlotte lunged for the tentacle that had her in its grip, but before she reached it, it suddenly released her and shrunk back, reforming itself into the solid, human legs of a man and her attacker crumpled to the floor. Charlotte swallowed and tried to make sense of her sudden luck, of her sudden victory. Her alteration returned unsated and irritated.
Charlotte glanced up to see Harris standing over her attacker, an empty syringe gripped in his hand. She frowned at him. Her breath was ragged and she gulped at the air ferociously, her fingers trembling.
"Alteration suppressor," Harris mumbled, running towards her and dragging her to her feet. "I might have stolen a few less than herbal remedies from Kingston before we left".
"Good thinking," she whispered, but she didn't have time to contemplate what other surprises Harris had concealed in his satchel. Instead she pushed away from him as the next attacker descended upon her. She didn't wait to see what alterations lay within the attacker's grasp and before she could decipher anything more about him or her, the attacker was lying in a ball on the floor, sudden cries fading to pathetic whimpers as Charlotte furious alteration crashed down upon its fear. An intense happiness and glee filled her alteration as he finally was allowed some spoils of the battle, but the glee was half-lived. A sudden, sharp gun shot rang through the air.
She turned as Matt fell, his broad form folded in on itself as he stumbled back against the wall and slid to the ground, a thin but dark streak of blood left behind on the already red wallpaper. Wallace rushed forward towards Matt's assailant, catching the gun in the attacker's hand and twisting it up towards his face. She pulled the trigger with determined strength. Blood sprayed from the attacker as he sank to the ground. Wallace ripped the gun and fired again at an advancing altered, before she sunk to Matt's side. She had no need to look to where attackers were advancing from, but taking them out each time none the less.
Charlotte stepped towards her fallen friend, but a familiar laugh in the dark caught her attention. She spun around, a glint of blonde hair on the landing above distracting her from Matt. She recognised the silhouette of James as he watched them, but nobody else seemed to notice. She gritted her teeth and in that moment caught the nearest altered with her alteration and, trying not to kill him out rightly, trapped all other altered soldiers attacking them beneath a projection. Her friends stumbled away from their own fights, stunned and uncertain to why they had stopped. As quickly as they saw that their enemies were unresponsive to their attack any longer, they took them out with vicious blows to the face or with quickly placed syringes to their upper arms. Charlotte felt them fall from her alteration and bore down on the person feeding the projection until he too was gone from her grip. Wallace yelled at Harris and Harris rushed to her side, busying himself with Matt.
Charlotte bolted for the stairs, but stumbled to a halt as the hulking form of Cary lumbered into view. He seemed no different than before, yet he didn't seem to recognise them or find the need to acknowledge them at all. In his arms he held Annakiya. Her eyes were closed and she looked like death if she was not already dead. Cary didn't look at any of them, but instead he strolled to the bannisters and, without a moment's hesitation, he threw Kiya over the railing into the empty space above. Her small frame twisted in the air, her limbs tangling in the descent. Charlotte heard Ian's yell and before Kiya's limp body had collided with the ground he had her cradled in his arms. Cary didn't seem to care whether she had hit the ground or not and turned from them, placing himself on top of the stairs, blocking any path to James. Charlotte frowned, but knew her task was to get to James. She knew he would lead her to The Mimic.
Ian, distracted by Kiya's unresponsiveness, and Harris and Wallace, too busy with Matt, left Charlotte alone, facing Cary. She had no idea what had come over him, what had made him so callous towards Kiya, his friend, as to discard her so readily, but one thing she did know is she couldn't care. There was no recognition of them in his cold eyes and he had placed himself between her and James.
Charlotte marched back to the piano, grasping blindly beneath it until she gripped the gun. Bodies littered the room, but she only saw the glinting blonde head behind Cary. She raised her gun, aiming past Cary to James, with an end to the job in sight. She didn't stop to think. She didn't allow herself to contemplate who she was about to attack and pulled the trigger. The bullet missed, thudding into the wall just above James' shadowed face.
"Why are you doing this?" she yelled.
"Why? Why not?" he laughed, his voice echoing around them. As it faded away silence engulfed them. She lifted the gun again, her finger tightening on the trigger, but a sudden disruption to the eerie quiet stilled her hand. Suddenly she could hear sirens and cars skidding on gravel. She could hear the rumble of helicopters overhead. The noise engulfed the house, surrounded them. Her mouth went dry. Time was running out.
James disbelieving laugh distracted her, pulling her away from the outside noises. "You called the government on us? But don't you know they think you're behind this," he growled. Charlotte wished she could see him more clearly, that she had a better shot at him. She wished she knew what he was talking about.
"But I'm not and once I hand you over to them, once I show them what you've done," she bluffed, surprised at how steady her voice sounded, "they will see we are innocent. They will see how we can help them and bring your brutality to an end".
"So pointless, Charlotte," he sighed. Really – I thought you were smarter than that. The strongest deserve power".
"They are innocent. Manipulated into believing your lies, but they are still innocent. They don't need to be involved in this. They don't need to get hurt". Charlotte moved towards the stairs, her heart pounding. She had to get to him, before the government forces outside got to her. She moved towards Cary. He was the last barrier between her and James, but he didn't flinch nor did he seem to care that she was approaching.
She took aim at James again and fired. The bullet ricocheted off the corner of the wall, showering plaster over the thick red carpet. James's silhouette laughed and Charlotte watched him withdraw further into the house. She launched forward not wanting to lose her chance. She sidestepped Cary who lunged for her at the last moment, his thick arms swinging. She dodged past him, keeping just out of his reach. On the floor behind him lay Ethan, pale and unresponsive, but she didn't have time to consider him. Beyond, she heard a door close and she darted after the sound, thinking only on inflicting pain on James.
She threw herself against the door, searching for him beyond it with her alteration. It was hungry, ravenous again, but she could not grasp his mind. She knew he had to be there. He had to be just beyond the walls somewhere, down one corridor or the next. She gave her mind completely to the alteration, while she tugged at the door hoping it would give way if she persisted enough. Desperation left her blind and only when Cary's thick vice-like fingers closed around her throat, did she release her alteration from its search and come thrashing back to the present. The blood pounded in her ears as she clawed at his fingers. She pulled and tugged, but her vision began to swim. Dizziness and pain swamped her as the blood supply was cut off from her brain. The view of the door before her began to swim. She kicked with her legs, trying to jerk away from Cary but her vision darkened. Blood hammered in her head. Pain and pressure spread up her neck and head. She was trapped. Her eyelids drifted shut as she slipped into black unconsciousness.
I really hope you enjoyed this chapter! Please let me know what you think! I hope it's living up to expectations! I'll have the next update as soon as I can! Please vote, comment and share! Sorcha x