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The forest is a dense maze around them.
Even as a boy, John could hardly remember spending much time within the thick confines of the trees, the amount of children lost and never found again was enough for the adults in town to tell him that the woods were strictly off-limits. The events of tonight only serve to hammer in the fact that he should have listened.
The girl is following close behind him, never quiet from the constant motion of sounds from the chains that hung from her back. When they clang together too roughly he can’t hold back a flinch, stumbling and struggling to catch himself before he lands on the ground in a heap. He can still hear the noise they made, held up in the air with a persistent ringing that lingered in his ears even after they had fallen limp. It brings back memories of Penny, left in a heap where she was split in two. There is thinly veiled nausea that roils in his stomach, but he ignores it in favour of constant movement.
The cauterised wound on his leg continues to throb a steady rhythm, he can feel the fabric of his pant-leg has been crusted to his skin, but at this point of the night, he knows that whatever fate that rests behind him is worse than whatever greets them outside the woods. So he keeps moving.
The moon above them is a barely there nightlight, he would be using his flashlight to navigate more efficiently, but after he smacked the girl behind him, it has refused to work. The heavy shadows cast by the conifer trees surrounding them dance with the gently swaying leaves, and he thinks the sight would have been quite beautiful, if their situation were any different. Time has started to meld together, each step following the other in pure muscle memory. He thinks he could have spent days like this, although realistically, he knows it can’t have been more than a few hours.
The silence and the stench of blood is beginning to get to him, dark spots dancing in the peripheral of his vision. His attempts to stave them off by rapidly blinking do nothing but make him dizzy, and his pace begins to slow in spite of himself. Along with the general nausea, he can also feel hunger pangs that make his mind flit to the granola bar he had haphazardly stuffed in his bag. Whatever supplies he brought with him to the ghost town was clearly not enough, a backpack stuffed with a flashlight, an extra sweater in case he got cold, and a singular granola bar. He knows he has water stashed in his car, but whether or not he’ll see it again is another question.
He wants to stop, their pace has been relentless so far, even if John doesn’t exactly know where he is, or where they’re going. Making their way past countless growth and tangled branches have left John’s hands scratched, but the pain from the thin cuts is a welcome distraction from the angry wound on his leg.
He can’t even hear any breathing from the girl behind him, only the soft clink of chains that have faded into the background noise of the woods. A part of him wonders if she’s some sort of stress-induced hallucination, haunting him like a vengeful ghost for everything that's happened tonight. His vision blurs further as his shoe snags on a stray root and sends him plummeting to the floor, eyes shut tight in a grimace. The girl doesn’t stop until one of her chains drags over a knocked-askew limb. He is still trying to catch his breath.
“Are you dead?” Her voice comes from above him, and when he is finally able to maneuver himself onto his back, he is greeted with the familiar sight of jet black eyes and hair, bracketing the cloudy sky overhead.
"Not yet." He slurs, closing his eyes shut to blur out the spots dancing across his vision. "Jus'... gimme a second...."
She kicks him in the stomach, leaving him gagging and lurching upwards.
"What was that for?!"
" Keep moving. " It is not a request, but a demand. John’s only response is an upset groan, clutching his stomach in a desperate attempt to stave off further nausea.
Not a hallucination, then, John thinks as he forces himself to his feet, catching himself before he falls again. The black smudges in his vision have hardly faded, and when he looks ahead for too long the surroundings begin to warp.
He makes it five feet before he is on the floor again, his head roughly hitting against the ground with an audible thump, and he is out within seconds.
-
He comes to in the same position he was left in, cheek smushed against the ground, smearing his face and body with even more dirt and grime. Whatever hazy dreams he had experienced were plagued by barely-there memories, altered variations of the past couple hours where the only thing that remained the same were the deaths of his friends, leaving him alone with blood coating his hands.
His head pulses with every breath he takes, and he prays to whoever is listening that he’s not concussed at a time like this. The solid weight of a chain is resting on his uninjured leg, something that certainly wasn’t there when he went down. Although, the minute he begins to stir it retracts itself and back towards the girl, who has joined him on the floor at this point. He sits up to face her, groggy and in pain.
"You... waited for me to wake up?"
"For now, I am blind. You’re my guide." She pauses for a moment, before continuing, "and you wouldn't wake up when I kicked you again."
"Right..." He trails off, taking a deep breath and pointedly ignoring eye contact with her. If the monster even was a her in the first place.
She’s staring in his general direction, eyes vacant and unblinking. Her blind gaze misses him almost completely, making direct contact with one of his coat sleeves instead. He chooses not to comment on it.
"Can you get up now?" She sounds annoyed , and John feels even more agitated. He doesn't bother with a reply, tearing open his bag with shaky hands to finally get at that granola bar he’s been thinking about.
"What's that noise?" She finally says when he doesn't reply to her original question, the sound of the wrapper drawing her attention. He has half of the thing stuffed in his mouth already, dry and stale but food nonetheless.
"Granola bar?" He speaks around another bite. The uneasiness in his stomach quells slightly, and it almost feels like a blessing. The girl doesn't answer, her face pinched in something like confusion. "It's food." He elaborates.
"I knew that."
"Sure." He finishes and stuffs the wrapper in his bag, taking a moment to breathe and let the miniscule amount of food settle in his stomach. He shoots another glance towards the sky, searching for the moon, but the heavy fog and clouds give him an unclear picture of what time it really is.
"So.. you didn't kill me in my sleep."
"You are my guide . Our survival hinges on each other." She reminds him, but all he does is shoot her a glare.
" Yours, maybe. I'm just a normal person."
"They don't think that if they see me with you. You'll be killed."
He pauses to wonder who they are that the girl talks so viciously about, but decides interrogating her at a time like this wouldn’t be wise. He lifts himself to his feet, and thinks of hour-long showers and hot food, and prays the girl has a merciful streak when they eventually breach the treeline, whenever that will be.
He turns towards the girl, adjusting the backpack straps on his shoulder.
"Let's keep going,"
-
The trees thicken the farther they trek, and it leaves him worried he is heading farther into the unknown and not the opposite, turning around this far in would be foolish, and they risk the chance of getting even more lost, and so John continues to stick with his gut and keep moving. The forest is teeming with wildlife, there is always some kind of bird or small animal within eyeshot, and it would almost be a delight if the girl besides him didn’t scare everything off the minute it looked at her. The clearings they pass are a blessing to John's hands, which have been stained and bloodied from roughly moving growth away from their path. No matter how many times he wipes his hands on his (similarly stained and ruined) pants, they remain red.
At a certain point it begins to rain, a gentle pitter-patter that fills the undisturbed forest with a soft ambience. Droplets make their way through the thick expanse of foliage above them, soaking the ground beneath. The soft rain quickly turned into something more of a downpour, coming down much more heavily. The girl stops dead in her tracks, and when John turns around to face her, she is simply looking up between the cracks in the leaves in awe. Raindrops slide their way down her face, and after a moment one of her hands comes up to gingerly wipe her cheek, bringing it closer to inspect it. Whether or not she can actually see anything is beyond him.
"What-?" She is cut off when a particularly large droplet of water that had gathered on one of the leaves above her splashes her on the head. "What is the... wetness?" She wipes her face with her hand again, but all it does is smudge the rainwater further across her nose and cheek.
He almost can't believe what he's hearing, but the girl continues to marvel at the raindrops that make her way down her face. John watches her cup her hands together to gather as much water she can, letting the excess slip through the cracks in her fingers.
"Its rain," is all he can come up with, and the girl nods once, gaze flitting towards the gathered water in her hands before letting them drop, splashing it onto the floor.
"So this is what rain feels like," she breathes, and she almost seems wistful. The deep rumble of thunder sounds from somewhere above them, and before the girl can ask her question, John already has her answer.
"That one's thunder. It's harmless." She nods again, squinting past the covering above her, although with how dark her eyes are, John doubts her vision has fully returned, if at all. She takes another step forward, and John follows suit.
-
When the rain lets up, the girl seems almost disappointed in its absence. It doesn’t show on her face, the only emotions that seem to cross it are ones ranging from mild annoyance to anger, but he can see it when she reaches up to her face again and her hand comes back dry. Neither of them say anything once the weather starts to clear. The rain is a welcome distraction while it lasts, the cooling shower washing away the dirt of the past few hours. The scratches on his fingers continue to ache, but at least they are cleaner.
Mercifully, the dense trees that surround them begin to narrow out with the receding weather, leaving for a much easier passage through the woods. The sky has cleared up significantly, with morning gradually creeping overhead, staining the edges of the horizon an orange that brings with it a facsimile of warmth.
The comfort the rising sun brings is short lived, as the sounds of clamouring voices and barking interrupts the gentle silence, causing him to come to a stop, the girl almost stumbling into him at his abrupt movement.
“Why did you stop?” He momentarily glances at her, before his attention is shifted forward as far as he can see.
“I can hear something,” he replies, “people, I think. Are they out looking for you?”
"It’s fine. I will dispatch anyone who tries to get in our way.”
" Dispatch? " He sputters, mind immediately flashing back towards Penny. "That's not, that's not necessary at all! We can just avoid them, can't we?"
"Neither of us are dying until we make it out of the woods," she hisses, a tinge of vitriol laced in her words. She takes an unsteady step forwards, swaying slightly before she catches herself on the tree she's leaned against. "I won't die until I can see again."
She stalks forwards, and John feels one of the chains slide over his shoe before it rises off the ground with a kind of heat that is sickeningly familiar now. The ringing sound that follows is now, too. She moves further before he has a chance to say anything else, stepping into a small clearing that is encircled by a ring of trees, as if she wants to be seen.
He hears them before he sees them. The sounds approach faster and become louder all the same, echoing around the trees. Two dogs make their way out through the brush, snarling somehow louder at the sight of the girl. They don’t approach or attack the girl, even as she continues to stalk forwards.
John has hid himself against the body of one of the thicker trees, head craned forwards in something like apprehension. The air is thick with tension, although if the girl can feel any of it, she hardly shows it in her actions. She stands clear in the middle of the clearing, chains poised in the air with an alertness that reminds him of a snake, coiled and ready to strike. He can see the warping of heat around her from however she controls them, blurring the air.
The silence grew for what couldn’t have been more than four or five seconds, before what looked to be soldiers burst their way through the thicket. Only two of them for now, but John can hear more approaching. They’re sporting the same uniform he had spotted while hiding with Penny, expensive and sleek in their design. John barely gets a clear glimpse of them before the carnage begins.
Her chains extend, whipping through the air and impaling one of the men before John has a chance to register her actions. She goes for their arms, slicing them out of their sockets and leaving their guns to clatter to the floor, unused in the face of the girls' efficiency. Their heads go next, rolling onto the ground, followed by their armless bodies, collapsed in a heap. She is ruthless, her actions play out in seconds, and it almost looks practised. A deep scarlet begins to dye the soil beneath. One of the dogs turned tail and ran, and the girl let them go. The other one follows its retreat.
More men push their way into the clearing, this time entering with a shower of bullets that send John ducking behind the tree for further cover. Overhead, a cacophony of birds erupt into the air in a flurry of wings, no doubt startled by the sudden explosion of noise.
Despite the amount of rounds fired, none of them seemed to make contact with the girl, whose form remains undisturbed in the early morning air. Their onslaught was ruthless, and she was an unmoving target . She remains spotless despite it all, the only blood coating her figure are the brief splatters that land on herfrom the men she had downed previously, coating the chains in a deep red. More men collapse to the ground, and this time without the girl having to lift a finger.
More rounds are fired from the few remaining, and finally John gets a glimpse of what's really happening.
The shots never make contact with her.
They’re sent ricocheting back away like she has some sort of forcefield around her, fired back into the skulls of the men that fired them, and all John can think is how?
When the sounds of violence stop, the girl stands amidst it all as the centrepiece, a vortex of black among the red of the ground and the deep green that surrounds them. Her back is turned, the chains continue to twist in the air. One of them whips towards a body on the floor, cleaving and cutting too quickly for John’s eyes to track fully. Like this, it seems like she’s slicing meat. The men who died by a bullet have each of their limbs amputated clean off, another spear sent deep into their chest like she was making sure they were really gone. Eventually, the clearing is awash in limbless bodies, a grotesque painting of red that spills as far as the eye can see. Each of the corpses are scattered around like mistreated dolls, and through it all the girl is silent. Now, without the constant noise of wildlife, all he can hear is the crunch of bone, and the persistent sound of chains.
Once she has accomplished her task, she swivels back around to look at him, face showing no emotion other than something akin to boredness. In one of her hands she holds a radio, stained with blood, but with an outpouring of sound nonetheless.
“Team C, do you hear me?!” He can feel the venom dripping from the speaker's voice, an anger that is palpable despite the harsh static. The speaker is feminine, but that is all he can make out from the tinny signal. “Team C come in , damn it!”
Her fist encloses around it, smashing it into pieces before letting the fragments clatter to the floor, lost in a sea of blood.
The fear from their first encounter returns tenfold.
“What was that?!” His scream of shock rips its way out of his throat, raw and impulsive, but the girl hardly flinches. She makes her way back over to him, tilting her head to and fro as blood from her face and chains begin to evaporate into the air in strings of steam.
"They would have killed you," she states plainly, shaking her head slightly as the last of the blood is removed, leaving no trace that it was there in the first place. "We can keep going now. There are no more obstacles." He wants to grab her shoulders and shake her around roughly, but he knows this choice would result in his own blood joining the onslaught that coats the ground. All he can smell is iron.
"How did you do that?" He sounds breathless, a constricting feeling forming in his chest. "Move... move all those bullets away from you, how did you do that?"
Her head tilts to her shoulder, eyes downcast towards floor, but John can still see them glaze over with something he can't place. Her mouth opens in a sharp inhale,
"Its main function is bullet redirection,"
John takes a step away from her, but the girl makes no move to follow him. She continues to speak, mumbled sentences that his fried brain can't begin to parse.
"Reroute, direct back at the source." A sound almost like a gasp tears its way out of her throat, frayed and raw as her words grew louder and louder, "commence Scatter Protocol, redirect don't deflect-"
"Hey!" He roughly cut her off, although that did nothing to stop her rambling.
"Redirect, re... don't reflect, avoid damages to the cardiovascular system,"
"Hey, hey!" Touching her seemed out of the question, especially in whatever state she had been placed in. She looks back up at him after a second further, the haze in her eyes receding. He can’t allow himself to feel relief, but it's something similar.
"Are you there?" It's asked in a rush, but the girl in front of him just nods slowly, letting him breathe out again. The constricting feeling ebbs slowly, but the panic remains.
"Bullet redirection. I have been trained to redirect upwards of eight hundred and forty-eight bullets per second."
"That's insane!" This, whatever this is, is far beyond him in a way he doesn't think he will ever truly grasp. “How do you even manage… I don’t….”
"I used to not be good at it." She states, but makes no move to continue further, letting whatever revelations John has made linger in the air. She looks at him expectantly, and John knows what she is waiting for.
He avoids the clearing and doesn't pause to look at it, lingering here would do neither of them any good, but he begins heading farther into the woods, the same direction the team of soldiers came. The woods are quiet around them, and he prays they don’t encounter anyone else.
-
His feet hurt, and he thinks the adrenaline might have finally worn off.
The woods are endless, no matter how far they walk they stretch infinitely in front of him, and he starts to wonder further if he really was leading them farther in. The thought is a hopeless one, but it lingers in his mind like static.
It has been about an hour since their encounter with the soldiers, and neither of them have made any sound. John’s subconscious has dug itself deeper and deeper into regret, every blink brings forth memories and brief flashes of dark reds, bodies mangled and twisted in a way he never knew was possible. A part of him hopes this is an elaborate nightmare, but he is aware enough to know that at this point this cannot be true. He eventually lets out a defeated sigh, leaning against a nearby tree to tell the girl he needed a small break, but she beats him to the punch.
“We're not getting any closer, are we?” It's not a question.
“Did you lead me deeper into the forest?” She almost snarls, an intense show of emotion from the otherwise cold neutrality she had displayed before, and cold dread sinks into his chest, doubly so when the chains begin to rattle.
“Um-” He spits out dumbly, but much to his surprise, they don’t lash out and impale him onto the nearest tree. Instead, their movement stops abruptly once she drops her head into her hands, falling onto the forest floor with a frustrated scream that sends several birds fleeing. John makes no move to get close to her.
“I don’t want to die here. ” Her voice is muffled, her head bowed with hands pressed roughly into her face.
“You’re not gonna die here,” he struggles somewhat with words, the tension is palpable and John feels mildly uncomfortable with the amount of distress the otherwise neutral girl has been showing. He has to remind himself that she is a murderer , and looking to be in the briefest amounts of pain has done nothing to abate this fact.
“Um,” he says again, head spinning as he tries to get a grasp on the situation. Her fingernails press into her forehead, clawing into her forehead hard enough blood begins to bead, although the wounds are stitched together the second they appear.
“If this was your plan, then you win. I’ll stay here until I’m found, then I’ll finally be terminated.” The use of the word terminated irks him in a way he can't place.
He almost wants to shout at her. Hours prior he watched her rip people in half and being lost in the woods is what does her in? The thought of comforting the girl makes him feel sick, the visages of harsh bleeding and limbless bodies haven’t left his mind, but he doesn’t exactly want to leave either. He slides to the ground, and waits with his eyes closed.
Until finally, finally,
"....Are you still there?" It's spoken softly, and again John can hear the faint rasp in her throat. His eyes blink open from his light daze, and his pupils flick to her form huddled in the grass. She is no longer folded into herself, simply kneeling on the floor and looking around with wild, blind eyes.
"Yes." He replies, leaning his head back against the tree he's resting on. He has one hand sifting through his empty backpack, cursing himself for barely packing anything. He squints up at the canopy of leaves above them, the orange hue from the sun filling out the sky more thoroughly, painting the ground in speckles and shadows of foliage.
"Why?"
"You seemed..." He searches for the word, "upset."
"Upset." She repeats, and this time he can definitely see her form relax further. She looks like she's grappling with something, but John won't pry, even if those chains are limp. The silence lingers for a moment further.
"You should leave now."
" What? Did you suddenly gain a heart? What was all that about killing me, hours ago? And you did kill people," his words are cold, but the exhaustion is draining , and he can't afford to keep playing nice with her, even if she is acting like a kicked puppy.
"And I am not sorry," she hisses, bristling towards him. "Those people have done far, far worse. I was being nice by ending it quickly."
" Nice ," he scoffs, although regrets his decision the minute the chains twitch, but they don't move any further.
"There is nothing left for me anymore," her face of anger ebbs away, replaced with a cold neutrality that is painfully familiar at this point. "Tonight, I will die by their hands. You can still run while you can."
"Why are you so certain you'll die? You're acting like I have any idea on what the hell is going on," his hands clench from where they're resting, and once again John grasps the true extent of just how far out of his depth he is, sitting on the forest floor with a monster in the shape of a girl. It almost doesn't feel real. He hopes it isn’t real.
Her chin drops, and somehow, her eyes have found his, boring into his own.
"Why were you outside the facility if you didn't know it was there?"
"The... facility? Is that what the ghost town was hiding?" He raises a hand to drag its way through his sweaty hair, gripping it in rapidly rising stress. "Its- apparently a hotspot for paranormal activity we wanted to.. check it out. Before.. Pen-... before we had to leave for the summer. It was, Penny didn't want to go but she's the only one with the camera so, so," his words spill out faster than he has a chance to reel them out, the guilt that had been resting at the base of his throat crawling out like bile. "We went anyway." He finally breathes out, willing his racing heart to stop.
"Its..." he takes a deep breath, "what are you?"
"I'm not human, if that's what you were wondering. I don't know if I ever was."
"Did they... put those chains in you? I mean th-the facility."
"I don't remember. They've always been there." She hesitates for a moment, "it wouldn't have been the worst thing they did, if that was the case."
John takes a moment to let her words sink in, turning them over in his head. The words bullet redirection rings hollow in his mind. He wonders what would have happened to her if he had taken Penny's side and left when he could, but the idea leaves a sour taste in his mouth. Hypotheticals wouldn't get him very far.
"Do you.. have a name?"
"I don't have one." He sighs inwardly. That was hardly anything to work with.
"What about 12, then? It's printed on your shirt," he leans back on his hands, taking stock of her appearance again. Ghastly and pale, even in the dim lighting her skin almost seemed white, porcelain-like in its quality, if not for the myriad of scars he could see on every inch of skin. The staples keeping her eyelids in place stuck out from her otherwise pale face.
The girl's entire disposition shifts the minute he says those words. Her frame stiffens into that of a statue, and the far-off look from before returns to her face.
"Not 12. Never 12." She firmly states, and their conversation lags before she speaks up again,
"Wh..what is...your name?" It is hesitant, posed in a way that makes it seem like she's waiting for him to snap at her.
"John Matthews," he replies easily enough, huffing out another breath that might pass as a laugh as she noticeably brightens. It seemed like she had never had a proper conversation before, and maybe she hadn’t.
Her almost smiling face turns into one of displeasure almost immediately, and John feels a little insulted.
"Matthews," she mumbles, one of her hands digging itself into the soft grass below. "I know that name."
"I mean... it’s Matthews ," he points out, "names that are common are always gonna sound familiar."
"Yes, I suppose." She looks taken-aback briefly, although her neutral expression returns as quickly as it left.
"Are you.." he chews on his bottom lip, turning the words in his head. "Okay now? Do you want to keep going?"
"Yes." She answers again, before pausing for a moment.
"I won't kill you, after you lead me out of the woods," she says, like she has finally made up her mind. "But I won't last the next few days. Someone will find me, and this brief freedom will be over." She looks more alive than before, something almost like acceptance reflected in her position. Or maybe it's more like defeat.
"But it was... nice. Talking to you," something like colour returns to her cheeks, and now, faintly, he sees the barest hints of a smile. "You're different from anyone I've ever talked to before."
"Oh." He blinks, watching her smile linger for a few moments longer.
"Hey." He feels brave in this moment, despite the barely-there panic that has been lodged in the back of his throat for however long he's been in these trees.
"We don't... we don't both have to die tonight, you know?"
She looks up at him, as though waiting for him to continue, and John bites his tongue, searching for the right words.
"You said that... that the facility is going to find you no matter what," he inhales sharply, "and.. I doubt they're going to let me go. Not after all this." Her eyes search his, her pupils are less blown out than they were before, and like this he can see more and more green. John wonders if she can make out his expression at all.
"What are you suggesting?"
"We can just leave. Together, I mean, I have a car and we can just go. There's nothing left in this place for me, either," he wonders if this is something his friends would have wanted, but his mind is already made up.
The past day has been a horrific play of tragedies, but he would not let the next one end like it, too. She hasn't answered yet, but he still stumbles to his feet.
"Here," he steps forward, albeit hesitantly over one of the lax chains. He extends one of his hands out to her. She continues to look in his general direction blankly.
"Oh I'm.. offering one of my hands to you. If you want it." Her eyes narrow, and up close he can see the splashes of green again, so dark they blend into her blown out pupils.
"I know," she frowns, "I can see shapes now. I don't want your hand."
"You're supposed to grab it, I'm going to help you up."
"Oh." Hesitantly, one of her hands comes up to rest in his own. It's rough, although he can't feel any callouses, only scars that race their way across her fingers and palm, some deeper than others. He hefts her up, compensating for the extra weight the chains bring. She stumbles, her hand in his own squeezing as their shoulders brush before she straightens out. The girl releases his hand and steps away like she had been burned.
Once she is on her own two feet she pauses, gaze going far-off for the briefest of moments, before she reaches towards the staples holding her eyelids in place, and wrenches them out before he has a chance to do or say anything about it. A strangled noise of shock makes its way out of his throat, but the girl just continues to stare at the pieces of metal cupped in her palms, bloodied and red. She looks strangely victorious when she drops them to the forest floor. She turns to him, a lightness in her stance that wasn't there before,
"Lead the way, then."