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Chapter 29 - Inferno is the Man
🕑 Added 2023-08-22 21:28:13 +0000 UTCChapter 29
Inferno is the Man
It stalked.
The sobering reality was one of death, the finality of the inevitable. It cradled the three lost in the darkness and it swallowed them whole. There was no sound, no scream, no wail of pain and agony, a hail of pleas, there was nothing but the burning silence that tore deep into the night. Its hunger satiated, its body began bending and tearing unnaturally, and it hung to the side like a flat panel, blending into the concrete wall perfectly. Nearby neon lights could not reach it, and darkness held strong and steady. It slept but would awaken soon, hungry and in want.
**
Ronald looked around the stacked shelves curiously. Breaking into one of the shops was fairly easy–he tore through the vent system that led to the rooftop, finding his way into the shop rather easily. The cameras around the place were blind to his escapades, and the ones inside slept in silence. Nonetheless, he’d still put on a ski mask just as a precaution.
Navigating the shelves, he started cleaning them up–honey, nuts, grains, pasta, dry veggies, and anything with a remotely longer shelf life was tossed into the inventory. One 'feature' of the Inventory that was never explained was that just as an item large enough could take up two slots, items that were small enough could be stacked into one slot. Really, 'slot' was simply a term that coincided with a three-dimensional box of a specific size and volume. And the Inventory had 16 of them that could be filled up.
Slashing through four shelves of things, Ronald’s inventory grew thinner by two slots. He’d taken a decent amount and most else were the things they didn’t need–or, at least, didn’t need immediately. However, he did also take a few cleaning supplies even if they didn’t have a washing machine and washed their clothes manually. In the future, Ronald had promised himself he'd build one if need be as it was too exhausting, even for an Awakened like him, to wash clothes by hand.
He carefully left the store through the rooftop and bounded for another, where he managed to fill out yet another Inventory slot by chugging tea and coffee into it. Though both hinged on the availability of freshwater, Ronald trusted that Tara would find a purifier.
A couple of hours before dawn, he was done; there were 12 filled-up Inventory slots full of supplies, quite a bit more than he thought he’d be able to store. In fact, he even stalked some hardware stores and took some basic tools that they were missing in the lodge, namely a shovel.
Per their agreement, he went to the food court as soon as it opened up, streaming through with the rest of the excitable crowd. Though he'd barely slept in days, clocking in some four-five hours in the last four, he wasn't particularly tired. He knew there was a limit–Ethan informed them as much–but what worried him more than being sleepy was that his stats had started lowering due to the extent of the distance between Ethan and him as well as the length of the separation. Now, they were on the clock–they couldn't simply stay in the city as their Stats would all become a big fat 0 in four days.
Ronald arrived first and got the most basic and somewhat boring breakfast, seating himself in the same corner as yesterday, lazily nibbling away at the food and drinking the juice. Tara arrived about fifteen minutes later, and she wasn’t alone. Ronald frowned for a moment; he knew who the girl next to Tara was–Ysolde, a girl he shared a class with a year ago. If Tara’s plan was for Ysolde to replace her, it would be extremely difficult considering that Ysolde was black.
“Hey,” he greeted Tara as she and Ysolde sat down, breakfast in tow.
“Hey,” Tara said. “Jenine is missing.”
“... what?”
“That day we left,” Tara whispered softly. “She disappeared on her way home. She was never found.”
“Okay,” Ronald nodded, still wondering what Ysolde had to do with all of this.
“You’re gonna burn a hole through me, staring so much,” the woman said as Ronald smiled apologetically. “I just mentioned to my homegirl here that I might know where Jen is.”
“Remember Greg, Jarret, Lydon and the gang?” Tara asked as the faces of the mentioned sprung to Ronald’s mind.
“Sure.”
“Rumour is that Greg got drunk one night and started hollering about his basement wives.”
“... that’s fucked.”
“It’s true,” Ysolde said firmly.
“Did you go to the cops? The military?”
“I did. Many of us did.”
“And?”
“Nothing,” Ysolde said. “In no uncertain terms, we were told to stop harassing the boys who did nothing wrong.”
“...”
“I don’t believe her either,” Tara said, prompting Ysolde to shrug her shoulders, taking a bite of the somewhat soft apple that was given in addition to the oatmeal. “But I figured we should check it out.”
“... this is a bad idea Tara,” Ronald said, eyeing her. It wasn’t that he worried Ysolde was lying and trying to lure them into some human-trafficking operation. Ethan had specified to Tara that she wasn’t to save anyone–it was the mission of going in, grabbing as much as possible, and getting out without raising any alarms. And if they went pursuing this trail… they will raise alarms.
“We’ll just check it out,” she reassured him. “If Jenine isn’t there, we’ll just book it.”
Ronald sighed in resignation. This was all just a bit too perfect. They were definitely walking into some sort of a trap, and Tara was more than smart enough to have figured it out as well. And yet, she insisted. It was dangerous–just because they were super-charged in terms of their strength didn’t mean that they were invincible. They could still be shot or drugged or beheaded–Ethan never suggested otherwise, nor did the two tempt fate by testing any of the above.
In the end, Ronald shrugged and agreed. The two agreed with Ysolde to meet up at around two past midnight just outside the food court, south of the massive plaza, and she would guide them to the apartment building where Greg and his supposed ‘basement wives’ were residing alongside the rest of the gang.
“So, care to explain?” Ronald asked as soon as the two of them were alone, having slithered into a nearby alleyway, blind to the cameras.
“Explain what? How I’m pretending to have an IQ lower than room temperature?”
“Yeah, among other things.”
“On my routine-setting walk, as you suggested, I went back to the uni,” she said. “As you can imagine, it wasn’t exactly ripe with life. But, while standing there, Ysolde just walked up to me and started chatting.”
“Aham.”
“So, I asked her whether she knew where Jenine was. She spun some story or another, can’t remember, but in the end waxed on about how she heard Jenine and a lot of girls got taken.”
“... she really took you for a moron, huh?”
“I played up to it,” Tara shrugged. “Anyway, that’s when I told her that I’d have to check it out with you.”
“Ethan warned you, Tara.”
"I'm not gonna take them back to the lodge," Tara defended herself. "Honestly, if there wasn't a sliver of a chance that Jenine might genuinely be there, I'd have reported this shit to Jane and let her deal with it."
“Did you at least get any of the supplies?”
“Yeah. And an unexpected gift.”
“Gift?”
“I found us another generator. Brand new.”
“... what? How?”
“It was in a military truck,” Tara shrugged. “Alongside a lot of other goodies. Like good mattresses, maybe a washing machine, and maybe a couple of heaters.”
“... goddamn.”
“Right? Don’t you think my treasure hunting gives me just a tiny bit of room to do what I want for a little while?”
“... our stats will be down by 40% tomorrow, Tara,” Ronald said. “We have to book it.”
“Yeah, I know,” she nodded. “And we will. As soon as I see what’s what tonight.”
“Well, you do love seeing things, it seems…”
The day passed rather slowly as neither had much to do, so they mostly just walked the familiar sights of the city, talking about their favourite shops, restaurants, and places that they used to hang out at. Even with that, however, they eventually snuck back into Tara's apartment and took a short nap, waking up just past midnight, and slowly heading toward the agreed-upon meetup place.
It was a dark corner, bereft of cameras or patrols, tucked at the back of some uninhabited apartment buildings and commercial shops with broken windows, clearly the victims of post-Descent looting. Ysolde stood in the dark, checking her phone, and Ronald and Tara both easily recognised some ten people hiding nearby. There were four hidden just past Ysolde, waiting at the other side of the corner, with two situated in the abandoned apartment above her where the window was hung open, and the remaining four scattered in the other bits and holes nearby. Tara couldn't guess the game plan, and more so the absolute courage (or stupidity) of them to do this in a city that's technically under Martial Law.
Ronald went rogue, stepping to the side and climbing the building with the intent of following whoever ends up escaping. They'd already concluded that nobody had a gun and that they either had simple pipes or knives as weapons.
Tara cracked her neck lightly and stepped forward, past the immediate corner, and started heading toward Ysolde who noticed her immediately, waving and putting her phone away. It was one thing for unfeeling, alien monsters to threaten the world and wholly another for soulless, homegrown monsters to exploit the situation for selfish gains. Righteous and a hypocrite, her steps were calm and even, though her heart was raging.
