Immersion World

by Max Jager

  "Well, he is helping us." George pointed out.

  "Helping get us killed." Fate pointed out. "He is toying with us. Like, seriously, who the hell plays games with other people's lives?"

  "This guy does." George laughed.

  Fate, along with several others, shot him a glare.

  "So what do we do now?" Snipes spoke up.

  "We need to find a way out. Clearly those with power ain't helping and we will need to do this on our own." Matthew sighed.

  The red-eyed raven flew into the room again and perched itself on top of a pile of rubble. It's talons and beak were covered in blood giving it a very unsettling appearance.

  "And the creepy bird has gotten even creepier." Matthew pointed out. "I thought that thing left, why's it still hanging around?"

  "Probably just found a rat or something." Fate replied, but she took a step away from the raven. Something wasn't right about that bird.

  "The man did say for us to wait a few days before we make our move, so we should probably try to follow that plan." Sophia suggested.

  Chloe nodded in agreement. "That is likely for the best. We should keep an ear out for them, by what the man said it seems like he knows a few of the gunmen are going to leave shortly. That will probably be our best shot at escaping."

  The group agreed on that point, so they waited two more days. Carley still hadn't been seen since he left with the gunmen. It was the seventh night of their imprisonment when they heard this eerie sound echoing through the old police station. It was a female voice, singing in a soft, but eerie tone. The words she sung couldn't be understood, but everyone could hear her moving through the building.

  "What is that?" One of the gunmen questioned..

  "Go check it out." Pete, the leader, ordered. The group could hear the footsteps of someone rush off into another room, followed by silence.

  "What is out there?" Pete called out. "Adam! What do you see?" But there was no answer.

  "Wake up guys! And grab your guns!" Pete called out and brief movement could be heard.

  "What's going on?" Sophia murmured, half asleep.

  "This might be our chance. Or we might be in even more danger." Fate replied.

  "What?" Sophia yawned and tried to wake up. She sat up and carefully walked around the others, who were still asleep, to stand beside Fate.

  "There's some creepy voice in the building." Brooke spoke up, but didn't get off the floor.

  As soon as she finished talking the next room erupted into a mix of gunshots and screams, waking up almost everyone in the cell.

  "They are fighting something!" George called out as he quickly got onto his feet. "Now is our chance." He added as he quickly rushed over to the door and began trying to kick it open. Although, he couldn't get the door to budge.

  "This cell could be what's keeping us alive right now." Fate pointed out. "Whatever they are fighting, it could be worse than our captors. If we break out now we might be jumping out of the pot and into the fire."

  "It's a risk we have to take!" George insisted, although no matter how hard he tried he couldn't break the door open.

  The gunshots and screams suddenly stopped, and a moment after, two people walked into the room. It was hard to see them in the dark, but it was a man and a woman. The man approached the cell first, almost rushing over to the bars. As he got closer his features became a little easier to see in the dark. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and that child-size red hoodie he wore that was far too small for him. He was also covered in blood.

  "Damion…" Fate quietly growled. "What are you doing here?"

  "Just following orders." Damion grinned widely and looked at everyone in the cell. "Where did that stupid kid go? And Jackson? I have a score to settle."

  As soon as she heard his voice Brooke jumped up, and Elliot was just half a second behind her. "Carley isn't here. He stayed behind in the village." Brooke lied.

  "After what you did to him, he was too afraid to leave the village." Elliott added onto the lie.

  "That's a shame." Damion sighed. "I guess I'll see him in a couple weeks then."

  "Damion hon, we need to go. They are regrouping." The woman traveling with him stated. She walked over to the cage to stand beside Damion. She was 6'2" and appeared to have a thin build, but the black cloak she wore made it near impossible to see most of her in the darkness. But one thing stood out, she had blood red eyes and her face was very pale. Her cloak had an odd symbol on it, there was a simple red circle with what appeared to be a black phoenix flying across it. The phoenix was leaving a trail of black flames behind it, in the shape of the capital letter M. Damion also had the same insignia on his hoodie, that hadn't been on his hoodie before.

  Damion turned back to her. "We can take them." He insisted.

  The woman grinned a little. "I'd love to kill them." She replied, then glanced up at everyone in the cage. "All of them." She added with a light laugh. "But as much as I'd like to, we are not supposed to. Just a couple more weeks, then we get to go have some fun."

  Damion sighed a little. "Fine." He turned and the two of them left the room. After a few steps he killed himself and everyone cheered.

  The rest of the night went by in silence, with everyone wondering if any of the gunmen were alive. They would have to wait until tomorrow to know what happened, but they all knew it was time they started working on an escape plan.

  Next Chapter: Escape!

  Chapter 11: Escape!

  — Chapter 11: Escape! —

  Brooke took a deep breath as she looked around at everyone in the group. How were they going to do this? They only had the one signet ring that Alpha in the black armor had given them, no matter how she looked at it that wasn't enough to escape with. She stood beside Elliott as the group discussed how to go about their escape. She kept glancing at the door, hoping to get some sign or something from Carley. But ever since he left to supposedly join the gunmen there has been no sign of him at all. She was worried that they might have just killed him.

  "No that's far too passive." George argued. "We need to break out and use aggressive strategy to get through these guys! None of this lying in wait BS."

  "If we just charge out like that people will die!" Fate argued. "We need to take this tactfully and cautiously."

  "No that just won't work." George argued. "We need to give the signet ring to Jess, have her swap places with the next guard to check up on us. That'll put her outside the cell and the guard inside with us where we can beat him to death. We take his gun, Jess opens the cell to let us out and hands the signet back to Fate, then we rush out there while they aren't expecting it and overwhelm them before they even know what hit them!"

  The raven cawed after George explained his plan.

  "No!" Fate argued. "They still have guns, if we rush out there like idiots they will shoot us!" She crossed her arms and glared up at George. "We do the switch with Jess, then after that we hide and ambush the people who come to check on us. We can take a few of them out this way before we engage the whole group."

  "But by doing that we lose the element of surprise against the full group!" George argued. "If we surprise the whole group we can take all of em out real quick. If they know about us then it will be harder to take them all out."

  "Shush!" Sophia quickly stepped in when she heard the front door to the police station open.

  "This is it. Give Jess the ring." George quietly insisted.

  "We follow my plan." Fate whispered.

  "No we follow mine." George argued. But when Fate refused to hand over the signet ring George growled quietly. He spit his own signet ring out into his hand, then shoved it into Jess's hand.

  "Eew!" Jess nearly shouted out as she dropped the signet ring onto the floor.

  Fate quickly stepped on the ring to hide it as one of the gunmen walked into the room and walked over to the bars.

  "You two!" He pointed to Brooke and Elliott. "Out of the cell."

  "Why?" Elliott questioned.

  "
Because I said so!" The gunman argued. He opened the cell and grabbed Brooke by the arm, then yanked her out of the cell. However Brooke immediately broke free from his grasp and took a step away from him.

  "I can walk on my own, thank you." Brooke growled at him. Elliott quickly left the cell to stand beside her.

  George was about to rush out of the cell, but the door was shut and locked too quickly for him to escape. George shot the man a death glare and walked to the back of the cell again.

  Sophia and Fate both gave the siblings a concerned look, but they held their tongues for now.

  "Why are you taking them?!" Snipes yelled out as he rushed over to the bars. "These are my friends! Stop taking my friends away!"

  Inami, reading the mood, placed a hand on his shoulder and gently tugged Snipes back into the crowd. "Shh. We supposed be quiet."

  The man hesitated a moment, but ignored Snipes and lead the two of them out of the building.

  "What do we do?" Sophia asked.

  "We stop screwing around and escape next time someone comes in! We could already be out right now!" George angrily growled and shot a glare at Fate and Jess. "Jess! Why the hell did you drop the ring?"

  "It was gross! It was covered in your spit." Jess argued.

  "Get over it. It might have saved their lives." George countered.

  "We don't know that they are going to be harmed." Sophia spoke up quickly to calm the kids down.

  "He didn't seem too friendly." Matthew spoke up. "Whatever he wanted them for wasn't good."

  "We need to act as soon as possible. Next chance we get, follow my damn lead." George ordered.

  "They will be okay, Carley is out there she will protect them." Fate insisted. "We need to take it slow. We'll get out on the next guard, then slowly work our way through the enemies."

  "Carley isn't out there, it's been far too long and we haven't heard from her. She's either dead or she ran off." George argued. "We need to just bust out of here as quickly as possible and bash their skulls in."

  The argument didn't seem like it was going to end any time soon.

  Brooke and Elliott were silently lead out of the building by the gunman. They were lead across the street to what looked like an old apartment building. Inside the abandoned and ransacked building was the leader of the gunmen, Pete, lying back on a couch.

  When they entered he stood up and walked over to them. "Welcome to my home." He greeted.

  Brooke and Elliott remained silent.

  "Yeah, yeah, I know we aren't friends." Pete chuckled a little. "Figured I'd open the floor to a semi-friendly relationship, but we can just drop that and let business be business."

  He still received no answer from them.

  "We lost a lot of our people recently. Some psychopath and his equally insane girlfriend is running around these ruins. And honestly, I don't even know what is taking Jarred so long to get back. We sent him with a message to the Alphas when we captured y'all and haven't heard from him since." Pete sighed a little. "I'm thinking the idiot managed to get himself killed."

  "What does that have to do with us?" Elliott questioned.

  "Finally! Conversation!" Pete grinned. "We are adjusting our tactics to get food and money while we wait. We don't have the manpower to challenge travelers head-on anymore. So I sent Danny in to gather a few of the kids in your group." He gestured to the man who lead Brooke and Elliott here. "We plan to use you two as hostages to negotiate the surrender of travelers. But at the same time we didn't want to take the two little ones. None of my guys will feel comfortable putting a gun to their heads. But you two are young enough to tug at the heart strings of travelers, and are old enough to not weigh on our conscience."

  "Why are you telling us this?" Elliott questioned.

  "Play your roll well, and you can earn a place in our ranks. Like that other lady from your group did. She's an amazing scavenger. Brings us lots of food each day." Pete explained. "We need to rebuild our ranks."

  "So Carley is okay?" Brooke worriedly asked.

  "She's fine, as long as she continues to be a resource." Pete replied. "She has started handling all the cooking, cleaning, and scavenging all on her own. Plus it's nice having a lady around the camp. We have no reason to get rid of her."

  Brooke couldn't help but to snicker a little. When he gave her an odd look she quickly clarified. "That's how she joined our group. Funny how much of a chameleon she is. Fits right in with anyone."

  "Yeah. Too bad you guys couldn't protect her." Pete replied, then looked at Elliott. "Your loss. But no worries, me and my guys will keep her safe as long as she keeps being so valuable."

  "So you just want us to act as hostages?" Elliott stated.

  "Yep. Can you do that?" Pete questioned. "We ain't gonna actually shoot you. If we did then we'd need to get new hostages. We will just make travelers think we're going to shoot you if they don't surrender, then when they drop their weapons we shoot them and take their stuff. Then rinse and repeat with the next group to walk by."

  "Can we see Carley first?" Brooke asked.

  "Yes and no." Pete stated. "She'll be coming back from her scavenging trip soon. You will see her come back then and you'll be able to see that she's fine. I will even let you talk with her privately. That's a pretty big showing of trust I am giving you there, I shouldn't be doing that. But since you're being polite with me now I will permit it. Don't disappoint me."

  "Thank you." Brooke replied.

  "You see? I'm not a bad person. I just want to survive like the rest of you." Pete smiled.

  "Yeah, I can tell." Brooke lied.

  "Good, we can all be friends then. Just play your part and we will all thrive in this new world." Pete said and then gestured for them to be escorted out.

  Brooke and Elliott were escorted out of the building and into the main camp, in the road right outside the prison. The gunmen were all gathered around a campfire, and their sleeping bags were set up just a short distance from the fire.

  Brooke and Elliott awkwardly stood around with the other gunmen for a little while before they spotted Carley walking back into the camp. He looked pretty badly battered and worn out. But he was carrying four backpacks full of stuff. He looked like he was struggling to carry them all, and he was walking with a limp that implied that his leg was broken.

  Brooke and Elliott were about to rush over to him but they were stopped before they could get far. "You two are to stay put until you're told to move." Danny, the gunman that was watching over them stated.

  "It's alright Danny!" Pete called out from the second floor window of his house. "They are kids, let them go see their friend."

  Danny hesitated, but let Brooke and Elliott go to Carley. However before they could reach him the other gunmen around the fire jumped up and ran over.

  "You alright Carley?" The first man to reach Carley asked before taking all four of Carley's bags. Carley had been struggling to carry the four, and had slung them over his back. The gunman just picked all of the bags up one handed.

  "I'm okay. Thank you Chris." Carley uneasily replied, then shot Brooke and Elliott a worried look when he realized they were out here too.

  Two of the other gunmen quickly rushed over to Carley. The first checked his leg and the other just picked Carley up and carried him into the camp. "What happened to your leg?" The one who had picked Carley up asked.

  "The dragon spooked me and I missed a jump, fell off the roof." Carley sheepishly replied. It was clear he was trying very hard to resist his urge to flinch when they touched him.

  "Don't go so close to the dragon, that's dangerous. We need you alive." One of the gunmen stated.

  "Alex, I'm fine please put me down." Carley uneasily said, and Alex put him down by the fire. Then Carley turned to the other gunman who was following them and checking his leg. "I just broke it a little, don't worry about it Andrew."

  "Of course I'm gonna worry about it, I care about ya Carley." Andrew insisted, then he grabbed a potion and handed it to Car
ley.

  "Thank you." Carley replied and as soon as he was laid down by the fire he drank the potion.

  "Give them some space guys, let the kids see their friend." Pete called out from the window again. All of the guys, once they heard Pete, reluctantly scattered and went off to different sections of the camp. Giving Carley, Jess, and Elliott some space.

  Brooke and Elliott quickly sat beside Carley as the potion slowly started to paralyze him.

  "You okay Carley?" Elliott asked.

  "Yeah." Carley replied. "What about you guys?"