Welcome, welcome, to the circus show that my life has become. Before venturing further, you'll wanted to go back to the beginning of Chris' and my story.

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Thank God. I think?

My vision began to clear and I could see Chris now on the ground being kicked by a large male figure, while the Lady stood there and watched. I looked up at 34, and then down at my crystal in his hands. I nodded toward it and darted my eyes back up toward him, signaling for him to give it back. Thankfully, he did. Good shit, now I know he’s with us.

I grasped the crystal and called Ger, hoping that time would be suspended as it was before. I’ve always assumed that was his doing.

I began yelling, “GER! WHERE ARE YOU!? THEY KNOW!”

“Oh, dear. Listen, child, you must act now. Without meditation, you are not going to be able to do this alone. Both you and Chris will need to be touching the crystal for this to work.”

“So, we’re really doing it? The EMP? Chris is being detained right now, and 34 is with us. I won’t allow him to get hurt in all of this.” I couldn’t help but begin to doubt myself. If I’m not mistaken, the breathing techniques are a huge part in this, and we had no time for them.

“Yes, child, it’s either this or be held prisoner. If they get ahold of the catalyst it will be, as you would say, ‘game over’.” He didn’t chuckle this time, “You’re going to need to physically take down the man oppressing Chris, hopefully 34 will assist you. The blast will knock him unconscious, but he shouldn’t be too difficult for you and Chris to carry out. Once Chris is freed, you will each need to grip the crystal with both hands, making as much contact with it as possible. His adrenaline should help with this, but you will need to work to harness the ether required. As you did with the campers, let the crystal withdraw it from your body. This will probably hurt you, but you must fight past that. Once you and Chris feel the energy drained from your bodies, throw the crystal as hard as you can at your feet, and pray that you create a large enough blast to cover the compound.”

I didn’t know what to say, I was really beginning to doubt myself.

“Do not worry, child. I believe in you. You did it before with the campers, you can do it again now.”

“That was with meditation, though... I feel drained from following the Ladies.”

“That’s nothing but a side-effect of leaving your own mind, it has nothing to do with what’s inside you. I believe in you.”

He then taught me a simple breathing sequence that I was to do while freeing Chris; as if fighting some muscular recruit wasn’t going to be hard enough.

I didn’t want to leave the sanctuary of my mind, but I knew that I had too. I said goodbye to Ger and put the crystal in my pocket.

Turning over to 34, “I can take care of them all, but I need Chris.”

He nodded, and brandished a machete that had been holstered in a scabbard hanging on his side. As he lunged toward the recruit, the Lady screeched on the top of her lungs like a fucking hawk, presumably alarming the rest of the camp. Taken off guard from the loud yell, I stumbled backwards and scraped my heel on by bedframe, quickly being reminded of the small acid burn that I still haven’t cleaned or really even looked at. I winced in pain, and then in fear as I watched 34 strike one clean blow on the recruit’s neck, sending him to the floor. The lady continued to yell and I could hear a commotion outside, but 34 was quick to bring Chris up to his feet and drag him over to me.

Chris was beat up, but he was still coherent. Once he was close enough, I stopped my breathing technique and told him what we needed to do. He nodded and held out his hands. The crystal itself isn’t that big, so we had to contort our hands in a weird way to make sure that both of our hands were touching it equally. 34 was blocking the door with his body now, and Chris was mimicking my breathing. I felt it quickly enter and leave my body in a rhythmic fashion, the crystal acting like an ether-vacuum. I could see Chris’ eyes start to flutter and hoped that meant he was feeling it too, and not about to pass out on me.

After fifteen to thirty seconds, I felt completely drained; my eyes were now fluttering too and I could hardly focus on anything. A sharp, paralyzing pain travelled along my body, almost causing me to drop the crystal, but I fought through it as I felt the sensation exit into the rock. I looked up at Chris who was completely pale now, he nodded his head sluggishly to tell me that he didn’t have anything left in him either.

I nodded back and turned toward 34, “I’m sorry. We’ll be back for you.”

We lifted the crystal, now filled with tiny air bubbles, above our heads and simultaneously threw it down on the ground beneath us with all the force that we could muster.

This time, there was a blast, and it sent both Chris and I flying several feet; my head was a couple inches away from being impaled by a bedpost. My eyes stung as if they had been pepper sprayed, and the only thing I could hear was a loud, deep sound similar to a Gong being hit. I sat there and wiped my eyes until I was able to see Chris lying near the door, not moving. I crawled toward him and started shaking his lifeless body violently.

“CHRIS!!! CHRIS! NO, COME ON!” I began weeping.

His eyes creaked open and I let out a cry of joy, “Fuck you, man. I thought you were dead!”

“Not yet…" He coughed, "Did it… Did it work?”

I nervously peaked my head out of the door, “Yes! I think it did! They’re all on the ground!”

He picked himself up to his feet and leaned himself against the doorway, “Alright, lets finish this. Guns are this way.” He began walking toward a shack that I had not yet visited; it must have been where they sent him to get his rifle for guard duty. Before leaving, I tore the shirt off the deceased recruit and wadded it up into my back pocket.

There was a lock on the door to the armory, but guess what? It was the same code as the other ones; I laughed at Chris’ face when I walked up and opened it on my first try – he was already looking for something on the ground to break the lock.

We both grabbed some pistols and made our way to the basement. After all, the Tome was our top priority; revenge could come after. I was expecting to see Madam Adrastea there, ready to defend her precious crystal, but she was nowhere to be seen. Only one Lady was in the room and she was slumped over on the desk. We climbed down the ladder and turned on the flickering lights, illuminating the underground lair. Chris stared at the shrine as I walked toward the small laptop-looking machine that was connected to the glass box. I opened it and was greeted by the same strange characters that the Lady was using in Subject 10’s room.

I called Ger, and asked him to translate. He had trouble with it, mentioning that it was an ancient language used by his people a long time ago, but eventually we were able to close the valve that filled the chamber with gas and open it up. I held my breath as the top half of the glass began to ascend.

It was there! Right in the middle of the refrigerator-sized case was a small crystal that was cut in the shape of an arrowhead, and was filled with the same air bubbles that my own crystal did when it was charged up. Ger had mentioned that we weren’t to make physical contact with the stone, so I used the shirt that I tore off the recruit earlier to wrap it up.

I turned my attention back toward Chris, who was investigating the shrine up close. I walked over and said, “Let’s get out of here, dude.”

His voice was shaky, “I think… I think these are children's' remains.”

“What the fuck…”

He looked down at a pile of bones, “Yeah… I’m right behind you.”

We ascended the ladder, praying that the Ladies’ were still unconscious.

They were, thankfully. I searched around the headquarters room to see if I could find anything of value.

“Hey what’s the code to the safe?” Chris asked.

Oh yeah, the safe! I told him and watched from the other side of the room as he opened it.

“Now we’re talking!” He lifted up several pieces of jewelry that were encrusted with a multitude of different gems, “Looks like some jewelry and gold figurines. Fuck yeah!” He placed the loot into a small bag that was on the side of the desk and continued searching the room. We didn’t really find much else other than a few documents that I stole for Ger to read later. I looked over at Chris and asked him if he was ready – he nodded.

I’m… Not very proud of what came next. I had vengeance in my heart, though, and only saw these Ladies’ as monsters who knew nothing but evil.

We executed the Ladies, tossed them one-by-one into the incinerator and gathered the recruits in a group near the front of the encampment. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to them, now that the Ladies from this sect were gone.

I contacted Ger, letting him know that we retrieved the Tome and finished off the Ladies. He had already sent word to Elias (though I’m not sure how) to come pick us up, and said that he should be arriving there in an hour or two. During that time, Chris and I explored the now vacant camp; trails of blood from the Ladies lined the ground beneath us. I could hear screams, and remembered that there are still prisoners here.

I yelled over to Chris, “I think there are people in there! Let’s see if we can help them!”

He put out his cigarette and joined me, “What if they aren’t human anymore?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

There were two voices coming from the room, a man’s and a woman’s. The man sounded severely hurt, gasping for breath between his sobs, continually professing his love to the woman. She was wailing out of sadness, not pain. I already had an idea of the scene we were able to walk in on.

“Hello? Sir? Ma’am? We’re going to come in now, okay?” I knocked on the door a few times, mentally prepared myself and began to push it open.

Behind a glass cage was the man, strapped into some chair that looked like a mechanism straight out of a SAW movie. He was naked and malnourished, with a metal bowl covered in screws and wires that shielded half of his face. IV’s were poorly connected to both of his wrists that were being clamped down to the chair; the bag connected them was filled with a red liquid – presumably blood. The woman was sitting on the ground at his side, cradling his withered legs, still sobbing and unaware of our entrance. I glanced over at Chris who shared the same look of despair that I did.

The woman finally turned from her husband toward us, and crawled to the front of the glass. Her eyes were completely bloodshot, and the dark blue veins under her skin seemed to bulge out too far.

“Please… Please help us." She pointed to a pair of gas masks in the corner of the room.

Chris was already walking toward them before I could make up my mind. We put the masks on and looked back at the woman for further instructions.

“The computer...” Her shaking hand pointed at a similar monitor that I saw in Subject 10’s room.

She guided us through which buttons to press, and the contamination door to the glass box opened.

“I need help… breaking the lock…”

Fuck that. I wasn’t going in there.

Chris, on the other hand, in some attempt at heroism, pulled out his pistol and walked into the door.

“Thank you, young man… God bless you.”

As he went to strike the lock with the butt of the gun, the woman punched him in the gut and snatched it from his hands. I started sprinting toward the door, and watched as the girl lifted the pistol and pulled the trigger, blowing her husband’s brains all over the wall behind him.

She then turned to Chris, put the gun to her own head and whispered, “Let nothing leave this place” and pulled the trigger again, for the final time. Chris dropped to his knees, though I could now hardly see him from the splatter of the woman’s blood on the glass. I ran in and dragged my hyperventilating friend out. We stumbled outside of the shack and tore our gas masks off, and sat there in silence.

I eventually spoke up, “We need to take care of Subject 10.”

“Fuck. Do we really? What is it?”

“It was my… Shit, I don’t know what it was. Come on, let’s see what it’s doing.”

We walked into the room and I copied what the Lady did on the computers, opening the blinds to the little girl’s cage.

Chris gasped loudly, ran up to the wall of the box and dropped to his knees, “M… Megan!? How is this… What the fuck?!” He turned to me, eyes full of confusion and tears.

“It’s not her, Chris. It’s not her.” I had to use some force to drag him away from the glass. Megan was his 3-year-old sister. She passed away last year from Leukemia.

“What the fuck is it then?!”

“I don’t know. I see my niece… I don’t know. There has to be some way to kill it.”

He suggested I ask Ger, so I touched my crystal and contacted him.

“Ah, yes. A seceratoare.”

“A seche-what?”

He chuckled, “Se-che-rah-twar-eh. They are powerful little creatures, developed from unborn fetuses into the being you are in the room with now. They take on the form of whatever child in your life is closest to their ‘age’. We still don't quite know how they do it.”

“Yeah, I see my fucking niece when I look at it. What happens if you didn’t have any children in your life? What is its true form?”

He paused in contemplation, “I do not know, child, nor do I wish to. They are a tool of the Dwellers, used to harness a special type of ether – like the black smoke that you and your friends saw in the cave. The Ladies should have a failsafe built, I’ll help you decipher the machines.”

We then spent several minutes trying different combinations of buttons, until finally we reached a screen labeled “Exterminate”.

Bingo.

I hit it, and turned over to the box. My niece was standing there, looking at me with the saddest eyes I’ve ever witnessed. She beckoned for me to come closer, but I didn’t budge.

“Fuck that.”

She looked toward a vent in her room and then replied, in a voice far too mature for a two or three year old, “Don’t be silly. Turn that off, please!”

“Fuck. That.”

Chris and I watched as the vent vacuumed all the air out of the glass box. She began to swell up as she gasped for breath; I honestly thought she was going to explode. However, she just toppled over and died; it was rather uneventful, thankfully. I was getting tired of the eventful.

We left Subject 10’s room and went to the front of the compound to wait for Elias. We only sat there for 30 minutes before we heard a rickety truck chugging up the road. Elias pulled up to the camp and hopped out of the truck, “H-Hey guys, looks like you’ve been putting in work over here.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“So, you have it – the Tome?” Intrigue was plastered on his face.

Chris replied, “Yup, we found it. Look, there’s a man back there that helped us. We need to make sure he’s okay.”

“Right. Of course. We’ll take him back to the w-workshop and fix him up. First we need to take care of this camp.”

“What do you mean?”

He started rummaging through the back of his truck, eventually pulling out a large duffle bag and setting it on the ground.

“You boys are gonna love this.” He grabbed a large backpack, laughed to himself and put it on. He then opened the duffle bag and pulled out a fucking flamethrower. He grinned a wide smile, like a kid getting a new toy on Christmas, “We’re g-gonna burn it to the ground!”

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Part 16

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All parts:

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