Chapter 62: Mercy
Sarah stared at Miles in shock for a moment before bowing her head and muttering.
"Thank you... Thank you..."
Brandon stared on in disgust, sneering at Ryan.
"If she pulls some shit again, don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’ll be all on you, Ryan."
Brandon huffed before sitting back down on his crate, turning his face away. There was nowhere he could walk off to outside the store, nor were there many crates he could kick around like last time. Miles felt he would’ve done either one of those if he could.
Mia stared at Sarah for a few moments before shaking her head and turning to Ryan.
"If that’s what you want, then. Sure, you’re the boss."
She shrugged.
Ryan nodded appreciatively at her. Then he looked at Sarah.
"You hear that? You can stay, but if you try something, if I even suspect you of attempting something on us, I will personally kick you out."
Sarah blinked her tear-filled eyes, still in disbelief that they hadn’t completely abandoned her.
"Yes, thank you. I won’t even dare it. I can’t."
The former class rep just nodded vaguely, looking a bit uncomfortable at the way she addressed him. Shifting his gaze from her, he looked around the storeroom as though lost on what to do now.
Miles had a few ideas. There was the EGO he still had to unlock, eating would also be nice, so would sleeping. Although the stabilization field had healed him and stopped the backlash, it had brought a wave of exhaustion that had been weighing down on him since.
Plus, it did nothing to stall the hunger caused by cold resistance.
’Most important before any of that is-’
"Do you know if there’s a place to clean up here?"
Chloe vocalized the thought before he could complete it. He had to get clean first.
He considered the girl looking outside the door.
She’d been oddly quiet during the whole Sarah affair. Besides voting in favor of her and carrying out the inspection, she’d done nothing.
She had also been the one watching Sarah while they checked the pylons. Chloe had said nothing back then, too.
Miles didn’t have to recall too far back to fish out the possible reason for her oddness. She was the one who’d broken the mirror.
At the time, it had been a necessary move to get rid of the psychic girl. But it had also inadvertently been the reason Sarah had even glanced in the mirror to begin with, making her kill her friends to survive the attack.
In a roundabout sense, it had been her fault.
But no one was going to blame her for it. Certainly not Miles; she’d made the right choice. Whatever happened after were a result of Sarah’s own choices.
It didn’t mean Chloe’d see it that way.
Miles shook his head. Now wasn’t the time to be having such thoughts. He gestured toward his stained shirt, then the ground.
"I don’t think we can rest here, not like this."
Well, he could’ve used [Delusion] to rid himself of the nuisance, but stressing his brain was just about the last thing he needed at the moment.
As if on cue, the emergency power cut off right then, plunging the room into darkness and taking the ventilator with it.
Ryan had his flashlight out in a moment, same with Mia and Chloe. Miles would’ve done the same, but he’d thrown his somewhere in the hallway.
"There should be a sink in the kitchen, I think. Maybe some towels there too; I remember seeing it once with the other course reps."
He shone his light into a corner, illuminating a broomstick and a mop bucket.
"Cleaning supplies."
Chloe, being the closest to the door, glanced out.
"There’s only one sink, so we’ll have to go one at a time."
"That’s fine, you can head out first. Then Miles, the rest of us can figure something out between ourselves."
Ryan nodded, prompting the girl to step out. With Chloe gone, he picked a broomstick. Mia made a motioning gesture, so he threw another one her way.
There were three brooms. Ryan looked at the remaining four in the room before Sarah raised her hand, volunteering to take it. He passed it on without much fuss, and they all began sweeping.
Chloe came back soon after.
She was shivering. Her skin was blushed red by the cold and from being roughly scrubbed by a towel. It worked, though; the only blood still left on her were some specks on her clothes.
She stepped aside, letting Miles pass her by, bag slung over his shoulder, and into the cold of the kitchen.
The snow still streamed in from the windows with the same persistence it always had, covering the bodies of the corpses right below the opening. As always, the ground was choked with them.
But perhaps because of how frequently they’d been moving in here, a small path had been created between the bodies.
He got around with relative ease, reaching for the open drawer under the table that Morgan lay on. Picking one white towel from inside it, he turned around to face the single, wide kitchen sink.
Twisting the knob of the tap there sent a stream of bone-chilling water out, even when it was turned to hot. He wasn’t one to complain, though; if anything, he was thankful that the plumbing system hadn’t frozen solid.
Soaking the towel in water, he scrubbed his face, not even flinching as the bone-piercing cold hit him. He was more focused on getting rid of every last speck of blood on him: hands, face, hair, and anywhere that had been exposed.
The bloodied bandages he’d been wearing over his hands naturally fell off.
He even took off his shirt to get rid of the blood that had seeped through it. After which, he tossed on the hoodie from his bag.
By the time he was done, his skin felt raw and numb, but it was mostly clean again. Even then, he still felt there was some blood he hadn’t been able to clean, blood that soaked his skin just like his shirt, and seeped into his flesh through it.
Forming a layer of grime he would never be able to clean, not without ripping his skin open.
The thought marked itself as irrational in his mind, but it still persisted regardless. So he did his best to ignore it.
He switched off the tap, letting the now pinkish water in the sink drain itself away. With that, he picked up his bag and headed back to the storeroom.
***
Some hours had passed by, and now he was sure it’d be night outside.
Not that he could tell, given the windowless storeroom and the fact that he’d powered his phone down to save its battery from dying. At least the flashlights kept them from falling into complete darkness.
The room was cleanish too, so that was a plus. He’d joined in mopping the blood off. But there was only so much they could do.
Lunch had been a can of beans, eaten with utensils taken from the kitchen. Dinner, currently in his hands, was also a can of beans.
Ryan had wanted to have a gathering for dinner, just like they’d done the night before. But even he could see the writing on the wall.
They were all tired, if not physically, then mentally. It had been a long grueling day, far worse in most ways than yesterday. Not to talk of the letters they’d read on the pylon.
With the high of their victory having long come down, the implications of what they’d done were finally settling in. They were murderers, some more direct than the others. But still, all killers.
Their actions had resulted in the deaths of four people. Six, if he counted Sarah.
Morgan was no longer here to coordinate them, and Lincoln was miles away. For the foreseeable future, they would be on their own.
Ryan just assigned watch rotations, then talked of further planning and unlocking EGOs when they were properly rested in the morning, before leaving everyone to their devices. Even he needed time to come to terms with this reality.
As it turned out, Miles and Grimm were assigned first watch. Brandon and Chloe second, with Mia, Sarah, and Ryan being the last.
Sitting on his thermal blanket, Miles studied the others. Some checked their devices with frowns, others silently fiddled with their belongings, and one—Brandon—just brooded.
’Seven of us, huh?’
He wondered how many of them would see tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day beyond that.
They’d been twenty last night, at least 60 that morning. They were slowly being whittled down, even outside the school.
All in a slow march towards a supposedly inevitable end. For what purpose?
A test, or perhaps a simple random glitch in the universe’s code, or even maybe something else.
He still remembered the gaze he’d felt at the start of all this. Shaking his head, he tried getting rid of those thoughts.
They were completely pointless. After all, there was nothing he could do regarding them.
Slowly, the others went to bed, each resting on thermal blankets they’d taken from the gym storage. Miles sank deeper into his thoughts as he watched them rest.
Eventually, it was only him and Grimm left awake in the dim light of the torched room.
Tonight was going to be a cold one. The first of many, many more in the coming future, if he lived long enough to see them.
Volume 1 end.
(Mercy)