Silence Falls

The guards that didn't arrest a hostage all step forward to examine what was going on with this elevator that, if they weren't misled, was slaying anyone who dared to step inside. The doors fluently opened with invitation, once again exhibiting that no one else was inside perpetrating the bloodshed. All was left was the now lifeless creature they'd sent in a minute ago who was limply dangling from the ceiling where it appeared like his shattered head got hurled straight through. The guards simultaneously took a step back, their eyes broad with an escalating agitation brought on by two mystifying unexplained deaths. What in the world was going on with this elevator? The boy that had stepped in before this all started wasn't in there carrying out these vicious deeds, and yet somehow their co-workers were being magically slaughtered by...what, an elevator?

Before anyone could contemplate any further on this conundrum, the guard holding Otep in a choke hold abruptly howled in agony, freeing his hold on her completely. She stumbled and slumped back against a wall in surprise, kneading her throat, and coughing a few time to relieve the throbbing ache. Her captor toppled down onto his side, a hand on his lower leg that was bent at a abnormal angle. It didn't take doctor to confirm that both the Tibula or Fibula bone had been fractured clean off.

“How the fuck...d-did I do that?” Otep queried in awe to herself, raising her quivering hands to her eyes. She didn't know else to explain how she did it. She was the only one that was close enough to induce the guard into any form of harm, and yet...she hadn't touched his leg at all. So, how was it broken then?

Outside the chapel, a pandemonium was erupting down the few halls that made up Solitary Confinement, shrieks and wails of the crazed that gathered everyone's scrutiny to survey the areas around them for something to defend themselves from another potential menace. On the floor, Bert finally regained consciousness again, raising his head lazily to inspect his surroundings. Otep meant to go to him to provide any relief he might need, but her eyes were too drawn to the entrance to the chapel as the shrieks got closer and closer. The door never stood a chance, and was unexpectedly urged opened by the dozens of prisoners of Solitary Confinement that came cascading in on top of each other. Long stringy unkempt hair, gaunt battered faces, blackened teeth, milky eyes and long sharp nails all from years of negligence and suffering. Otep's eyes widen as she skulked as far from them as she could managed within a closed Chapel. Good or bad, these patients have gotten to a point where they would slaughter just about anything without logic. Little did she know at the time, they weren't after her or her friends.

Every single guard within that room let their hostages go, the creature on top of Connor propelled off of him with new victims in mind just as they were besieged by them. Bert, Cris, Bam, and Connor clambered onto their feet and raced to gather with Otep against the wall near the elevator, their arms coming up to shield their heads for protection, their eyes tightly shut as if they could make themselves imperceptible from the feral patients initiating their attack.

Claws dived down like pitchforks, sinking themselves into the meaty muscles of the towering guards, and scraping down into bones of the emaciated creatures resisting back. Howls, like nothing ever heard outside of the walls within a prison asylum such as this, reverberated off the walls like a blow horn. Those howls, that wouldn't lessen even a fraction, just kept getting louder and louder. Sounds of skin battering skin, teeth rupturing through skin, and bodies collapsing dead onto the floor were brought in next into this nightmare symphony. The kids were so terrified for their lives that they were nearly brought to tears, so sure that this was the end for them all. They were trying with all their might to mentally cut off the link that told them they were physically there in the same room as this butchering brawl to instead pretend they were in a more tranquil environment like back in their cells that they didn't sense three of the patients closing in around them, heavily rasping on them, their teeth exposed to prompt horror, their eyes on fire with revenge, and their claws dripping with blood from the lives they just took.

Just in time, the missing Hermanni walked out of the elevator like nothing had taken place at all inside, and attained the spotlight of the three feral creatures. Blue green eyes engaged with blood thirsty eyes, and steadily narrowed in focus on them too as the elevator door shut behind him. At first, three others of the Solitary Confinement patients twisted their heads like inquisitive animals towards Hermanni, then shared a look to the rest of their deadly horde that had just accomplished obliterating the last of the guards off. They all ditched the mangled and dismembered bodies to gathered before Hermanni who stood in front of an enormous cross of Jesus Christ, looking like a man of influence with utterly no fear towards the feral patients. Time seemed to freeze for a long time as both parties peered at each other, as if visually conveying to one another. Hermanni then hoisted his palm out towards them as a signal for them to step back and make way. Without hesitation, they complied as if they came to an understanding with the unusual boy to carry out his every request. During this entire commerce, the kids remained covert and oblivious under the shelter of their arms, still feeling the wheezy breathes from the innocently punished souls of Solitary Confinement.

Hermanni studied his friends covering in fright. He had to get them moving again, but if they were to open their eyes and see him pausing before an mob of feral patients like he was their commander, they might become frighten of him too. Stepping over to them, Hermanni kept his palm up towards the feral patient's vigilant eyes to keep them still before lowering it as he stooped before his friends. Putting on a voice just as terrorized for his life, Hermanni murmured out to them in a wobbly voice, using as much of their language as he knew. “F-Friends, we go!”

Connor boldly peeped up first, his green eyes sweeping the room to observe the feral patients stationed across the room, hunched over and watching them like a pack of ravenous wolves waiting for their prey to make a break for it, and then there was Hermanni looking petrified as he glimpsed cautiously over his shoulders at the feral patients idling behind him to make sure they hadn't moved. Where did he come from all of a sudden, Connor speculated before shedding the riddle to smack both Bam and Bert on their arms to obtain their attention. “You guys, look!”

After they lowered their arms to noted their safe distant from the blood-coated freal patients, Bam didn't waste a second longer in the Chapel. “Fuck this fucking dump, man!”

“We're getting the fuck out of this church NOW!” Bert ordered, carefully hurrying everyone back onto their feet and out of the Chapel by veering along the wall towards the entryway, their eyes never leaving their new threat. When it was clear the feral patients had no interest in harming them, the group made a dash for the elevator that went up to the cafeteria. Bert never used the elevator here because he had to ventilation systems to depend on to keep him holed up from sight. Pressing the only button inside, the door shut before the elevator lifted off. Not one of them thought to ever interrogate Hermanni on where he disappeared off to, or how the two staffs that perished in the empty elevator met their end exactly. They simply didn't have the time to if they planned to depart the subterranean facility tonight.

Inevitably, while the elevator brought them closer to the cafeteria, Bam, Bert, Cris, Conor, Otep and Hermanni stood in silence, their minds privately summoning the events that lead up to the dead corpses in the elevator. The conundrum of what happen was becoming too supernatural for them ignore, and so they all migrated to one side of the elevator from Hermanni except for Connor who was more focused on the next tide of incoming rivals surely awaiting them in the cafeteria. Analyzing the faces of his comrades, he could see the numerous barely controlled volatile emotions wavering across. He couldn't blame them, they never had an accurate taste of the freaks in Solitary Confinement? The battle going on in their minds couldn't be helped after what they all went through.

But the turmoil over what they experienced wasn't exactly encircling on their minds at the moment. No, what was was the matter that they should feel sick to their stomachs after all the blood, massacre and decapitation they'd witnessed and taken part in, terrorized to death over their chances at making it out alive, enraged for what had been done not only to them but other lost faces they'd seen before in passing glances in the halls, and deranged with a tornado of many more crazy emotions, only they weren't. It was like an unseen protective cloak was wrapped so securely around them, sheltering them from their current danger and the profound emotions that resulted in them. Something was making them cope with what was happening around them. Something was making them not challenge the insane plights that were unexplainable. Something was propelling them forward like a parent would to their toddler riding a bike for the first time. That overseeing hand on their back was leading them towards the next few stumbling blocks that they were awaiting tonight. Tonight? Was it still even night on the surface? Could it be morning yet, or perhaps even the afternoon?

Ding.

The elevator came to a quiet halt, reviving everyone back into focus again. They had made it out of Solitary Confinements alive and well which was a great triumph. Now, they just had to get past the cafeteria, assemble the girls from their dorm, and figure out a way to get back up to the surface to freedom. The surface, could it really be that close? They have always been this far down from it, yet at this very moment they have never felt closer to the sun in all their lives.

Bert never got to the feel the sun, though he emerged for a short period of time to feel the night on the surface. The crisp air was authentic and exhilarating, but it was to feel the rays of the sun on his skin that he really longed for in those few short seconds above ground. Yes, the sun. Bert has been down in this buried facility for a long time, just the same as the others. Perhaps their time to leave this buried jail has finally come after all.

Rapidly, the elevator door opened, and any dream of trekking the surface of the earth freely instead of living under it was smothered like water to a flame. The thwarting group of patients determined to escape were in for a disastrous shock. Patrolling outside the elevator were more than a dozen lumbering guards with police batons, and SWAT team armor and helmets. The children gasped in unison and squeezed themselves together against the back wall of the elevator, their eyes wide and their breaths swiped. They felt their last bit of fight in them deplete. At the same time the densely armored guards detected the troublemakers paralyzed in the elevator, Bam snarled to himself. “Fuck, we're outnumbered.”

“SHIT!” Bert cussed as he smashed a fist on the wall beside him. He was sick of their perpetual hardships tonight. It was one thing after another with no rest in between. Moving up in front of his friends, Bert stretched out his arms out to shelter them from the soon-to-be onslaught from twenty or more armored guards that they didn't stand a chance against. “Shit, shit, shit, shit!”

“Well, look what we have here?” A guard brayed with satisfaction, the floor seeming to pulsate from beneath their military combat boots as they all chased toward the elevator, sharing laughs and remarks about locating these unruly patients, and how easy it was on their part in doing so. “Looks like the end of a lot of trouble you scums caused!”