Silence Falls

Hermanni smiled to himself as the guards policing the cafeteria in SWAT armor began to close in on him and his companions within the elevator. No, he wasn't plotting to make it simple in the least bit for these lumbering men to apprehend his new family. Vivid blue-green eyes floated behind the guards to a fuse box on the wall near the stairwells that headed up to the patient's dorms. With that smile still on his face, Hermanni closed his eyes in concentration on that metal box and the power encased within in. Promptly, the fuse box began to throb, convulsing from where it was tightened into the concrete wall before detonating from the inside out, sparks showering across the cafeteria's linoleum floor. Before anyone could acknowledge, the entire room was descended into an perilous blackness, leaving everyone, even the guards, absolutely blind.

“What the...?” A guard growled out, revolving around for any slither of light within the large room to see. Upon remembering they were distributed flashlights for taking on the job in this subterranean facility, they all began to pat themselves down for the apparatus, so they'd be able to pinpoint theirs prey once again. They pressed the tiny button on each of their flashlights, then a few more times, but unfortunately, they all just so happened to be out of battery at the same time. “Oh c'mon! These were new batteries!”

“I can't see anything, you guys? Can you?” Otep confided low enough so that the boys could hopefully hear her, that is if they were still nearby.

Before any of them could retort with the same claim, an unforeseen explosion of light erupted into the room in the design of a scorching silhouette. Quite literally, one of the guards swiftly went altogether up in flames like he had been saturated in gasoline previously! Everybody alike broke out into screeches of terror at the horrifying and abrupt display. The guard ablaze hollered in searing pain, turning around to bumble for the stairs for help only to dwindle over before he could get there, incinerating alive for the onlookers to all see.

“HOLY SHIT!” Bam and Bert shouted before slapping a hand over their mouths and recoiling back into the security of the close off elevator with the rest of their friends. They were both thinking the same speculations. How the hell did a man just randomly disintegrate into flames, was this some kind of sick prank!? And if so, why?!

As soon as they ended those series of questioning, another guard towards the back of the group mushroomed into flames next, and then another, and then another following that! They were going up like match sticks one by one! The group of kids in the elevator started freaking out that they would somehow be next in this incomprehensible igniting combustion!

“EVERYBODY JUST START RUNNING! NOW!” Bert directed them as he thrust and dragged each of them out of the elevator and into the open cafeteria. “GET TO THE STAIRS! MOVE IT!” As they all made a break for the stairs, slighting the straggling gargantuan around them presently melting, and the ones seeking to make a last effort in arresting them. Their fingertips never got close enough to even skim them before they too detonated into blazes behind them, making the kids shriek out and jolt away from the torrid wildfires encircling them. Once they reached the stairs, everyone flew up as fast as they could without looking back.

Hermanni, being the last one, was wrenched back by a frightened colossal guard who twirled him around to confront his petrified features. “H-HELP ME...PLEASE!!!” He rattled the slender boy in his clutches as if he believed he somehow had the capability to preserve him, but the smile remained on Hermanni's face.

“Help?” Hermanni communicated back in a Finnish accent, nonchalantly raising a hand to press the tip of his middle finger precisely into the center of the guard's perspiring forehead. “I help.” Beneath his fingertip, a meager flame exploded against the skin of the guard's forehead, singeing it before he was startlingly ravaged alive by it, the flares devouring its way through his clothing, his resilient skin, sinewy meat and generous bones, all the while with Hermanni welcoming to the melody of a hulking man roaring a blood-curdling scream. Retracting his hand back, Hermanni spun and trekked up the stairs to his friends, leaving the cafeteria floor powdered with the ashes of the security team.

Hermanni finally met up with his new group of friends in the girl's dorm's hallway, they were quibbling in blaring overlapping speeches among each other over what just transpired in the cafeteria with the security randomly bursting into flames right before their eyes without explanation.

A development behind them down the hall, however, seized Hermanni's immediate attention. At the end of it was a small security room where a security guard had just woken up by the loud exchange, and was now noticing the same missing patients that were on the loose in the facility were huddled right in front of him unbeknownst. He had been instructed they were prowling the lower levels, so he didn't think they'd ever make their way back up past the security teams while he took a nap on duty! Shooting up onto his feet, his hands began to fumbling for his gun in his holster with the full intention of ending the runaways. Blue-green eyes widen in horror as the deadly loaded weapon lifted to aim directly at Bam's head, who was none the wisest of what about to hit to him. Hermanni's eyes narrowed at the guard before an acute rapid sound reverberated the hallway, making everyone drop into silence by its piercing abruptness. The guard stiffened before collapsing back into his chair and then sagging downward onto the floor. The kids twisted around in his direction, recognizing that there had been a guard station with someone on patrol down the hall the entire time they had been squabbling.

“What the fuck? Where did he come from?” Connor hissed after they all dived towards the floor, all except for Bam and Hermanni. Bam was fixed to the spot, lingering for the guard to get back up from where he had tumbled from his chair. Only he didn't get back up.

Cris reached out from behind him to seize a hold of Bam's pants leg, and whispered out a plea. “Bam! Get down before he shoots you!”

But Bam wasn't listening due to the matter that the guard simply wasn't getting up. Tugging his pants leg out of Cris's desperate hold, he warily crept his way to the security room. The other kids behind him steadily straighten up curiously, having also noted that the guard wasn't firing at any one of them or even hollering threats. There was only quiet from him which was odd. Making it to the station, Bam cautiously stepped inside like a thief breaking in, but swiftly charged right back out in horror by what he quickly saw. The security guard without a doubt was deceased, fresh blood splatters all over the small table set up into the station. From where he laid on his side, the area where his heart should have been in his chest was an hollow crater, the ends of the exposed rib bones splintered. His gun was missing from its holster, and was nowhere in view from within the small station. “Jesus Christ...”

“Bam, what is it?” Bert hailed out to him from where he stood with others, scanning him intently.

Hermanni was the only one fearless enough to come up behind Bam, but it was only to refocus him on the mission. Inspecting Bam's light blue eyes, he toiled to interact with him in his language. “Bam, we hurry. Must go.”

In his blue-green eyes, Bam felt the interest inside him for the guard's puzzling downfall dull away. It was a effortless progression from lights on, to lights off in his mind, and it felt eerie, because it didn't feel like it a mental transfer produced by him. Also, he was left feeling like he couldn't think all that clearly all of a sudden, as if there was someone else in his head shipping things around. “Um, y-yeah. We should get going.” Peering into his peculiarly vivid blue-green eyes, Bam grasped that Hermanni made him feel uncomfortable with his abnormally pale skin, silky lush pink lips, his fascinating impossible striking eyes, and his luxurious ebony hair. He was just too beautiful. With his skin crawling, Bam rapidly brushed by him to hurry back to the others.

“What's going on, Bam?” Otep grilled with her arms crossed over her chest. “What happened to that guy in there?”

“Um...fatal heart attack, I guess.” Bam rambled, rubbing the back of his head, not knowing how else to illustrate it himself of what he had spied in that small station. “I-I don't really know, man. He's dead for sure though that's all I know.”

“As long as he's not a threat to our plan, that's all that matters.” Bert concluded the conversation, and then gestured to the doors lining along the walls of the hallway. “What does is rescuing the girls and getting the fuck out of this place.”

“Then let's do it!” Connor declared, enforcing everyone to divide to unlock the two specific doors.

Launching up from her bed, Natasha gawked at her cell door swinging open to display what looked to be the silhouette of Bert. Shielding her eye from the blinding light streaming in from the hallways, she called out in a firm voice. “Bert, that better be your sweet ass I'm seeing coming to the rescue.”

Bert chuckled as he stepped inside. “Your wish is granted. Now, get up out of the bed and let's get going. We're almost out of here, ladies, we're almost out!”

“About damn time!” Casting her blanket off of her, Natasha jumped into her white slip-ons and galloped for the door, her heart racing to feel the sun again.