Page 6 of Exiled

I obeyed without comment, throwing my arm around his waist and letting him support my weight. His body was warm and solid against mine, a reassurance amidst all the chaos and fear. We stumbled toward the open door, moving as quickly as we could given our circumstances.

The hallway outside was barely lit, the feeble light from scattered overhead bulbs casting long, eerie shadows across the grimy concrete floor. Doors lined the walls, each one identical to the next, but we didn't have time to ponder what horrors they might hide.

“What the fuck is this place?” I asked. “I don’t remember getting here.”

He rubbed his temple. “It’s all a blur, honestly,” he said. “I remember the Viper exchanged you and Sam, and then there was an explosion, and Teo told us to back down but I…I think I ran toward the cabin. I can’t remember exactly.”

My thoughts were a whirlwind of confusion. I vaguely remembered something about the Viper, about Sam and an explosion, but it was all so hazy. The last clear memory I had was of my father, of the way his hand was wrapped around my wrist, of the scent of burning outside as he pushed me into his living room.

"We need to find a way out," Victor said, pulling me out of my thoughts. His voice was hard, but I could hear the underlying note of desperation. He was just as lost as I was, yet he was doing his best to remain calm for both our sakes.

I nodded, tightening my grip on him as we staggered further into the labyrinth of doors. The oppressive silence was punctuated only by our ragged breathing and the soft sounds of our movement. My heart pounded a rhythm of fear in my chest, each beat echoing the same word: survival.

"Wait," I urged suddenly, pulling Victor to a halt. He swayed on his feet, his breath coming in labored pants. I listened intently to the darkness, straining to hear over the rush of blood in my ears.

"Do you hear that?" I whispered, my fingers digging into Victor's side.

"What?" His voice was gruff with exhaustion, but I heard the tension creeping back into his tone.

"Water," I said. "Running water." It was faint but unmistakable - the constant rush of a stream or river cutting through the stifling silence.

“We could go that way.”

I nodded. “We could, but something about this feels like a trap,” I said. “Where’s everyone else? Teo, Sam? My dad?”

Victor paused, and for a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he sighed, a long weary sound that echoed in the narrow hallway. "I don’t know. I think Teo and Sam split up before the explosion. Your dad...I don’t know," he admitted. His voice was filled with fear and uncertainty, something I wasn’t used to hearing from Victor.

"That's alright," I said, trying to sound stronger than I felt. My stomach twisted into knots as I worried about what had happened to all of them. "We'll find them."

Victor sighed and tightened his grip around me, the pressure both comforting and unnerving. "One step at a time, Sof," he said in a low voice.

The cold reality of our situation hit us both at once: we were trapped in an unknown place, injured and alone. We had no idea where the others were or what happened after the explosion.

All we knew was that we had to survive.

"Right," I said, nodding and forcing a small, wobbly smile onto my face. "First, we find a way out of here."

Victor nodded.

“Sounds like a plan,” he grunted. He gave me a strained smile, attempting to hide the pain that was evident in his pale features. His arm tightened around me as we began to move forward again.

The sound of the running water grew louder, guiding us through the pitch-black hallway. There was an eerie silence in the air, only broken by the irregular rhythm of our breathing and the distant echo of water coursing through some unseen pipe or tunnel. It was surreal and disorienting, like we had stepped into some twisted labyrinth from hell.

“What if it is a trap?”

“What’s going to happen?” Victor asked. “We’re already captured, we’re both hurt. If we were going to die, we would have already died. So I think our biggest concern right now should be surviving. I have a wound that needs tending too, and you’re going to need water, food.”

"You’re going to need those things too.”

“Right. That’s my point.”

Victor's words echoed through the bleak corridor, bouncing off the cold, damp wall and hanging in the heavy silence. We couldn’t be in the Everglades, it would be far too hot in a place like this. Victor seemed to sense what I was thinking, his grip on me tightened. I could hear his ragged, shallow breathing and the distant thundering of my own heart, the only living sounds in this grimy, forgotten place.

I stopped us then, leaning Victor against the wall as I took a closer look at him. The weak overhead light threw his face into sharp contrast; the dark circles under his eyes looking even darker, his pale skin made almost ghostly. He was worse off than he'd let on.

"We should rest for a moment," I said, my voice sounding foreign in the silence.

Victor shook his head defiantly, his jaw clenching. "No, we need to keep moving.”

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