On Till Dawn

The First Few Minutes

//TW//: death, descriptions of death & vomiting

The space around us is deathly silent. No one could talk or move, even if they wanted to, one of the overseers has some kind of power that's able to stop movement. Everyone is sitting in neat rows, too neat, watching a count down. 

When the countdown hits 1 minute remaining, I can see the hunters moving towards us. 

When the countdown hits 40 seconds remaining, I feel the hold on my movement weakening, allowing me to move my head and look at how many people are sitting behind me. I estimate about 1,000 teenagers are sitting in the rows, while there are about 200 hunters.

When the countdown hits 30 seconds remaining, the hunters stop moving.

When the countdown hits 20 seconds remaining, everyone is suddenly able to move, and chaos ensures

I stand up, along with hundreds of other people, and start to enact my plan. All the exits of the courtyard-shaped area were blocked by hunters, but the area doesn't have a roof so I can try jumping the walls. That would be possible if I can find someone that has a power that can make jumping the walls possible.

Amidst the chaos, I managed to yell to a girl next to me with short black hair asking her what her power was. She yells back telepathy. I grab her hand, and another girl's with dog ears and tail, yelling two things. One, grab a hold of as many people as possible, the second to the black-haired girl, telling her to yell across as many people's minds that they need to jump the wall when the timer hits zero.

When the timer hits zero, four things happen. A deafening sound erupts across the courtyard-like area. The hunters can suddenly move again, barreling towards the people that are closest to them. A clear voice screams through my head to jump the wall or die trying. And holding onto the two girls on either side of me as tightly as possible, somehow we are blasted into the air and start heading towards the top of the wall.

I look to where the sudden lift is coming from and see that the dog ears girl had grabbed another girl who seemed to have some power to do with air, which was currently straining to get us up and over the wall. On the other side of the black-haired girl, a girl and a guy were hanging on for dear life. Altogether 6 of us.

After getting to the top of the wall, which turned out to be a building, I stop for a second, looking over where we just left. The area is littered with dead, dying, and butchered bodies. The blood of fellow prey is smeared across the courtyard. There were still some people fighting the hunters in there, but one of them died painfully every few minutes. Looking down there I estimate there were about 400 dead teenagers. Even if the amount of teenagers vastly outnumbered the amount of hunters, A hunter was a grown adult that had a mastery over their power, so one could kill a hundred of us. Or even more.  But looking down on the scene, it seemed most had chosen the wise decision of fleeing. 

I turn to the group of people I had seemingly recruited. There was the girl who had black hair that had telepathy, and I now realised she also had pair of glasses she somehow hadn't lost, the girl with the light brown hair, dog ears, and a very matted tail, a girl with the hip-length platinum blonde, seemingly trapped in a vortex of wind by her powers, and a boy and girl with the same dark brown hair, the same freckled face that I only realised at that moment must be twins. 

platinum blonde, dog ears, glasses, and the twins. Ok.

platinum blonde collapses to the ground from Exhaustion. Dog ears looks over the edge of the building and doubles over, vomiting from the sight. The twins were unharmed but look mentally shaken and Glasses just seemed worried. 

I look around at them and know that I must be the one to break the silence. 

"I know you all must be scared, but we can't stop for long. Now that we are together, we should stay together. By all means, leave, but we are better off as a group. We need to get as far away from here as soon as possible. We have tracking devices in our necks that will be turned on tomorrow morning, so we will be as safe as we can be until then. But we need to get out of here. NOW!" 

As I finish my mini-speech, I get a few nervous nods. I help up dog ears while glasses helps up platinum blonde.  The twins look at each other as if sharing some secret and then turn to us. 

I take a run and jump off the edge of the building. The others soon follow me, with platinum blonde using the last of her power to cushion our fall. 

We run and don't stop. We all know stopping before we have put a good amount of distance between us and the hunters could mean death, so we just keep running, trying to continue on till dawn.

Word count - 894