Her Compound

Chapter 1

I woke up with a gasp and immediately lashed out at the figure who was hovering over top of me, my fist connecting with the soft flesh of the person in the dark room.

"Ouch," Matteo hissed before grabbing my fist with his hand and pinning it to the ground. "It's me, Zoe."

"Matteo?" I squinted through the darkness of the room and could just make out his outline and relaxed slightly. A moment went by as I got my heart rate back to normal and I could still feel Matteo's hand around the wrist of the hand I had used to punch him with. I raised my eyebrow, knowing he couldn't see through the lack of light in the room. "You going to let go of my hand so I can sit up off of the hard floor? Or..."

"Are you going to punch me again?" he replied, with what I thought was a smile before letting go and giving me the room to sit up and stretch out all of my sore muscles.

I then tried to look around the room, but found no source of light or... anything for that matter. The room was completely drowned in darkness.

"Matteo?" I whispered.

"Yeah?" He said a little ways away.

My hands groped along the ground as I crawled over to him. "Where are- AHH."

I stopped in my tracks as my hands made contact with a body. At my scream that had cut off fairly quickly, Matteo circled back to my side. I reached out tentatively towards the body I had felt and pressed my hand to the shoulder of it. It's soft breaths could just barely be heard through the silence and I sighed in relief as I realized the person wasn't dead. I then ran my hand up carefully to the person's hair and let out a gasp as I felt short cropped hair.

"It's Willow," I said to Matteo as I moved my hands back to her shoulders and shook her. "Wake up. Willow, wake up."

I could feel her stir and slowly break free from the liquid that had put us unconscious underneath my hands. She let out a groan as she sat up.

"Zoe?"

"Yeah, it's me," I replied with a huge smile on my face even though I knew we were far from being anywhere safe. "And Matteo's here too."

"Where are we?" she asked.

"I don't know," Matteo responded, sounding further away. "But I found the other wall. The room's only about a dozen or two meters across."

Willow stood up. "You were measuring one side to the other?"

"Yeah," he said, growing closer to us. "That's how I stumbled across Zoe. Who, by the way, punches fairly hard."

I rolled my eyes and started making my way to the right, the knees of my grey slacks getting dirty against the floor. My hands swooshed back and forth as I searched for anyone else in the room.

"Where are you going Zoe?" Willow asked. I could hear her slowly walking through the darkness closer to me.

"If we were in here," I called back to her, "then Logan and Lily-"

I suddenly stopped talking cause I could just barely make out a groan coming from the right of me, just a few feet away.

Willow continued to come closer to me. "Zoe, I-"

"Ouch!" Logan shouted as I heard Willow tumble to the ground. "Watch where you're stepping."

"Sorry!" Willow blurted out.

A laughing Matteo crawled over to us through the dark.

"Where'd she step on you?" He asked as he came to a stop next to Willow.

"My hand." Logan scooted forward a little bit closer to Matteo. "I may need a kiss to make it feel better."

A small second of silence went by before the sound of Matteo kissing Logan's hand broke the silence and then their laughter pierced the air.

Willow let out an angry breath. "You guys can't possibly be serious right now."

"Why be serious?" Matteo said, slowly coming down from his laughter high. "We're most likely going to be going through that same thing all over again so why not just have some fun while were still alive-"

Light suddenly flooded the room and we all let out gasps as our hands raced to shield our eyes from the harsh bulbs overhead. As soon as my eyes had somewhat adjusted to the brightness, I took my hands away and took in my surroundings.

We were in a medium sized, white room. Multiple lights hung from the ceiling casting every inch of the bare room to glow. Willow, Matteo, Logan, and I all were sitting in the middle of the room, a very small bit closer to the side in which the only door was located. My eyes then landed on Lily and her red hair as she stood up by the other side of the room. How long had she been awake?

Before I got to open my mouth to ask her, the door to the room opened, causing my head to snap in that direction to watch the man enter.

He stood on the other side of the door and as I looked behind him I could see the wall on the other side and knew there was a fairly large hallway there. Were we still in Ace's place? Or did we just get transported to somewhere similar to it?

"Don't worry," the man said, forcing my attention back onto him.

As I looked at him -and I mean really looked at him- my eyebrows immediately shot up. He couldn't be more than eighteen at the most. His body was lean and yet muscular, wearing a tight black shirt and dark pants with straps and pockets for what I assume to hold weapons. He had platinum blond hair that just barely touched his light grey eyes and he was really tall, his legs looking like they were going on forever. He looked between all of our faces before speaking through the silence.

"I'm not going to hurt any of you."

Matteo glanced at all of us before arching one of his eyebrows and looking back at the guy. "Who are you?"

He smiled a small smile and nodded towards the open door. "Come with me and I'll explain everything."