Hidden and Silent (SpyxFamily)

Chapter Twenty-One

       The deafening blast shuddered the apartment and two sickening, very concerning thuds hit against the back wall of the main area. Anya's ears rang, dust billowed in through the open bedroom door, and she couldn't tell if that was what was choking her or her heart that shook in her chest like a maraca. The fighting seemed to have ended and her hands slowly left her ears as she stared after the door, waiting for her parents to appear. Or cough. Or say something. To do something. But all that sounded was settling debris, something crackling, something shrill materializing in the distance, thudding footsteps and slamming doors in the halls, and screams echoing beneath and above her that made her head hurt.

BRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!!!!

Anya jolted and gasped at the voices suddenly adding to the flood in her head. It hurt. It hurt so much. Scared, urgent emotions and voices throbbed and she whimpered at it. It wouldn't go away. She clutched her head at the invasive noises, making her lightheaded and dizzy. She wouldn't let the hands that meant to reach under her arms, pick her up. Would they take her away from here? She couldn't leave without her parents.

When the voices had somewhat quieted a minute later and the head-splitting migraine softened to a more minor headache—the voices moving a good distance outside the building—she finally looked up to the doorway. Smoke was drifting in, the smell thick in her nose, though it hardly registered as a concern and she got up off her knees, hardly realizing what she was doing.

A voice rang like a distant memory in her ears, faint and pointless in the present moment, and she absentmindedly brushed the touch off her shoulder like it was a mere bug. Maybe it was. She didn't pay much mind to it. She gripped her shirt at her stomach and braced a hand on the wall as her feet sludged to the door, clamping a trembling hand on the doorframe when she reached it.

The room was clouded in grey. It was thickest here, though Anya could see the still forms of her parents on the floor, silhouetted in the smog and wreathed by the splintered furniture around them. She gasped a breath in, not understanding the tears on her face or the wobble in her breath. Her parents were sleeping, only sleeping, her parents wouldn't get hurt by something like this, they were only sleeping.

She couldn't feel their m—

Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, she should go wake them up.

One step in front of the other, she reluctantly removed the hand that kept her steady on the doorframe, though she didn't understand that either—her parents were sleeping, they were fine, Anya shouldn't be unsteady—and moved hesitantly across the floor, focused on them and only them. Her eyes stung with contaminants and watered her vision, making it harder and harder to see.

"M. . ." She whispered, words hiding in her throat, and she shuddered and fell to her knees next to her mama. She lay on her side with her back to Anya, and a small hand lifted to rest on her shoulder. When Anya tried to speak, only a small whimper of a sound vibrated against her neck. Anya gave her mama a light nudge. "Ma—" She managed to force out a wisp of a plea, but it was hoarse and too quiet to wake her mama. Anya shook her a little harder.

Her mama didn't move.

Anya's tongue had forgotten how to form sounds and she couldn't think beyond the sight of her parents lying on the floor. Unmoving. Asleep. Still and quiet where they had been fighting just a moment before. Anya's chest inexplicably ached and until she sucked in a deep breath, she hadn't realized she'd been holding it. Her mind was clouded with a fog she couldn't dispel, though she wasn't entirely sure she wanted it gone. It hugged her consciousness with a muffling, heavy blanket, softening the edges and forcing her to focus only on what was right in front her. Protecting her like a pair of tinted glasses from the harshness of the sun. Nothing else existed. Just what was important right here in front of her. Anya's heart beat slow and painfully against her chest, throbbing in her ears and pulsing in her fingertips. For the strength in her heart, her blood dragged, and with it, her body. She nudged her mama with her traitorously weighted, shaky limb and refused to acknowledge the dread threading in her veins with each touch her mama didn't respond to. Every moment that she stayed still. Every second that Anya couldn't hear her mi—

Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping.

Her parents were sleeping. A deep sleep. A deep, deep sleep. Anya hadn't ever come across this weird, dampened feeling before and it sc—

Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping.

They were tired from fighting those bad guys. Really, really tired.

Her gaze lifted to the body a little further away where a form crouched next to her papa. But they were unimportant right now. Once more she attempted to find her voice and call to her papa, and once more it failed her.

Something terrible bubbled in her chest, her lungs, her entire being. She was sure she was breathing, but it didn't feel like it. The floor vibrated beneath her when bright colours flooded the edges of her vision and she hardly noticed the new minds that appeared. And then she was being lifted.

Her fingers being dragged out of reach of her mama was a strange feeling as her view widened with her rising altitude. This wasn't right. She had to stay with her mama. Her blood screeched at her. Her body screamed and cried in protest. A burn built inside her, the oxygen somehow all crammed in her lungs and unable to use it. She could only gasp in, a scream stifled by who-knew-what. The sound denied actualization swelled at the back of her throat and laid heavy in her skull. The pulse of her heart echoed hollowly as a drum in a cavernous room and she couldn't think. Her parents grew smaller and smaller as she was carried away and all she could do was watch.