"Where are we? Ringer! Ringer! Why is it so dark? What have they done?" Teacup's voice is loud, but the darkness strangles the sound into a muffled, terrified whisper. I moan, my arm aching like I've been stabbed. My hand reaches for something, anything, in the harsh blindness of the room, but my icy fingertips find no purchase. I flail around desperately for a moment longer before I hit something cold and hard, but rubbery. Almost like dead flesh. Maybe the Others are merciful. Maybe I don't want to see what lies in this cave, what fills it with the stench of rot and decay. Suddenly, I feel hopeless. What the hell are we fighting for if we can't win, if we can't change anything about our inevitable fate? Are we fighting for the sake of saying we held them off for a couple more months? I hiss as the dull ache in my arm grows into a torturous feeling like barbed wire is ripping through my skin. "Teacup! Just come to my voice." I can hear shuffling and aggressive swearing from the other side of the room before my searching fingers touch a lock of curly hair. Teacup's hand grabs my arm before I could say anything. But its cold, far too cold. Like a wintery draft, there but not. Touching me but moving past me, through me. "You're there, aren't you Cup?" A hollow, echoing laugh surrounds me, tugging at my heart and threatening to break me. I shut my eyes tight, trying to keep in the hot tears that have suddenly sprung into my world. "Cup?" I whisper desperately, feverishly choking on the mucus and blood that's built up in my throat. My mind spins and spins and spi--
I spew my empty stomach onto the filthy ground, retching and groaning with pain. My fingers scrabble through the sand and grit as I attempt to move away from the mess. Tears mingle with the grime covering my body as I realise. "Cup! Teacup!" I scream, my throat rubbed raw from the retching. "No! Come back to me!" I start throwing handfuls of gritty sand, hoping, wishing, begging. Cup, she was the bravest of us all. The strongest. She was ready and willing to fight, to die. And without her high-pitched little voiced, a voice rusted at the edges with hatred and the fight that churned within her, without it I couldn't hear. I couldn't feel anything but pain, hard violent pain. I'm cracking. Pieces of me roll into the water at my feet, sinking into the damp sand.
Wait. Water?
I fall to my knees. Sure enough, they become covered in a thick layer of sand. Warm, stale, gluey sand. My saviour. I almost kiss it, my cracked, bloody lips poised centimetres from the lukewarm surface before submerging themselves completely in its warm, stagnant embrace. A way out. A way. Out.
later and I'm sprawled in the harsh sunlight of a summer afternoon. Summer. Even the thought of it makes my head spin. We've been in this hell for more than a year now.
My breath catches in my throat, salty tears no longer diluting the hardening blood on my raw cheeks. I attempt to take in a shallow breath, chest aching.
Before the world is plunged into a undeniable, unavoidable darkness.
YOU ARE READING
Tomorrow's Gone (5th Wave)
Fanfiction"The survivors of the last five waves aren't human anymore. We lost that part of us as we ran from disaster after disaster. They thought they could kill us by ridding humans of their humanity. They were so wrong, it hurts." Cassie and her crew are b...
