Monotone | ✔️

Chapter Fifteen

I had been grateful for the opportunity to sleep after the hectic occurrences the day before. After my brief sob with Chris, we managed to extract Jay's body from Robyn's clutches and give him a fairly decent burial, cleaning the blood from his skin before rolling him in blankets and laying him to rest outside the tunnel. We had to do that procedure with haste, just in case any robots caught us. We hoped he would be happy in his eternal sleep, able to gaze at the sky above whenever he desired.

Robyn had seemed to calm down. She wasn't totally hysterical, anyway. Instead, a calm sense of lethargy had seemed to settle over her like a comfortable shroud, dousing her in a grief-ridden tranquility that took both me and Chris by blatant surprise. What clandestine emotions were raging in her complicated mind? No one would know. No one could understand her, albeit Jay. But he was gone. Nonetheless, I was grateful that she wasn't trying to rip my head off anymore.

Our other acquaintances, the three men who had killed Jay, had lingered respectfully in the corner, their heads bowed in awkward shame.

Thankfully, my sleep was devoid of any nightmares, though I detected a faint rustling from beside me from time to time. It failed to rouse me yet heightened my speculation, though I didn't wake to properly survey what was happening.

When I awoke I would realise how much of a mistake this was.

For, when my eyes did flutter open, the stench of blood was overwhelming. It coated my senses with greedy, gluttonous fingers, twisting around my mind with tendrils of metallic glee. It wasn't my blood, no. It wasn't Chris, nor Robyn's. It was the three murderers'.

Hastily, I scrambled to my feet, Chris too rising in a confused manner. Sharing a look, we started to follow the thick scent. Our eyes was met with a hideous sight; a sight I was sure would blaze in my brain for the rest of eternity.

The three men - I had forgotten their names, and placing an identity to the corpses would make the horror more real - were sprawled in grotesque positions on the ground. Through each of their chests was a bloodied stab wound. The scarlet residue flooded from the cavities, and their hearts were scattered beside them, fragments of their vital organ sporadically placed around their bodies.

Bile rose to my throat, and I gagged. Chris had a similar reaction, yet he looked away quicker, his eyes scanning around the premises with angry, scared optics. "Robyn!" He called, his voice guttural with fear. All trace of tiredness had left his harrowed face, the vista of blood before us was enough to shock the most steely man into alertness.

Robyn had to be the guilty party, that I was sure of. This was her revenge. This was why her anger had seemingly ceased the day before, for she was planning her twin's disgusting, florid vengeance all along...

"Yes?" The sickly sweet voice emitted from the shadows, and from the darkness Robyn exited, innocently spinning a bloodied knife in her agile hand.

"What is the meaning of this?" Chris spat, his voice rising in volume.

"They're murderers. Aren't you proud of me for securing their fate in hell?" Robyn drawled.

"Do you think this was the best solution? They may have killed Jay but it was an accident. Did you see his body the other day? His ribs were prominent, his skin was a sickly yellow, even before all his life left him. He was sick. The fever messed with his brain and caused him to be hasty in approaching the three of them. Now you're the murderer, you're not any better than them." Chris argued.

"It may have been an accident but he was my last remaining family!" Robyn yelled. She stopped playing with the knife and held it steadily in her hand, her stance almost offensive. "They deserved it. They deserved all of it."

"You stabbed them in the chest and ripped out their hearts!" I shouted. "No one deserves that death!"

"They made me angry. If there's one thing people would've known by now is it is not wise to make me angry." Robyn's voice was dark. She was crazy, insane, corrupted by her own anger in her turbulent, confused system.

"Go and sleep. Don't leave, or I won't be able to contain the extent of my fury." Chris murmured in a demanding tone. Robyn scowled at us but obliged, putting her knife back in its correct pocket.

My hands were shaking with horror and anger, my mouth opening multiple times yet no sound was able to come out. Chris walked past me and ventured to the bodies, blatantly trying to ignore the horrible wounds.

"W-what are you doing?" I asked, finally regaining the ability to speak. He was rummaging around their bodies, inspecting their pale skin with observant intent.

He didn't look up from his work but merely continued. "Checking for something." I didn't press further, though my discombobulation was still in pristine condition.

Soon, he looked up again, a negative frown pulling his lips downward. "We have a problem." He murmured.

I blinked. "You mean, apart from a deranged murderer in our midst?" I murmured, unable to stop my sarcastic comment from spilling out of my traitorous mouth.

Chris nodded, unamused by my impudent remark. "One of them has a tracking chip in them. He must've got it when he was up top, but the robots were unable to kill him before he came down here and they were unable to pursue."

"So?"

"These chips are able to tell whether their tagged subject is dead or alive, and whether it was from normal sickness or.. Murder. They know he's dead, and know how. Therefore, they know there are people down here - us. They know we're travelling to the city. When we try to go up top, they'll be waiting for us. We're dead."

{ DUN DUN DUNNNN }