The Sky Beneath Us (on hold)

TWENTY

Avery.

_____

His head was groggy, sore, he heard a gunshot. The Jackal was dead, now all Avery needed to do was find Becca...yeah, find Becca was what he was here for, wasn't it? But what hit him? What hit him over the head?

He felt himself being tied up, that was weird. Tied up like Becca? No. It couldn't be. He was supposed to be rescuing Becca...not being tied up like her.

And why couldn't he see? What veil covered his eyes?

Darkness.

He could hear Becca's voice, pleading, and other voices, male and female - all muttering nonsense. More psychopaths, or voices in his mind? Avery could feel himself being dragged by his legs, was he a captive now? He must have been captured. He had failed.

But I am not finished with you yet.

"Tie 'em up, make 'em suffer" a husky feminine voice croaked.

"Yeah, yeah, and cut 'em!" another voice rasped.

The voices cleared his head a little. He was captured by the psychopaths, the ones he never managed to kill before. One had knocked him out before he could help Chad.

Shit, Chad.

Was that the gunshot?

The signalling of Chad's death?

His vision cleared, he could make out a face - Becca's. She was hunched in a corner, crying. He wanted to tell her everything would be ok, whatever happened, like she told him before.

He tried, he wanted her to know that. That he tried.

And so begins the great purge.

The raspy psychopath, a lipless middle-aged man, placed a thick blade to Avery's throat. The blade felt cold, and its sharpness began to pull across his sweaty neck.

Avery thought of Eve, Mark, Brady, standing by his side and now their fate unknown. Becca, about to suffer the same fate as he.

He thought of those who died before him, people who gave him hope in his darkest hour.

Nancy - who was killed by The Flip itself.

Tom - who died giving Sadie support with her worst fears.

Danny and Melissa. Paul. Joseph.

Sid, who died valiantly defending his home and those he swore to protect as a Fighter.

Chad - his friend. Who stuck with him until the very end. Who now belonged to the sky.

Avery braced.

"Time to-" the psycho stopped mid-sentence, his face dropped. There was panicked shouts. He tried to run.

And with an animalistic roar, something monstrous mauled him to death.

***

Chad.

_____

Chad felt the life finally leave his body as he fell into the sky. He skimmed the edge of the resevoir, passed the tip of the tallest tower, felt the cold creep up his spine and permeate his soul, saw the sky darken around him - blue to an inky deep black in seconds. With his last breath, he swallowed a lungful of shadows.

Time, and timelessness.

Silence.

This was death, but why was Chad still thinking? Feeling? Hearing?

Seeing white. Bright white surrounding him, blinding him, his dead and empty mind brought to a visual spectrum before him.

A speck in the distance, slowly becoming larger. Smoke, no, a cloud. A cloud of pure darkness.

The black cloud approached him, like a swarm of locusts, yet made no noise.

"Darkness. Darkness incarnate" a whisper echoed through Chad's destroyed brain and left his dead ears ringing.

"Where am I? What are you?" Chad questioned into oblivion, his voice both outside and inside his head simultaneously. Slowly, the cloud formed into the shape of a man, horrific and black against the whites of Chad's mind.

It swarmed around him, engulfed him, became part of him.

"Welcome, child, welcome to power and life everlasting. I, am the Darkness. And I, have big plans for you. This, is my world now. I'm going to master it, consume it, and you shall help me Chadwick John Martins...for I am only getting started".