𝐃𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐎𝐍 | Gally | ✓

Chapter Twenty

Gally's trail of blood had started to fade. It ended at the entrance of a tall room. The walls in here  were higher than the usual maze. A long, wide platform stretched out from where I stood across the floor. Below the edge of the platform sat an intimidating, seemingly bottomless pit. It was darker and colder than the rest of the maze. I quickly learn I wasn't the first one to have been here.

The end of the room had a narrowing hall. As I slowly stepped closer towards it, the putrid smell of griever organs churned my stomach. At least half a dozen of them laid across the floor, lifeless. Gally couldn't have killed all of them on his own could he? It was impossible.

I carefully stepped over sprawled griever guts and green goo. My ache in my head was starting to worsen. I couldn't figure out how they'd all died like this, until something caught my eye. A simple wooden spear was impaled into one of the monster's chests. The sight of it brought a sense of pain to my own chest. It was from the Glade, but Gally wasn't holding one when he left?

I was struck by sudden revelation. My heart fluttered quickly as I sprinted past the motionless grievers. A small circular tunnel waited for me at the end of three sets of doors that fell from the ceiling. Each one had crush a griever in its path. With one final speck of hope, I crawled through the dark hole.

The moment my foot stepped through the hole, a spiralling door closed behind me. It was now just me, and pitch black darkness. As I kept crawling, the floor of the tunnel grew wet and sappy. Unsure of the substance, I put a sample of it on my finger and sniffed it. Gally's trail of blood hadn't finished after all.

It wasn't long until I was blinded by a sudden light in front of me. If this opening hadn't appeared sooner I would've ran my head into it. I hopped out of the stuffy tunnel and the door immediately closed on me once again. The knife of fear imbedded itself in me, it's pain coursed through my veins.

On either side of me were two seemingly endless corridors. Clanking steel bars stretched across the wall and continued as far as I could see. Rows of drab, dingy fluorescent lights continued along the ceiling. The blood I had followed only pursued in tiny droplets scattered on the sleek floor.  The stains were barely noticeable, yet they were the only thing left leading me in Gally's direction.

My shoes squeaked along the hazy reflective floor. The sound almost echoed down the hall and reminded me of how lonely I was. The further I kept, the more I anticipated someone to start following behind me. This irrational anxiety kept up behind me, forcing me to look back over my shoulder. I half hoped to actually see someone there to at least put my mind at ease and get over the anticipation.

I had forgotten to pay notice to the trail on the floor. Nothing was left. Only an empty hall stretched out before me. A creek became the only other sound down there. Not far from me, a large metal door swung ajar, begging me to open it. It taunted me, but I just slowly kept towards it.

The metal door was cold on my damp hands. I waited, unsure of what could greet me on the other side. A part of me knew, somehow, that as soon as I opened that door nothing would ever be the same. Regret washed over me before I even pushed it open. Something was waiting for me on the other side, the energy was tired of me hesitating.

Before I took one last breath, I heard a broken voice, "You think we're free out there?" it sniffed. My heart burned in my chest, I'd found him, we were going to be okay.

Carefully, I pushed the door open. I thought I'd gone mad when I looked around the room. The dark cellar smelt of blood and something burnt. I jumped at the sight of a body laying only a foot away from me, then soon noticed that more were scattered across the room. Shattered pains of glass covered the room. They must've been some sort of device seeing as broken smashed in keypads laid on each desk. It looked like someone had set off a grenade in here and shut it in.