Suddenly, everything seemed to go still.
Latya felt something pull her to the floor, as time slowed down, she watched the bullets fly as she hit the ground with a thud.
Then everything seemed to resume back into how it was.
Latya took in a deep breath as she looked around at the fallen guards, blood splattered on the floor, and the steel walls. "Fuck." She said sharply under her breath, her heart racing as she rushed to her feet, her legs threatening to buckle under her and send her to the ground once again.
It was the shadow. She could feel it in her veins. The cold that crept over her at the swift touch as it had pulled her to safety. It almost felt like her heart had stopped in that moment. The pain that shot through her mind had felt crippling, even worse than the first and only time it had touched her.
The touch had been absolutely necessary, though. It had… saved her? Had it slowed down time, too? How—
She didn't have enough time to think, though, she could hear more guards running towards the room. She grabbed a gun immediately and bolted out through the door the guards had left open.
As she ran across the steel hallways, she could think of nothing but how she needed a car and where they were possibly keeping that.
She saw the approaching shadows of some guards, and she quickly turned the other way.
"Check everywhere! Kill her on sight!"
Fuck, she really needed those wheels, she needed to drive out of here as soon as possible, even if it was to mislead them because she was certain there wasn't a vehicle here that they didn't have a tracker on it.
Goddess, she missed Big Ben.
It took a couple of hiding and sneaking around to finally get to the door, but unfortunately for her, there were more guards around that she could fight, armed to the teeth, too. Her bullets would run out before killing half of them, and she would only be able to kill that many because she was a good shot.
Her heart thundered in her ears as she watched them running around from where she was hiding. The sun was setting, and Latya knew she was running out of time. She had to do something and had to do it fast.
She looked around quickly, searching for a car.
Luck must have been on her side, because a car drove in and… oh my goodness, parked really close to her hiding spot!
Only one bullet was all she needed. Too loud, though.
She hid. Some guards were hurrying towards him, he stepped out and she jabbed the butt of her gun against the back of his head as hard as she could, and snap the keys from him as he tumbled forward. She rushed into the car, slammed the door, ducked, and turned the key as they opened fire on the windshield and everywhere else bullets could hit. It took Latya a moment to realise that the glass wasn't shattering on her. She sat up and laughed.
Bulletproof?
How wonderful!
She slammed her foot on the accelerator, crashing into the guards in front of the car as the rest ran for cover.
Noise.
Chaos.
They got into their cars and chased after her. Latya drove in a zigzag line, trying to keep them off her trail, while she stared at the small screen of the dashboard for the road map.
Uzeri, Onyowo.
Well, that was fucking far from the private island where her parents stayed, in fact, it was so far from anywhere she knew and she wouldn't even know where Uzeri was if she didn't have a growing interest in cartography.
The nearest city was too far away. It was just a long road in the midst of woods, and wait, they were approaching a bridge!
Her car swayed, a turn she didn't plan. Her tyres had been fired into. Fuck! She wouldn't last on the road for long.
It was getting dark now, but she needed things to get darker. Why couldn't this have been a self-driving cat? How stingy was Larrison!
With one hand on the wheels and her heart racing from fear and adrenaline rush, laughter rushed out through her lips, and she fired two consecutive shots at the headlights of the car that was closest to hers, blocking others behind it.
Darkness.
She took advantage of that and jumped out of the moving vehicle into the woods. She heard the cars swirl past her, not knowing she had fallen. But that wasn't the only thing she heard, she heard a crack as she landed roughly into the woods.
Ah, it was her leg.
That was not good. That was not good at all. But her face didn't hurt, so maybe things weren't as bad as they seemed.
But things were about to get even worse.
The white light of torches swept through the woods, and Latya's eyes widened in fear and shock.
Well, if they were stupid, Larrison wouldn't have employed her.
"Comb these woods to the ground! The sea, to its depth! We must have a corpse to present! That bitch must be killed!"
Oh, fuck. Things were bad, they were really bad.
Latya bit her pain away and grabbed her gun that had slipped to the ground, as he forced herself to her feet.
Then the lights were on her; they had seen her.
Her heart slammed against the walls of her chest, a shot was fired in her direction, missing her only by a bit. She would be doomed if she tried to be stationary enough to fire. They would take her down immediately. Her aims lacked focus, and she seemed to have taken down two of them, but that did nothing. They were more than she was, and her bullets were running out.
"Shadowbaby, I won't mind you touching me now." She said breathlessly as she tried her best to run, ignoring the excruciating pain that spiked up from her ankle to every point in her body. Tears streamed down her face.
Goddess.
She might actually die tonight.
This was starting to feel really real.
And nothing was happening yet. Although the shadow thing had only come to her aid once, and she still wasn't sure what it wanted, she couldn't—-
She stumbled back as a bullet jabbed into her back, the floor seemed to open beneath and she tumbled into the pit that developed beneath her out of nowhere.
She landed against a wooden surface, and she quickly turned as fast as she could to see where she had fallen from. Many guards had stopped there, searching for her. Some guards looked right at her, and Latya froze.
A gunshot would send her to her grave.
"She vanished," One said.
"She must be hiding somewhere."
What? Couldn't they see her? They were staring right at her.
"This is so strange."
"Fuck, that bitch is a witch."
"What are you? A child believing in fairy tales. She was certainly hiding somewhere around here. I shot her! She can't last out here injured!! Find her!"
"Yes, sir!"
They dispatched, and Latya let out a sigh.
They couldn't see her. What kind of strange thing was this? Was it the shadow thing again? Was it helping her again? Why?
Pain jabbed into her again, and she felt dizzy from blood loss. She tried to stand and inspect where she was, but it was too dark and she could barely see a thing.
But just a that moment, lights flickered on one by one. They were anchored to the walls of the cave she had fallen in, and suddenly she could see her environment again, and were nothing but oil fashion lamps.
There was nobody there too.
Struck by fear, she stared up at the full moon that shone down on her. She could see it all now, her blood that had dripped from her back and smeared the wooden surface, the foreign writings carved into the wood, and the style of it.
Wait, was this a coffin? And there were two of them? She was standing right at the junction where the two coffins met.
It wasn't until she watched her blood get absorbed by the two coffins did she realized that she was doomed.
"Fuck, I'm in a horror movie."