Page 132 of Kill Feed

My body should react. Why won’t it fucking react? I see him coming. I see him charging directly towards me.

Move, goddammit!

The collision comes hard. A hand grabs the front of my hoodie before my back is slammed into a tree. The impact rattles through my bruised body, a stinging reminder of what happened only hours ago.

Pain blooms across my shoulders, shooting through my back and ribs.

Still, I barely react.

The ram skull fills my vision, and for a split second, we’re so close that nothing else exists. And somewhere behind that mask, the man I trusted raises a hand as if he’s about to hit me.

Dante’s grip loosens on my sweater as he steps away, retracting his fist. “Tell me, little stray,” he grimaces, pulling a blade from his belt. “Where would you like me to cut first?”

How about at my fucking heart? He can start there because apparently, I don’t need it.

“I can cut you from head to toe,” he continues, waving the knife in my face, “let’s put on a show; the audience is watching.” Dante taps the tip of the blade against the camera strapped to his chest, smile faltering for half a second.

Sick fucking bastard. This was his plan all along, wasn’t it? I try to swallow down the nausea rising in my throat, but even my trachea stops listening to me. I’ve been robbed completely of control over my whole body.

He shifts the knife in his hands, flipping it from one end to the other. “You wanna die here?” Is the last thing I hear before he lunges forward, striking the knife into the tree bark next to my head, slicing the lobe of my ear.

This instant is enough to kick-start my body back into motion. Focus returns, crowding my field of vision with the eerie forest. I rip myself from the tree, almost stumbling to the ground as my gaze tears through the clearing, searching for directions.

Where the fuck did Leo go?

Shit, neither Leo nor Marcos is there. He must have run off, wolf skull chasing after him.

I don’t dare to look back as I run towards an open path, the clearing disappearing behind me. I can hear boots hitting soil that aren’t mine, but I don’t dare to look back.

I dart through shrubs and splattered moonlight filtering through the pines as tunnel vision leads me to wherever the fuck I’m going.

I barely had time to think between running and fighting for my life while making excuses as to not think about the possibilities. To find any other explanation. Telling myself the timing was suspicious but not impossible. Now he’s chasing after me, a repeating theme I can’t seem to shake.

And suddenly there aren’t any explanations left.

Only conclusions.

Another conclusion being that I’m completely fucking lost. My lungs burn as I sprint directly into a hornet’s nest. Bloody bodies litter the forest soil as agonizing screams echo through the air.

To my left, the clown twins are tying a girl to a tree, the barbed wire and chains tangled together as they wrench her tighter and tighter, letting the spikes pierce deeper into her skin.

To my right, the group of military men in gas masks are beating a guy to death.

It’s a fucking bloodbath, but none of the bodies seem to be Amani, Lucas, or even Leo. This could mean that they are safe, but it could also mean they were murdered somewhere else.

I keep running, letting my body carry me further, fast enough to just run past these lunatics in masks, but the darkness does nothing to help my footing as it hits one of the bodies and crash to the ground.

Air rushes from my lungs, but before I can even suck in a breath, I hear a voice behind me.

“I’ve been looking for you, you little shit.”

I swing my body around, hands still digging into the dirt. It’s the asshole I cut during the first game— there’s a bandage wrapped around his arm now and a crack in his gas mask. “Oh. I’m going to enjoy bashing your head in.”

His group steps away from the mangled corps, filing closer, dragging their bloody bats through the dirt.

“This the boy who dented my truck, ay Kieran?” a woman chimes, wiping leaves from her bat before swinging it in a circular motion.

“I’m surprised the guy can even run after that crash,” another adds.