With less than half an hour till seven, Theo arrived at the run down old building he called home. He stopped just shy of the entrance and looked it over with a solemn expression.
'Guess I'm home,' he thought as he let out a deep sigh.
Walking through the door, he set his tattered back pack down, sat at the table. He took off his shoes and shirt before relaxing as he stared off through a nearby window.
'I wonder what Maria is doing.' he suddenly thought after a few minutes of meditation. Then the more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Unlike what he was used to, the entire building was dead silent. Usually, by the time he hot home the whole place would be a noisy mess. But today, today was... peaceful. And that was in spite of the fact that all the children living there had now found homes.
'Now that I think about it, the whole neighbourhood is quiet, why?'
It was strange indeed, especially because their closest neighbour was an old woman who for some reason loved playing old songs from her youth at this time of day. It was annoying and the reason he hated coming home early, but it was always there nonetheless. him not hearing anything of the sort now only deepened his worry.
'No kids playing around, no arguing between hormonal teens, no noise coming from neighbouring buildings, nothing at all. That's strange,'
Jolting up from his seat, and for the next few minutes, he searched every room on the ground floor. Even going as far as to leave the building to check on the neighbours. Why? no real reason, it was just something about the atmosphere kept feeling more and more strange. Strolling to the door of the neighbouring house, he knocked multiple times, but got no answer.
Getting impatient, he peered through the window at the side and once again saw nothing.
'What the hell's going on?' he said, squinting even harder. Yet still all he saw were chairs, a table, and some pictures hung on the wall that looked to be of her from when she was younger. On the table below was what looked to be a record player.
'Guess she really loves reiving the past. But, how old is she? A hundred or some...' His thoughts suddenly trailed off as he spotted something in the corner that sent a chill down his spine.
'Is that... blood?'
In the corner of the room by a door, Theo's gaze fell on a pool of dark crimson. In it, he saw a trailing leg protruding from and propping the door slightly open. Theo barely held back the urge to scream at the sight and covered his mouth with both hands before swivelling and darting back to the orphanage as fast as he could.
Now with a sense of desperation about his search, he went through the kitchen, the pantry, the bathroom, the living room once again, even going as far as to search the back alleys. But still, he found nobody.
'Where is she?'
"Maria! Maria, I'm home!"
But his call got no answer. His heart began pounding in his chest. At first, it was a mild increase in heart rate, but soon it became a loud thump that only increased the sense of dread he was feeling.
"Maria, where are you!? Maria! Maria!"
He shouted her name over and over again, louder and louder as he desperately searched, but still, he got no answer, not even a sliver of a clue as to where she could be. Returning to the orphanage and taking a moment to think, he noticed that the stove in the kitchen was still hot, and he raised a curious brow.
'Did she go somewhere in a hurry? But where? And at a time like this? Or did something happen?"
His thoughts spiralled as he imagined different scenarios that could make any of this make sense. Opening a pot on the stove, he saw a half-cooked pot of food.
'No, she wouldn't have left food in this state. Not when we're already struggling to put even a loaf of bread a day on the table. Besides that, she has never left without telling me where she was going, or at least leaving a note. Maybe she...'
Interrupting his train of thought, a warm droplet struck the crown of his head.
'What the?'
He frowned, swiping at it absentmindedly, but what he saw when he took a look at what it was made his toes curl. His fingers came away streaked crimson. It was a strange, viscous, rough and metallic scented substance that he recognised.
'Blood?'
His gaze instantly snapped upward, and in that moment, a wave of intense panic swept over him.
"Maria....."
The silence that followed further sprouted the seed of worry that was quickly blooming within him, and before he knew it, he was darting away and racing up the steps. As it was night, the halls were all dark and devoid of the suns light. He reached for the switch on the wall as he ran past, he flicked it over and over but but the lights refused to come up.
"Fuck!" he exclaimed.
Ignoring the light and running up, he quickly reached the next floor. His foot struck something and he was instantly shaken and took out an old, clunky phone from his pocket. After struggling for a couple of moments, he managed to turn on the flashlight, and was immediately taken aback by the sight that followed.
His stomach churned, and he nearly threw up as littering the ground were a number of severed and mangled corpses. Surrounding them were dark, glistening pools of blood, reflecting the dim light of his battered phone's torch. Theo stared at the scene for what felt like an eternity, completely at a loss for words as his mind continued struggling to process the gruesome scene.
The next thing to hit him was the scent, he had gotten a whiff as he ran up the stairs, but now standing at the source, the metallic and disturbing smell stung his nostrils. But that wasn't all as along with it, there was another, strange scent. It was acrid, charred, curling into his nostrils like burnt paper left too long in the fire.
He shifted his gaze to the concrete walls, and his eyes widened in shock. Covered with deep scorched gashes looking like marks left by a knife, or no, something even larger.
'A sword? But what was a sword doing here?'
He stepped over the corpses and into the corridor, but like the previous walls, its entire surface, along with the doors to the rooms along it, were all charred, and not only that, the doors had all been smashed open.
"What the hell...."
Walking down the narrow hall, confused by what was now in front of him, Theo's mind raced with an unending number of possibilities. Possibilities, no matter how absurd they were, that could explain exactly what could have transpired in his home.
Exactly what, no who, could have done this? Did a fissure appear somewhere nearby? No, if there was, there would have been a warning... right? Those people couldn't have been so neglectful of the outskirts that they would let spawn run free inside the walls.'
But before he could formulate a rational map of the possible events, he heard a faint sound coming from just up ahead. He paused and braced himself as he slowly edged closer, listening closely.
"Maria..." he called out softly, but got no answer.
The closer he got, the clearer the sound became, and soon the very fait sound of someone's ragged breathing. Locking on to where it was coming from he bolted forward, swinging the half open door to his room open so hard he nearly ripped it off its hinges.
"Maria!" he yelled desperately.
Running into the room, his eyes once again widened in shock.
"My god!" he gasped.
Lying on his bed, in the place he had spent most of his life, with a bloody and battered body, was Maria as she struggled to breathe. Theo rushed to her side and fell to his knees with his eyes quickly welling up with tears. The dread he had been feeling only deepened as he looked over her injuries. Her entire body, like the walls earlier, was covered in cuts, gashes and scorch marks.
'That's not all, her two arms are broken and bent out of place,' running his hand across her skin, he continued. '... and her legs aren't in better shape.'
Reaching forward, he cradled her head in his arms.
"Maria!" he called out in a panic, but she was currently in no real state to respond. "Maria, what the hell happened? Maria, please answer me!"
Maria's breathing was already shallow, and with every gasp for air, her struggle only got harder. And as she lay there in his arms, Theo's heart raced even faster as dread replaced his every rational thought.
"Maria, please... don't do this. Please... don't leave me alone."
'Who could have done this? No, first, what reason would anyone have to even think of doing this? Who are those people outside?'
The young man's mind raced with too many questions preventing him from forming a single coherent plan of action. He needed to report this to the authorities, he needed to get Maria to the hospital., he also needed to check on his core status. But with the way things were unfolding, he was unsure of how to deal with or even understand the raging mix of fear, anger and utter confusion surging through him.
He could only stare at her and sob as the colour in her already pale skin slowly faded.
Desperate for a miracle, Theo held her tight as a stream of tears came trickling down his cheek.
"Maria, please! You have to be alright! You just have to be! Please! I'm begging you! You can't leave me! Not you too! Not now!"
She groaned in pain as, slowly, her eyelids began fluttering open.
"Maria!... Maria, can you hear me?"
She opened her mouth to speak, but the effort expended to perform that simple task was too much for her battered body, and she began coughing violently.
"No! Stop! Don't talk! Save your strength!"
Theo was desperate. Frantically looking around for something, anything at all he could use to help her. But alas, in his run-down orphanage he called home where daily necessities were scarce, there couldn't possibly be anything he could find to help her, least not in his room of all places.
'How do I get her to the hospital then? Wait, how do we afford the hospital in the first place?'
The mere thought of the thousands of credits he would find himself in debt for was enough to make him instantly scrap that idea.
'So where do we go now?'
With her in his arms and his skin up against hers, he could feel the warmth of her body slowly fading as a chilling cold replaced it.
"Come on, Maria, stay with me!" he demanded as he fumbled in his pocket before pulling out a phone.
'I can't think about that now! What I need to worry about is keeping her alive!'