By the time the clock neared seven, Theo found himself strolling down a street lined by several sagging old buildings. The deeper he went, the quieter the sounds of the numerous vendors and machinery became. At some point, the sound of the cannons lining the walls ceased, at least that was what he thought.
His ears were still blocked by the music coming from his earbuds after all. The only reason he was even aware was because the earth became still once more. He looked back towards the wall. From this distance, the myriads of buildings that stood between him and the wall blocked off his line of sight to it, but from where he stood, he could just see the very top of it.
Turning back, he let out a sigh and continued down the street.
'At least there wasn't a siege today.'
Sieges are events of catastrophic proportions. Categorized into tiers, the lowest tier alone would be enough to wipe out nearly half of the outskirts. During these natural disaster-like events, hordes of spawn swarm and storm the walls of the city. Laying waste to everything and everyone in sight.
His nonchalance regarding the threat of a siege
His nonchalance regarding the threat of a siege wasn't a sign of bravery. It was more like a sort of numb acceptance. One that came with growing up beneath those walls under the constant threat of those life-ending attacks.
When one lives their whole life knowing a single bad day could erase their very existence in minutes, or even seconds if they're truly unlucky. Fear eventually dulls into nothing but background noise.
Theo took a few more steps before slowing. Stopping a few steps ahead, he glanced around. Feeling a faint prickle run across his skin, the kind that one usually felt when something felt wrong happened… or right after something terrible had already happened. He pulled out one earbud.
Usually, in this part of the outskirts, the noise filling the air was much, much less than deeper into its center. But still, there would usually be at least a few vendors and machines assaulting his ears.
But right now, there was nothing.
No machinery. No vendors. No chatter from the neighbouring blocks. Even the occasional groan of pipes beneath the street had gone silent.
The eerie quiet wasn't peaceful, though. It almost felt imposed. As if the whole sector had been smothered under an unseen hand.
Theo stopped walking. The air tasted stale, heavy in a way he couldn't explain.
His brow creased.
Something was off.
Terribly off.
He tucked his hands into his pockets and kept walking. Soon, Theodore was only a few buildings away from home. Before he reached it, however, he caught sight of something peculiar. Strolling to the door of the neighbouring house, he knocked on the rickety door multiple times, but got no answer.
'That's weird. Usually she would have answered by now.'
Living inside this old building was an elderly woman. She had lived there as long as Theo could remember. And unlike all the others who lived close to them, she was the only one to show even a sliver of kindness to him apart from Maria in this hellish world.
He knocked again, harder this time. The wood rattled in its frame but remained shut. Placing his ear close to its rough splintering surface, he tried to listen for any sign of movement inside. No shuffling footsteps. No tired voice calling out from inside. Not even the creak of old floorboards shifting under weight.
Just silence.
Getting impatient, he peered through the window at the side and once again saw nothing.
'What the hell's going on?' he thought, squinting even harder. Y
et 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 something he had seen numerous times in books about the old world. A record player.
All in all, it looked like the home of a woman nearing her twilight years. Just then, a thought appeared in his mind.
'I never questioned this before, but how old is the old bag? A hundred or some...' His thoughts suddenly trailed off as he spotted something in the corner that sent a chill down his spine.
Theo froze.
In the dim corner of the room—half-hidden by the length of the table, lay a dark, uneven shape. At first, he tried to rationalize it.
'Maybe it's a shadow. A stain the old bad couldn't get out. Maybe... maybe...'
He tried harder and harder to convince himself that what he was seeing wasn't real. That it was his mind playing a cruel trick on him. That if he just rubbed his eyes, he would open them and see the elderly woman sitting by the record player listening to a nice tune.
But the longer he stared, the more the truth dawned on him.
The colour was wrong. Too deep. Too heavy. Too thick! And he knew that, because he had seen it once before.
'It was a pool of 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. Without even the slightest hesitation, he darted back to the orphanage as fast as he could.
'Now that I think about it, the whole neighbourhood is quiet, why? Because this place is closer to the centre of the outskirts?'
No.
That wasn't enough of an explanation. The outskirts were loud even on quiet days. Someone always argued. Machines always clattered. The outskirts were always going to be the outskirts. And silence in the outskirts wasn't natural. Silence meant only one thing out here:
Either that place was abandoned for one reason or the other, or nobody there was alive.
He cut sharply past a rusted fence, ignoring the way the metal screeched as he brushed it. The orphanage sat right in front of him. Bursting into the building, he called out at the top of his voice. "Maria! Maria, where are you?" as he went through the living room, the kitchen, the pantry, the bathroom, the living room once again, but nothing.
'Where is she?'
"Maria! Maria, I'm home!" he called out again.
But his call went unanswered.
An indescribable sense of dread crawled up Theo's skin. settling on him like a thin layer of ice.
Every room he checked, only to find it empty, served to deepen the feeling. The orphanage wasn't large by any stretch of the imagination. But it was still bigger than any of the surrounding buildings. That's why it took him a while to check every room on the first floor. Just to find them all empty.
Each time he shouted her name, the silence was the only thing to answer him.
If before, he was wary of the strangeness of his predicament. Now he was sure something was wrong. Terribly, unmistakably wrong.
Theo stood in the center of the living room, chest heaving, eyes darting from door to door as if Maria would step out at any moment.
But she didn't.
His heart began pounding in his chest.
"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.
'Did she go somewhere? But where? And at a time like this?"
His thoughts spiralled as he imagined different scenarios that could make any of this make sense.
'No, she wouldn't have left the house without locking the doors. Not when we're the only ones left living in this run-down hut. 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 knew all too well.
'Blood!'