Why did I not take a shot at any of the two? I began questioning myself.
I was currently still stuck inside the ventilation shafts, and this was the chain of thoughts that had come to plague me. It was only the silenced darkness that could produce such a thought, but an important one it was indeed to ask.
In the midst of an attempt at escape, I had managed to get myself into possession—even if only temporary—of a shotgun, one I knew to be very loaded. Yet why was it at that fraction of a second when I got my hands on it, it didn't even occur to me to try and take down maybe one of the two men that stood before my way.
It was idiotic now that I thought of it, but still I managed to get out of that sticky situation. Either way, at least I was no longer chained. That, to me, was the most important bit.
"Running around in the sewers, and crawling around inside vents," I mused to myself. "Who would've thought!"
This good mood of mine continued to play as I made my way through the dark vents. Although mostly clueless about where I was going, I trusted my senses in making the decisions for me. So far, everything was coming along well and I didn't hear a single word nor noise coming from behind me.
Of course, that was as quick to change as usual.
Surprising me, I began to hear the sound of rattling coming from the place where I had just left. Although largely inaudible, chatters among the two men could be heard. Mainly shouting of anger or something along those lines. Whatever it was, it was music to my ears.
Not long after this, I was quickly faced with my first cross-section. There was a path going to the left, and there was one to the right; which one should I choose I couldn't really tell.
Trying to recall the layout of the bunker, at least from what I could seem to remember, the room I had just been in was located at the very back of the place. It was practically two rooms further away from the front door compared to the storage room. Although that meant absolutely nothing to me, due to my inability to tell distance without a proper benchmark, I proceeded nevertheless to do the math.
"That should mean I'm right above the storage room, I guess?"
Still none the wiser of my exact whereabouts, I decided to just wing it and went to my right.
No point in wasting anymore time, I reasoned to myself.
And so, I veered right and continued to crawl yet again. It was certainly a tiring process and a rather cramped one too, but the fact that I could rest my limbs against something gave me a much easier time in moving about.
Now all I needed was a way to get out of the shafts and back into the rooms.
If I were to take back what was rightfully mine, I needed a plan of attack. Staying here was not part of that plan.
Thankfully though, it didn't take long for the vents to show me exactly what I needed. In a matter of a few seconds, I saw light coming from right in front of me. At least, some form of light.
Moving as quickly as my baby steps could grant me, I reached this vent panel that led down and out of the shafts. However, before anything, I decided to take a small peek at what I was getting myself into. Squeezing my line of vision through the grids, the only thing I could make out from the other side was a dark floor illuminated by what was most likely fluorescent lamps.
"What?" I couldn't help but utter. After all, this was completely different than the bunker I was exposed to… Unless this was another part of it?
Deciding that dropping down would be the only way for me to confirm it, I silently opened the panel below me and dropped myself down onto the floor. Long story short, that was a bad idea.
As soon as the shockwave hit my whole legs, I winced in pain as my body still was yet to recover. Damn restrictions!
Still, I looked around me while tending to my legs, and although I still wasn't sure where I was, I got to at least know that there was nobody around. In fact, as far as the eyes could see, there were only pipes and more pipes. It was clear that this place was still in the sewers, but where to be exact, I had no clue.
As soon as I was able to move again though, I quickly got up to try and figure that out.
Looking left and right, I decided to take the latter as it should lead to the same direction as the bunker's front door.
Making light steps in fear that I might attract unwanted attention, I ventured my way through the path fairly easily and once I arrived at the end of it, my question was finally answered. Sort of.
There was a wall at the end of the path: a rock-solid wall where the opening to the main sewers should've been. After checking it with multiple knocks and taps, I could pretty much say nothing indeed was going to break the thing.
"Interesting," I muttered. "So, this has to be some sort of hideout within the bunker itself. A place to hide yourself in during the case of emergency…"
I looked back at where I had come from and decided that if there were any secret doors or entrances I could use to my advantage, this would be the perfect place to look for them. Thus, I retraced my steps and began looking out for such things.
***
It didn't take long for me to find my first point of interest, but it wasn't necessarily knowledge that I could put into actual good use.
After having walked a good four to five minutes, I came upon the sight that seemed to have been the final resting place of a person. Although no remains could be found, to nobody's surprise, the walls themselves had been etched with markings too faint to read as well as the sad, solemn presence of an old and rusty canteen. Surely, all of the water inside would've evaporated by now, but the thing remained standing for who knew how long.
It was a sad sight, truth be told, but an even more ominous one to see when you were trying to escape from potentially being killed.
Rest in peace, whoever you were.
Continuing on with this somber note, I tried to hear for any signs of the two men who were after me. Oddly, I somehow couldn't manage to hear a single thing from across the walls between us. It was as if I had been completely cut off from the world completely.
That kind of scared me.
To my absolute liking though, something more of my style came along not too long after.
It was a hidden door, one I wouldn't have seen if not for the fact that I was looking for something of its kind.
Reaching out to its handle, I tried opening it and to my absolute surprise, it subdued itself to my will relatively easily. Now, that was not a good sign. Either that meant the thing had miraculously stayed in perfect condition over the centuries, or someone had been tampering with it; the former seemed highly unlikely so this brought me up to my next question…
Was the presence of this whole place even a secret in the first place?
The only reason I was ecstatic in finding this whole thing was because I thought it would give me the upper hand, but now… Now I wasn't that sure anymore.
"Oh-hoho," the Reaper's voice resurfaced to my consciousness. "Things just got interesting, didn't they? What do you think, Rainy boy?"
Standing there rather dumbfoundedly, I wanted to return a snarky remark but I couldn't bring myself to. I was unsure of what my next course of action should be, and this did not help my predicament.
In fact, I wasn't even given a chance to make the decision myself as a sound of gunshot echoed from the darkness. The sound of a shotgun, its wielder furious and craving for blood. Even if that wasn't necessarily what was actually being said, to have that being the first thing I heard after a long while caused me to flinch a bit way too much.
Without even a single moment of hesitation, I opened the door and went back into the "safety" of the bunker.
At least, that was what I had in mind.
Without even a care of who might have been on the receiving end of the door, I bolted my way into the bunker and hid myself in whatever place I could fine.
Fortunately, not only was there nobody to welcome me but the place that I had entered couldn't have been a better place. For lack of better terms, I dubbed the room the bunker's gym. Not only was it the most spacious out of all the rooms I had been in, it also had all sorts of makeshift training equipment scattered within it.
I guess even savage murderers still needed their muscles pumped everyday.
Looking around, I tried to pinpoint any thing that I could weaponise for my gain, but unless my arms could suddenly recover and use one of those dumbbells then I was out of luck. Especially with my left arm being at the state that it was. I had almost forgotten how badly it was injured, but out of everything that was wrong with my body, this one seemed to be the one growing the worse condition. Not only had it swollen by a ton, but the sheer red color that it was boasting looked as if it was out of a horror movie.
As the sounds of gunshot began to get closer and closer, I decided that there was no time left and tried to find myself a nice place to hide in. After searching for a couple of seconds, I settled at the corner of the room, behind a rack of equipment. It wasn't exactly the perfect place to hide in, but it would do.
Heart pounding, I waited with bated breath as the sound of gunshot continued to parade the corridor just a wall apart from me.
What the hell was he doing!? This was what I had in mind the whole time. Surely, wasting one's bullets would never be the ideal case, but to do so intentionally… That was practically idiotic. Don't get me wrong, I was happy to see it happen, but it did kind of rub me in the wrong way.
…
It stopped. For whatever reason, there was no longer any sound that I could hear from the outside. All was still, and inside the darkness that enveloped me, I could only hear my breathing.
"What?"
Looking around me from behind the rack, I saw that there was nobody there with me. It seemed that whoever it was—most likely four-eyes—did not enter via the secret door.
Still, there was something deeply disturbing about this whole situation.
Realising that staying in one place would actually be a bad tactical move, I was quick on my feet to go and venture to other parts of the bunker. Better me coming to them, than they to me, I thought.
Needless to say, my body was no longer in a good shape. My steps were weak and even my whole body felt like falling. Truly, if it wasn't because of the endurance I'd built over the years, I would've fallen down and passed out. Thank goodness, I didn't need to run that whole lot, otherwise this story would be a whole lot different.
I got out of the gym and arrived at the corridor which led to the living room. Although the place looked just like how I remembered it to be, I approached the place with caution.
After all, in such a well-lit place like this, I was basically a sitting duck.
"Alright, here we go."
I took my first step into the light.
At first, it felt nice to finally be out of the dark. My whole body felt healed, even if only in spirit. Sadly, this happiness quickly turned into panic as I realised that the floor had suddenly come out of its way to greet me.
Ah shit, here we go again.
Falling onto the floor with a great thump, I injured not only my face but also my left arm, which was subjected to the weight of my whole body. Needles pierced its way through my muscles, as the pain jolted throughout my whole being. The pain was so vivid that I couldn't help but bite at myself to prevent myself from screaming.
One small misstep. That was all I needed to turn into an absolute pathetic lump of meat.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit," I whimpered, as I tried to push myself back up again. Sadly, this was all to no avail.
"Found you."
OH FOR THE LOVE OF-!
Without even a second wasted, I was thrown through one of the doors and onto the cold, hard floor yet again. This time, blood was definitely oozing out of my head, but even this was lost in the midst of the headache that I was having.
"Haimesworth! Found him!"
Crap, he was calling for four-eyes too.
Crawling with all my strength just to get somewhere—anywhere from there, I dragged my whole battered body away from the man. Although I wasn't exactly sure where I was, I needed to keep the distance between us.
WHAM!
Something hard suddenly slammed itself onto my back, causing me to scream in pure agony.
WHAM!
Another one, and I was already coughing up blood.
WHAM!
Third time, and I was already at the edging the end of my tethers.
"You think you can run away, kid? Ain't gonna happen."
Gone was my ability to speak and gone too was my throat. My vision was already turning dark, and all that I could hear was the impending bells of Death tolling in the background. Hell, I couldn't even move a muscle, so how the fuck did I even think of being capable of killing the Dark Marksman with this measly amount of power that I had!?
"Now, now, Rainy boy... You've still got that one small thing left up your sleeves. Why don't you let me help you out a bit? All I'm asking in return is your left arm, how about that? It's already broken anyways..."
In that fraction of a second where I bordered between the light and the dark, I used all of my remaining energy to utter one last word before fading away.
"Please…"
…
..
.
"With pleasure."
And with that, all of my being burst into flames as a demon was let out.