Silence.
The silence felt palpable. I felt choked like every breath i took, I was breathing lead instead of oxygen. My lungs burnt desperately and I released a breath i didn't know i was holding.
"What are you talking about?" I croaked, my voice hoarse and cracking. My heart felt like it was beating at a million miles a hour.
"Don't bullshit me." She coldly replied back. "Why were the shadows chasing you so ruthlessly."
"I don't know.", I said my voice heavy with strain of trying to keep my teeth from clattering.
She went silent as her facial exspression underwent a change from indifference to anger, then to curiosity and finally pity before it turned back into a cold indifferent exspression.
"So you say you don't know anything?" she asked curiously
"Last thing I remember I was running into a burning aparment building, then darkness and I found myself here." I explained to her. "I don't even know how I got here or what is happening here. Heck I didn't even know those monsters were called shadows till now."
I looked at her pleadingly, begging her to understand me, sympathize with me and to an extent save me.
But unfortunately her face was steely, not a shred of emotion to be seen on it.
Crack.
Last thing I saw before I lost consciousness, I saw Clair hovering over me. Her gun moving from the crook of my neck.
"Fuck..." I said before everything went dark.
.....
...
I woke up with a splitting headache. Ah,head pain, my old friend. I woke up with a start despite the pain in my head.
I was in a room. The room was simply furnished but was brightly lit. And I mean BRIGHTLY LIT. The light was bright to the point of it being uncomfortable, blinding even.
I tried moving of the bed, my head throbbing painfully in protest. I stumbled towards the door, my eyes blurry with tears from the blinding light. I fumbled around looking for the handle of my door and finally felt i with my hand.
I pushed the door and exited the room. The next room was a busy hub. People moved left and right, laughter and chatter drifted from the room. The people though they laughed harmlessly were armed to the teeth. Guns and knives as well as swords and all matters of weapons on their persons.
The once bustling room turned quiet once i entered. All eyes turned towards me. I saw some of the people subtly rest their hands on their weapons.
Clair stepped out, the crowd parting to let her through. Her eyes cold and calculating as she scanned me critically, her face revealing nothing as she stepped closer till she stood face to face with me.
She looked me up and down slowly her eyes never leaving me.
"Follow me." She said walking towards the back of the club.
A cathedra couch was at the back of the club. Clair sat down on the couch. Burly,armed men surrounded her like she was some kind of queen. I chuckled softly at the ridiculousness. A foot suddenly appeared striking my stomach.
I fell on the floor clutching my stomach in pain. A tattooed man with cold eyes looked down at me, his hand clutching a katana by his side.He stomped his foot into my side,applying pressure to my ribcage.
I felt my breath leave my lungs as his foot dug deeper and deeper into my side.
"Enough" I heard Clair finally speak up "Let him go"
His leg finally lifted from my side
"We will do the old fashioned way" she said, and the words settled over the room like a death sentence. Hands yanked me forward, forcing me down, my knees slamming into the floor as a sharp pulse of pain shot up my spine.
She stood up regally and approached one of her "attendants". She took a blazing red sword from them. As she pulled the sword from her sheath I could have swore the temperature soared as she pulled it out of its sheathe.
I flinched and tried to shuffle away from the Blood red sword in discomfort but the tattooed man i now knew as Kazuya held me by my shoulder in place.
Something within me detested the sword, causing me intense discomfort as i struggled to get away but Kazuya's grip on my shoulder was like a vice.
The crowd watched in silence now, their faces carved from stone, their weapons no longer hidden.
Clair stood and approached me, her presence suffocating, each step deliberate, unhurried, as if she already knew how this would end.
I tried to speak, to tell her again that I didn't know, that I was just surviving moment to moment, but my throat closed around the words.
She stopped in front of me and tilted my chin up with two fingers, examining my face and my visible discomfort with quiet disappointment. "Ignorance doesn't make you innocent," she said softly. I barely had time to register the cold flash of steel before it sank into my abdomen.
Pain bloomed violently, stealing the air from my lungs as warmth spread beneath my skin. My body sagged forward, strength bleeding away with every heartbeat. The room blurred, sounds stretching and warping, until even the pain dulled. Darkness surged in from the edges of my vision, heavy and absolute, until it swallowed everything whole.