Chapter 12 - The Descent
Elena missed the first rung of the ladder, her boots slipping on the slick, rain-soaked iron as she fell hard against the metal platform, bruising her shoulder.
"Mom! Are you okay?" Maya called out from the darkness below, her small face streaked with rain and dirt as she clung desperately to the railing.
"I'm fine, keep moving down! Don't look at the windows!" Elena ordered, wincing as she pushed herself up and began the treacherous descent into the chaotic yard below.
The front lawn was a sea of flashing red and blue lights, though strangely, no police cruisers were in sight—only sleek, black utility vans with obscured license plates and men in heavy protective gear cordoning off the property.
As Elena and Maya hit the wet grass, a blinding spotlight from one of the vans snapped directly onto them, pinning us in its harsh, inescapable glare.
"Subject and minor secured. Initiate memory scrub sequence," a cold, automated voice boomed from a loudspeaker mounted on the roof of the nearest vehicle.
Elena grabbed Maya's hand tightly, breaking into a desperate sprint toward the dense line of pine trees bordering our backyard, ignoring the mud sucking at her shoes.
"Keep running, Maya! Don't stop for anything!" she yelled, her lungs burning with every breath of the freezing night air.
A sharp hiss sounded behind us, and a dense, sweet-smelling white fog began rolling rapidly across the lawn, eating up the grass and swallowing the trees ahead.
Maya stumbled and fell into the wet mud, sobbing as the fog closed in around her small ankles, turning her white dress a ghostly gray.
May you like
Elena dropped to her knees to pull her daughter up, but as she reached out, her hands grasped empty air where Maya had been a fraction of a second before.
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