Grave of Heroes 10 Chapter 10

By the time he made it to the school Braden had nearly run out of energy. Carrying a person's entire body weight while running was no simple task, not even for someone who got as much exercise as he did.

He quickly carried her to the gardener's shed. He muttered a quick prayer hoping that Darvish hadn't locked the shed.

Braden had never checked it before, so he didn't know if he did or didn't.

Trying the door, he found it opened easily. He set the girl down as gently as he could, checking to see if there were any change in her condition. She still hadn't regained consciousness, and he had no idea if he was right about it being drugs or if it was something more serious. For all he knew they could have tortured her, and she had internal injuries.

He didn't have time to think about it though. He looked around and saw a cabinet with a lock on it and a sign that read: Dangerous Weapons Keep Out. He looked around for something to break the lock but all he saw as a bucket and a pair of gardening shears.

He picked up the bucket and tried slamming it on the lock but it didn't budge. Growing desperate, he grabbed the gardening shears, and then ran back outside, closing the door behind him. Maybe it would buy enough time so that the task force could get here before they found her. Of course, if it came to that it would mean things had gone bad for him.

He quickly looked around for a place to hide, but before he had time, they were there.

The men ran up to him silently. They didn't even seem to be out of breath.

"Another bad sign," Braden thought. That meant that, at the very least, they were in better shape than he was, which meant they weren't just random street thugs.

"Who are you?" He shouted, hoping the noise might draw someone.

There was no response. Instead, the man he'd identified as the leader barked something in that language Braden didn't understand, and they quickly fanned out around Braden, cutting off his avenues of escape.

Braden thought desperately, trying to come up with a way out of this, but they didn't give him a chance.

They ran forward, drawing weapon that Braden hadn't seen before. All of them wielded swords, and Braden felt his blood run cold even as he ran towards the one on his right side. "All of them use cold weapons, all of them are Supers." And even as this thought occurred to him, the one on his left suddenly blurred forward with astounding speed as he suddenly arrived behind Braden, stabbing forward with his sword.

Braden tried to twist out of the way, but the sword still caught him in the shoulder.

The pain was unlike anything he had experienced before. All of the muscles soreness in the world couldn't compare with the feeling. Worst of all was the fact that he could still feel the sword inside of him, cold and sharp.

He let out a cry as he staggered forward towards the man he had charged at.

He swung wildly with the gardening shears using his good arm. The man didn't even try to dodge and just reached out and directly caught the shears with his hand.

A sound rang out like metal colliding with metal, and Braden, hoping to see blood coming from the man's hand, saw that it had taken on a greyish sheen, as though it was coated in metal.

The man didn't even hesitate as he swept Braden's leg with his own, knocking him to the ground. Before Braden could even react he felt the same cold, stabbing, awful sensation in his gut, and gasped out a breath. Tilting his chin down, he saw a sword stabbing through him, pinning him to the ground. His hands went to grasp at it. He had no idea what he was doing, whether he wanted to pull it out or keep it there. He just didn't want the man to hold it anymore.

However, the man had already let go of it. He stood above him, looking down.

Braden let out a cry as the pain started to hit him.

It hurt worse than anything he'd ever experienced. It made his shoulder seem painless.

Worst of all was the feeling of wrongness, the feeling that something awful and devastating had happened to him, was happening to him. He'd dislocated a finger once before when his mother had slammed his hand in a door. The feeling was like that, where he didn't want to move it, to pop it back in place, even as it felt so painful and wrong while being out of place. His entire body seemed to convulse around the sword stabbing through him.

He gasped for breath as the other two men came up and stood looking down at him.

They spoke to each other in that same foreign language before one looked down at him.

"Where is the girl?" The man asked in flat, unaccented, Federal.

Braden just shook his head. He coughed, causing the pain in his gut to worsen, and felt blood on his lips.

"Where is the girl?" The man repeated.

Braden shook his head again. The man said something in that other language and Braden felt a sudden pain as one of the men took his foot and stepped on Braden's injured shoulder.

He screamed out, tears trickling out of his eyes from the intense pain.

The leader waved his hand and the other man took his foot off of Braden's shoulder.

Braden let out a choking, gasping cry of relief. He wept, and felt ashamed even as he knew that it wasn't something to feel ashamed of.

"Where is the girl?" The man asked again.

In that moment, Braden hesitated. He wanted to tell them. He wanted to make the pain stop.

Seeming to read something in his eyes, the leader spoke. "There is no reason this has to be painful. We can send you on your way quickly and painlessly. The darkness will take you and the pain will be gone. All you have to do is tell us. Tell us where the girl is."

Braden looked at the man and came to a decision. He opened his voice and croaked out, "The graveyard back down the road. I couldn't keep carrying her, she was too heavy and I don't have any abilities. I dropped her in the graveyard thinking I'd send someone for her once I got help."

The man looked at him before nodding. "We will check. If you lied to us, I promise you your death will be long and torturous."

Then the leader gestured at the others and barked some orders in that language Braden didn't understand.

The leader and two of the men ran off. Only one remained, the man who had stabbed Braden in the shoulder earlier, the one with the ability related to speed.

He eyed Braden coldly, watching to make sure he didn't try anything.

Braden felt his consciousness start to slip away. But before he could pass out and escape the pain, and the dread he felt when he thought of what they would do to him when they didn't find the girl, a voice sounded out.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Chapter end