Chapter 6

As the crew walked back, Neo entered an introspective state for a moment. He just couldn't help but think that the scholar was intentionally stalling for time. Granted, he couldn't have known about the breach in the roof, but there was no way he wouldn't have known about the door situation. The pieces were already connecting themselves—the scholar was up to something. Beauty also seemed to have the same suspicion, even Shitface, who wasn't very much on the brain side, was throwing occasional glances at the scholar. Even he could tell that something was wrong with the unassuming scholar. But there was nothing they could all do. Dismissing or eliminating him was as good as spelling their doom. He was the only one who knew his way around the maze-like structure of the DCC anyway. So they just had to be quiet and watchful.

By the time the crew got to the breach in the wall, it was already nightfall. The moon had already chased away its glamorous counterpart dominating the night sky in all its glory.

"This is going to be a long… long night," Neo thought, as they got ready to scale the pile of debris.

"Hey, you go first," Shitface commanded, pointing the metal rod at Neo's head. Neo swallowed hard. He had seen that metal rod in action and he was sure he wanted it nowhere near his head.

Approaching the pile of debris, Neo's hand trembled slightly. The roof was about ten meters above him, the pile of debris seemed to be artificially arranged so that its tip was very close to the roof. Neo started to climb the mountain of debris one limb after another. Soon enough, the roof was just an arm away. Neo held onto a contorted metal rod that protruded from the breach. As he tried to use it to lift himself up, a frustrated grunt escaped from his lips. He was getting even weaker by the second.

After several strenuous attempts, Neo finally lifted himself and landed gracelessly on the roof. He opened his sweat-soaked eyes, only to see a decapitated head with hollow eyes and rotten viscera staring at him.

"Crap!!"

Neo cursed as he jolted backwards, struggling to get on his weak feet. Once up, the cold wind of the night sky brushed against his skin, making him shiver. Neo quickly checked around to see if there wasn't any creature getting ready to feast on him. He was in luck though, there wasn't. But what he saw instead made him feel dizzy . It turned out the mutant monster was not conservative with its brutality at all. There was a head cut off from its body, but its eye was still twitching. There was a severed arm writhing around. There was even a head with both eyeballs in its mouth, and also some other gut-wrenching scenes that Neo wouldn't want to spend any more than a second glancing at. It was a chaotic mess of carnage, gory, a horrid and gruesome massacre.

Neo looked down, noticing that the other members of the crew were scaling the mountain of debris no faster than he did. So he quickly turned back and tried to ignore the horrible scene before him, or at least get familiar with it. He needed to study the immediate environment so he could use it to his own advantage in case something went south.

After a few moments of keen observation, Neo finally uncovered the secret behind the breach in the roof. It was actually a path of escape carved out by the last survivors of the DCC… just as he suspected. Neo was currently standing on the concrete roof of a particular research facility, and there was a metallic beam connecting the building Neo was standing on to the next. The angle of the beam's inclination and the cracks created on its point of contact to the next building betrayed the fact that the makeshift bridge was done in a hurry. Beside the building was a ladder leading down to a position where four vague skid marks could be seen, confessing the speed with which the vehicle that conveyed the survivors had left. But that was the least of Neo's worries, actually. He wanted more than anything to just fall down and sleep. His mind was clouded with both physical and mental fatigue.

But before he succumbed to the soothing embrace of sleep, the pale light of the full moon reflected from the hollow eyes of one of the dead wraiths, reminding Neo that he was still in the middle of a devastating, harrowing nightmare, jolting him back to reality.

"Curses!!" Neo yelled, straightening his gaunt body.

"Maybe this is all some crazy nightmare and all I just need is to sleep and I can be free". He thought as the idea of sleep became even more tempting

Neo's eyelids felt heavy, his vision blurred. The pull of sleep was almost irresistible. A primal urge to fight, to survive, jolted him awake. A cold fear gripped him, a fear that wouldn't let him succumb to sleep.

If he slept in an allegiance trail, he didn't know what would become of him because, apparently, no one had ever entered an allegiance trial and lived to tell the tale. Apart from that, if he slept off, the other members would end up using him as live bait, just as they intended to. Speaking of the others, they had all scaled the hill of debris and they were right behind him, panting heavily. It seemed they were all bearing the same mind onslaught that Neo was witnessing. Maybe worse, shitface had dark circles under his eyes all of a sudden, Beauty seemed to be relatively fine, or probably she was hiding her exhaustion. While Scholar was struggling to even keep his eye open as his lab coat swayed slightly in the wind. He still had it on, surprisingly, as if getting rid of it was tantamount to getting rid of his dignity. But Neo was too tired to even care. The fatigue that had been gnawing on his physical condition had finally made its way into his mental fortress, sowing devastation amongst its ranks. He was in a bad shape, they all were.