Five Deaths to Trigger – Runaways

After killing Jackie in front of her whole class, Connie realised that she could no longer stay within her old life which caused her to make the decision to runaway from home.

It had been two weeks since she’d runaway from her family, and during those couple of weeks she had met with a few other runaways. Some were normal teens from dysfunctional families, others had jumped off the deep end which resulted in their parents kicking them out. However, despite being in a group of twenty or so children, Connie was still the odd one out as she was the only child who was younger than ten years old.

As the group migrated quietly from one camping spot to the next, Connie quickly diverted from her course to go to the toilet out of the view of the rest of the kids. They all came running when she let out a high-pitched scream to discover a body, completely drained of blood and lying in a ditch.

                ‘What is that?’ one of the younger girls moaned as the site caused her to gag.

                ‘I think it’s a body,’ Connie guessed as she grabbed the phone of one of the older lot before using it to phone the police. ‘Hello, I’ve found a body.’

                ‘Where?’ the lady on the other side of the phone asked calmly.

                ‘By the side of the river close to Adsa,’ she explained while gesturing for the rest of the kids to move on.

                ‘What’s your name?’ the lady asked, attempting to see if she was speaking to one of the various runaways.

                ‘Bye,’ Connie replied quickly and hung up the phone, much to the dismay of the woman on the phone. Turning to one of the older kids she said, ‘Go now. I’ll be fine.’

                ‘I’m not leaving you. They’ll take you back to your family,’ the girl protested.

                ‘Not if I have my way,’ Connie smiled. ‘I’ll be fine. They won’t be. Go.’

                ‘Fine,’ the girl grumbled before chasing after her friends while Connie to the side and climbed up the side of one of the buildings so that she could watch the police investigation without being seen.

*****

After Angee left, Tom and Felix sat down and discussed Jamie. ‘You worked with him,’ Tom pointed out. ‘Any idea on what we could use to bait him?’

                ‘The opportunity to kill you,’ Felix shrugged. ‘But he’s smart. It would have to be authentic.’

                ‘Then we give him that opportunity,’ Tom decided. ‘We set the trap using you and Penny. I’m the bait, you’re the weapon that is hiding in the corners where he can’t see you.’

                ‘Do you not think that he will be smart enough to see that?’ Felix questioned as Penny walked back into the room. ‘It would have to be you, and only you. Anyone else in the room with you and he’ll know, and he’ll be a no show.’

                ‘How am I supposed to fight someone with my powers?’ Tom countered.

                ‘By taking mine,’ Penny suggested, shocking Felix who spat his coffee out all over Tom.

                ‘What?’ he stuttered.

                ‘Give him some of my blood and he gets my mimic ability, he can mimic everything that Jamie does,’ Penny explained.

                ‘Yeah, but at what cost?’ Tom questioned while wiping the coffee from his face before adding, ‘It took us years to get you to a state where you were your own person, remember? You were mimicking Felix to the point that you basically were a female version of Felix.’

                ‘Yeah, but you helped me to learn to control my mimicking,’ she countered. ‘So you should be able to control it if you were to have it.’

                ‘Or he’d go just as bat-shit insane as the person that he’s copying,’ Felix warned. ‘The risk isn’t worth the reward here Tom, especially since the reward doesn’t necessarily come with the risk.’

                ‘Has anyone ever gotten anywhere without a risk?’ Tom asked rhetorically.

                ‘Depends on if there is a risk-free way or not. Almost everyone would take the risk-free way if it were offered to them,’ Felix replied.

                ‘But do I have a risk-free option available here?’ Tom asked simply.

                ‘No…’ Felix sighed. ‘Now that I think about it, that route has the least amount of risks associated with it…Do it.’

A few hours, an ambulance call, a woken Protector and a sleeping paramedic later, and they were ready to begin. ‘Tom, you realise that this could end badly for you, right?’ Lelia asked

                ‘Yes, I know it could. But I don’t have a choice,’ Tom sighed sadly. ‘I have to stop Jamie before he kills anyone else.’

                ‘As long as you understand,’ she nodded and attached two pipes to his arm, one delivering Penny’s blood from a blood bag while the other removed his own blood and inserted it into its own bag for safe keeping.

As the transfusion took place, Tom felt a wave of nausea hit before he fell into a deep slumber with his head falling forwards.

*****

Faye had taken to hiding in an abandoned flat in the middle of town, thinking it to be the only calm place where she can collect her thoughts and decide on her next course of action. Pulling out her phone, she plugged her earphones in and then set up the radio, which was playing the News. While she was mostly listening idly, the story of the car accident victim from a few days before hand caught her attention.

                ‘And in other news, the younger boy who miraculously survived a car crash out of Torquay a few days ago is said to be resting in hospital with only minor injuries,’ the newscaster revealed.

                ‘Minor?’ Faye pondered aloud. ‘His mum died in the crash, how did he only receive minor injuries?’

                ‘The crash also caused the death of the boy’s mother, Natasha. On a related note, doctors are shocked in terms of the boy’s rapid recovery despite being in the crash.’

                ‘Could Tom have…?’ Faye wondered aloud. ‘You clever SOB. I guess I know where I’m going tomorrow,’ she laughed before lying down and drifting off into a somewhat peaceful sleep.