The first hours after barricading the lab were slow and suffocating.
They didn't dare turn on the lights. As the Afternoon filtered in through the high windows in dull strips, catching floating dust and the faint shimmer of chemical residue on steel tables. Hunger came quietly at first just a dull awareness then it started to hit sharper as time stretched.
They needed food.
The teacher decided they couldn't stay sealed forever. The prep room had water, but nothing else. The canteen was too exposed, so they began checking nearby storage rooms instead moving cautiously through the laboratory wing.
It was quieter here than the rest of the building. Too quiet.
They found a staff pantry in one of the smaller offices a few sealed biscuit packs, bottled water, some stale bread. It wasn't something much, but enough to stretch carefully.
That was when Alero began noticing it, the glances.
At first she told herself it was nothing.
Everyone was shaken. Everyone was stressed. But the boys' eyes lingered too long.
She shifted closer to the female teacher instinctively, keeping her siblings between them. The teacher noticed too. Her posture tightened. She began giving quiet instructions more firmly, keeping control of small tasks like rationing and who held what.
The boys obeyed but only on the surface.
There was something restless in them now. Something that hadn't been there before.
(Fear changes people!!!!)
Sometimes it removes with a masks.
They moved deeper into the lab wing to check another storage space. The hallway lights flickered briefly, then steadied. The air smelled metallic and stale.
Alero felt it before it happened the tension snapping.
One of the boys moved suddenly.
He grabbed the teacher from behind.
It happened so fast her brain refused to register it at first. The other boy blocked the corridor instinctively, eyes darting once toward Alero not in fear, but in warning.
The teacher struggled immediately, striking backward, elbow connecting with someone's ribs. She almost broke free.
Then the second boy grabbed her arms.
Alero's siblings began crying, confused by the sudden shouting. One of them asked what was happening. She didn't answer.
Because she knew, She knew what exactly these boys were trying to do.
She had seen it before in men on streets at night. In whispers at school. In stories girls never told teachers.
She knew it was one of the ugly side of humanity when pushed to a corner.
The teacher fought hard at first furious, shocked but exhaustion had already eaten through all of them. The Hours of running, Fear....Shock... Stress.
Alero stepped forward once just once then stopped.
She had no weapon in her hand. Her arms felt like stone. Her legs were shaking. Her siblings clung to her waist.
If she moved toward them, what would happen to her siblings?
If she screamed, what would it change?
The teacher's protests shifted from commands to pleading.
That sound would stay with her forever.
Alero pulled her siblings back slowly, step by step, toward one of the side lab rooms. Her heart felt like it was breaking through her ribs. She didn't look at the boys again. She couldn't.
She pushed open a smaller lab office and shut the door quietly behind them.
The crying didn't stop outside.
Her little sister kept asking what they were doing to the teacher. Her brother looked at her with wide eyes, trying to understand something he wasn't ready to understand.
Alero pressed them against her chest and covered their ears.
She felt useless...Helpless.
The world had been in chaos barely hours ago and already something worse than monsters was happening inside it.
She stared at the door, waiting for courage to appear inside her.
But it didn't.
Outside, the sounds changed again with pleading and moaning sobs as the teacher Resigned to what ever the boys were doing to her as Exhaustion claim her.
She hated herself in that moment.
Hated that she wasn't stronger. Hated that she couldn't protect everyone. Hated that surviving sometimes meant choosing who you couldn't save.
And somewhere beyond the lab wing, faint and distant, something else echoed through the building.
A low, dragging moan echoed through the hall ways, as shifting bodies dragging sound rang.
Alero lifted her head slowly.
The boys were too distracted to hear it yet,
But she did.
Something shifted in her and the fear of before came crushing on her back again.
Because monsters were coming.
And monsters didn't care who deserved what.