The first thing Priar could make out was a foul odor. It smelled of spoiled meat left long enough to collect dust. As his head began to construct, there was a faint hum of an insect floating by his ear. His eyes followed afterward, but were greeted to a darkness unknown to his time in Harmony. In the real world shadows would cast off even a slight hint of light. Silhouettes would form as his eyes adjusted, but in Harmony, these rules did not apply. Darkness was not a color amongst its code. It was an enemy to light itself, in a constant dance for control. What light tried to burn its way through, was absorbed by that insatiable hunger. It swallowed what life it could until it was overpowered by the endlessly bright heat. Only, the dark had existed long before and it will continue to exist long after.
Not soon after his head assimilated into the space, his boots found the floor. Squelching into the sickly mud beneath him. Although much of their location had been obscured in darkness, Priar could clearly make out the summer rays gleaming into two separate pathways each 80 yards away from where they'd been standing. From beside him the rest of team 12 righted themselves. Rudolph carrying the rifle he'd used in the test, and Lance with a sidearm. Bright believed Lance's performance was deserving of some reward; more than that, he'd felt bad for the young man.
They'd not been given the time to form a plan. After they'd finished shooting, Bright simply tasked each team to bring him the flag and sent them somewhere completely unknown.
Slug walked ahead of the formation they'd spawned in, eagerly searching around the darkness.
"What are you doing?" Esme asked with more attitude than she'd intended.
"Looking for the flag? Duh." Slug replied looking under a wet sheet. His fingers stuck to the fabric as he released it, finding nothing but dead air.
Esme went to argue, but Jolie stopped her. "Lets try and find a light. We don't know where he could be hiding this thing. Rudolph, keep an eye out for the other teams outside. You've got the gun, so put it to use."
Rudolph saluted "and if I see someone?"
"Report it" Jolie ordered. He nodded then jogged into the light and out of the bunker. Priar went along with this, but he'd much rather have been outside.
The team fumbled around the room, tripping over rats and other small objects that acted as clutter. Priar cautiously stepped on something cylindrical, he lifted his foot and it disappeared back into the darkness where it'd come from until it came to a stop against something hard. He crept to the object with a hand outstretched, feeling along the floor he stopped in his tracks when he felt the tip of a needle gently poke at his fingertip. Definitely not a flashlight, he thought. He stood, feeling around for what the syringe had hit. He placed his hand on the cold varnish of a wooden cupboard. He could feel the dust clinging to his fingertips as they slowly scanned along the surface. He came to a stop when he found a copper knob and gave it tug, but it'd been rusted shut. It was then he felt something brush against his back. He quickly turned swatting at whatever bug he thought it to have been, but he then heard Slug's muffled laughter from a distance.
"That's not funny" he said into the darkness, turning back to the cupboard. With another pull of the knob he'd pried it open. Inside was a zippo lighter. He flicked it to life, filling the space with a dull hue of orange. Esme, breathed a sigh of relief. She'd always been afraid of the dark, but she was much too prideful to say it.
Priar brought his light around the room, and to his shock, he'd found that the beds, walls, and floors had been covered in blood. The bed Slug had searched only moments before had been coated in a viscous red. Priar had to remind himself none of it was real, as did everyone else. That thought could only protect them for so long.
Jolie let out a shrill scream. No one had ever heard her scream before. She hadn't known her own voice could reach that pitch either, then again no one could keep their composure when met face to face with a corpse.
His skin was deathly pale, eyes sunken in his skull. It had seemed like all of the fat on his bones had been eaten away by maggots and whatever other insects that'd used his body as a breeding ground.
Jolie fell back to the floor clawing at the mud to get farther away from the body, unable to take her eyes off of him. She backed into Priar's legs then skittered around him as far she possibly could.
"What the hell is that?!" Slug shouted.
Lance took the lighter from Priar's hand, gesturing for him to go check on Jolie. "A body. Late stages of decomposition. If I had to guess, he's been dead for a few weeks now."
"This happens in only a few weeks?" Esme questioned.
"In a rainforest? Yeah-"
Priar knelt down to meet Jolie, barely seeing her crazed stare in the fire light. She held her knees to her chest, every muscle in her body tense. He tried to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but she slapped him away.
"It's ok! It's just me. You remember me right?" He spoke in a low tone to ease her. "The guy you saved on our first day? The guy you want to kick the shit out of?" she finally looked away from the body. "I know I'm probably the last face you want to see right now, but it's going to be alright. This place isn't real. We're inside Harmony, remember?"
She brought her knees away from her chest, unwrapping herself from the cocoon she'd made."Y-yeah, of course."
"You alright?" Priar asked.
"I'm ok, it just startled me." Her steeled expression returned once again. "Let's just get out of here."
From the bright entrance to the bunker they saw the silhouette of a bounding Rudolph holding his rifle in one hand, pumping himself forward with the other. He sprinted to the firelight closing the distance between him and his team within seconds.
"9 is coming this way!"
Jolie hopped up to her feet, "from which entrance?" Rudolph pointed down the path he came. Jolie nodded, trying to avert her eyes from the body. "They'll search this place like we did. When they're distracted, we'll ambush them." Rudolph almost put his hand up to salute her, but Priar interjected.
"Hold on, ambush? You think that we can take on all 6 of them? I don't know if you noticed but half of the team can't even shoot straight let alone fight."
"You've done it before. You'll be fine." she reassured, snapping off a piece of wood from the cupboard to use as a weapon.
"I hate to agree with him, but Priar's right." Esme added. "If they notice us before we can get to them, we are at the disadvantage."
Jolie huffed a breath of frustration. "Then don't get caught!"
Lance, who held the lighter close to him in consideration finally spoke his thoughts. "It's a risk. They'd have the better fighters in any other situation, so this may very well be the only chance we can take them out-"
"There's gotta be another way," Priar interrupted. "Rudolph, what does it look like outside?"
Slug looked past the group to see team 9 cautiously entering the bunker, 1 of them holding a pistol. "They're coming in," he whispered. Lance quickly flicked off the lighter, plunging them into darkness once more.
Rudolph lowered his voice to a whisper as well. "It's a maze of trenches, if we leave from either side we'll be stuck regardless."
Priar's eyes went wide at his words. It seemed so clear to him now. "I know what we have to do."