Cross My Mind

FINDING THE TRUTH PART 1

Lucy turns around and started running towards the forest and immediately, the rest realized and they chased after her. Garba caught up with her and asked

“why are we suddenly running into the forest?”

Lucy caught her breath and responded

“don’t you guys get it, we just started the game and if we wait long enough for their eyes to open in the next few seconds the moment their vehicle disappears out of sight.

They will see us and we will be forced to start the game with a fight against them, a fight we will be outnumbered in; facing fourteen of them with only five of us”.

Garba and the rest of the team quickly understood Lucy’s plan, the two outcomes of the plan both lead to similar circumstances. The first circumstance being that Carson’s team does see them just as they are about to enter the forest, they would chase them right away. In this case Garba’s team would take initiative of the forest's thickness and indirectly fight them using traps and other indirect methods.

The second scenario is if Carson’s team do not see them entering the forest, in this case they already know that they will be around the area since it worked perfectly for them in the last game.

The five members of the team were about to enter the forest when Garba turned around to see if the other team has seen them or not, what he saw was the worse case scenario for their little team because they have already been seen by Carson’s team and half the members are already halfway across the beach chasing after them.

“Everybody follow me, we have been seen and they are already putting up chase. If the forest is ten times bigger than the last game, escaping them should not be that hard for us but we need to run faster” Garba mentioned and zoomed fast into the forest.

Once in the forest, Garba had all the team members run a few meters in a straight path and suddenly made a ninety degrees angle turn and ran in the direction to their right.

Just behind them, Carson and his team entered the forest.

“they could not have gone far, we are splitting into two groups and chasing them separately; each group should be more than capable of handling them but I want you to all send a massage to the team chat if you find them, we will do the same so that we will track you to where they are, we will overwhelm them with our numbers” Carson said.

He split the group into two, taking lead of one and heading to the left and assigning the guy with a tattoo on his face to lead the other team to the right. The guy with the tattoo on his face asked his team to come to a stop.

“I am inkface, that’s what you will call me for now and I want to know that all of you are willing to follow my orders. I am a little familiar with who we are facing, if we catch up to them, two of you are responsible for the big guy among them, you can handle the rest however you want but there is an Asian among them called Lucy, if you get In my way of fighting her I’ll eliminate you without hesitation. Boss Carson also said they are good with traps and lures so be watchful and avoid suspicious places and things.” Inkface said and the men responded with a “yes sir”, continuing their chase.

Two hundred and fifty seven meters away from inkface and his team, Garba’s team has approached an area that according to Garba should have a Giant Boa constrictor that is big enough to swallow all of them without problem and strong enough to kill a player with a single strike of it’s tail.

Garba opened his backpack and brought out two items, a long rope and a dagger.

“check your backpacks, do you have two items in them?”

Immediately, all the five members checked their backpacks and to their surprise, Mila, Lucy and Fred both have a knife and a rope as well while Sarah has only a knife and no rope.

“I think this is only for those who won the last game we played. I knew you guys won yours but I also won mine. Sarah is the only one who didn’t” Fred said.

“It actually makes sense, meanwhile this is not exactly a big advantage. We are already in the giant snake’s territory so I suggest we track and know where it is before it finds us first” responded Garba.

“our dressing is not so attention grabbing which will allow us to blend perfectly with the environment, if we want to track the snake, we don’t want to run into other predators or players so we should move through the trees. In a forest thick as this, there could be bears, panthers and jaguars and the trees are not exactly safe too so we should not linger much in one place but we cannot move recklessly too. That is how brutal nature is” added Garba.

The five players climbed trees and started moving slowly to avoid detection. They move from tree to tree through the branches one at a time and after an hour of sneaking around the forest, a lone panther came passing, as soon as Garba saw it, he sent a massage to the team chat asking them not to make any sound or move a single inch. all of Garba’s team mates cling to the branch they are on observing the predator roaming below them.

The panther casually walks in circles around as if it is looking for something and in a single swoop from out of nowhere below them, Garba and his team watched the panther get grabbed by the neck as the vicious constrictor shows itself. The boa immediately formed it’s death coil surrounding the panther and squeezing the life out of it and crushing it’s bones. The panther makes its last loud growling sound that reverberated the side of the forest before finally falling silent.

Every member of Garba’s team watched with grim and terror as the oversized snake take it’s time swallowing the panther. Each member needs not to be told by Garba who has managed to escape the snake in the previous game that if it sees them, chances are they are all going to die.

Just a few meters away, inkface and his group heard a loud growl coming from their right and he asked his group to follow him running towards the location Garba’s team was hiding on trees where the Boa just finished killing and swallowing the panther.

Garba and his team mates have been still for a moment, awaiting the giant killer snake to leave before they will come out and continue to move. The boa suddenly raised its head up and looked to the right.

Garba noticed the boa’s behavior and realized it is about to move because it is hearing something.

“get ready to fall back, the snake has heard something to the right and is about to move” Garba said in the team chat and all members got ready to retreat from Its territory on Garba’s command.

Just before the snake moves, a group of seven players dressed in Military camouflage ran into the open space right in front of the panther. The seven men now standing at an arm’s length to the head of the boa have become instantly paralyzed by shock.

“the guy with the tattoo on his face was my recruit that disappeared before the game” Lucy sent to the team chat.

“this guy has already joined the military guys team even before he went with you, I saw him join them; he must have been sent to check on us was all” Sarah responded.

The boa swooped down and grabbed one of the military camouflage dressed guys, causing the rest to run in different directions, with one moving to the left of the forest and the rest of the team moving backwards where they came from.

At Once, they boa chased after inkface and the rest of his group now running backwards to where they came from, Garba quickly gave the signal and his team started to move from tree to tree ignoring the screams of the rest of the military dress team as the vicious large snake devours them one at a tine.

After a few moments of sneaking from tree to tree, Garba and the rest of his team finally caught up to the player from the military group who ran in a different direction than the rest. He has gotten himself into yet another dangerous situation that may end his life as well. As Garba’s team sneaked from atop the forest canopy, they found the escaped player surrounded once more but this time by giant alligators and about seven mutilated dead bodies of other players who Garba believed must have run into the nest of the alligators as well.

“what should we do?” Fred asked, turning and looking at Garba.

“you mean should we help him, you cant seriously be thinking of helping an enemy” replied Mila.

Garba stopped them and gave the idea a thought before finally removing his rope, tying one end on the tree and throwing the other end to the guy. As soon as he saw the rope, he grabbed and started climbing, barely being missed by the sharp teeth of one of the alligators that charged at him.

after the man was halfway up the tree on the rope.

“stop” Garba shouted. “you will not be allowed to climb any further than this unless you tell us what we want to know. Climb one more centimeter and I will cut the rope” Garba said showing the guy his dagger.

The guy stopped where he was, “what do you want, I’ll tell you” he said

“how many of your team mates are left and tell us their location on the map” Lucy quickly asked

The guy looked at Garba, let go of one hand, slowly put the hand in his pocket.

“they are currently running back to meet with Carson, if you let me go, they’ll spare some of you” he said and slowly begin to pull his hands out of the pocket.

On the opposite side on an adjacent tree facing the tree Garba is standing on, Fred watches carefully and realized the guy slowly pulling out his knife. ‘is he going to cut his own rope, it cant be. He is …..’ he thought and suddenly realized what was about to happen.

“watch out everyone, he is about to attack by throwing his knife” Fred shouted and before any of them could react on time, the dangling man took aim and throw his knife at Garba who at the moment is squatting and about to cut the rope.

Although Garba saw the knife coming, he could not dodge it on time. It grazed his shoulder, cutting right through his cloth and arm before the handle of the knife hit him in the head, just above his ear at exactly where his Neuraface was implanted and Garba instantly passed out, falling from the branch he is standing on and crashing violently onto branches below him before his backpack hanged on the edge of one of the branches, preventing him from falling into the nest of vicious alligators.

The Guy who threw the Knife at Garba was trying hard to reach the top of the rope but Lucy who was on the same tree quickly rushed and cut the rope. Fred quickly rushed down a few branches and grabbed Garba so he would not fall.

The other guy fell helplessly on the floor of the forest, drawing all the alligators’ attentions.

“I am sorry, there are only seven of them left and they are tracking my position right now, if you help me, I will make sure they don’t fight you” he shouted in a desperate voice as five alligators from all directions surrounding him close up on him. The first alligator bit his legs and another bit his head and the rest, his arms. Each of the alligators began to do the death roll, a movement alligators make to break off the parts of their prey they are biting into. In a matter of seconds, the guy became dismembered into different pieces with his blood panting the forest floor red.

“we need to move away from here, I am sure however many of his team mates are out there, they must have been tracking his location using the team mate location on the map. I doubt any of the five that got chased by the boa survived, plus the one that got instantly killed by the boa and this this one, I reckon there should be seven of them left”. Lucy said

The team carried Garba and retreated to the edge of the forest a few hundred meters from the beach.

After getting cut on the shoulder and getting hit in the head with a knife, Garba blacked out and finds himself back in the glitchy space where a voice keeps calling him. The space has become a little less distorted and Garba has begun to recognize a few structures. He examined the space properly and noticed a door with a tag on it that he can roughly discern to be MEDULLA written in capital letters.

He reached his hand to hold the door knob but before he could touch it, a glitchy computerized voice said “warning, the answers you seek are inside the door but to open it would cause you unimaginable pain”.

Garba stopped for a moment and asked.

“who are you?”

“the answer lies on the other side of the door” the computerized voice said.

“I don’t have any choice than to open the door then’ he thought and placed his hands on the door. Once he turned the knob and pushed the door, his entire body burst of an agonizing pain. His entire body becomes enveloped in sheer physical pain that almost made him pass out. After a few minutes, the physical pain slowly decreased and all of a sudden he is back in his fourteen years old self on his bed with a terrible headache. Immediately Garba felt the pain of the headache, he knew exactly where and when he is, the saddest and scariest memory he has.

His father walked into the room looking drunk and out of his character.

“Dad, my head hurts really bad, I cant sleep at all because of that” Garba said to his father in the hopes that he may get him a prescription or even better, be taken to a hospital but instead Garba saw Mr. Danladi crying and heading towards his bed.

“is everything alright father?” fourteen years old Garba asked but as Mr. Danladi leaned closer to him, a repelling smell hit Garba and he knew immediately that his father was drunk, which was the main reason his mother couldn’t live with him anymore, the reason their lives became hell. Before Garba could do anything, his drunk father put his hands on his neck and started to choke him.

“I did not give birth to a witch, I must send you witch eyed brats back to where you came from” Mr. Danladi keeps saying while strangling his fourteen years old boy.

Garba could not do anything in the face of the overwhelming strength of a drunk Forty-eight years old man, he lay in his own bed wriggling in pain, being choked by his own father. In his mind, he keeps wondering if this is how he is going to die, who will take care of his sister and for a moment, the irky pain in his heart has reached its highest limit, then all of a sudden his mind becomes completely void of anything, he is back in the space with glitchy structures holding the knob of the unlocked door bearing the tag MEDULLA. He pushed the door open and walked inside.