Relief washed over her as she sank deeper and deeper into the welcoming darkness of nothingness. The weight helped her to float down, down, down until there was no light left. She was calm. She wasn't in any more pain.

Something grabbed her. It yanked her out from the deep, dark nothing and forced her back into the light. She begged it to let her go, to let her die, but it told her no.

Shooting up on the metal bed, the girl clutched her chest. 

She could feel the teared muscle inside of her begin to stitch itself back up. 

She detected the exact moment that she felt the blood in her body begin moving again. It was like she had pressed the rewind button on her life.

All the blood was dry now, gripping to the new warmth of her skin. The cover she had been placed under floated to the floor so she picked it up and draped it over her disgustingly dirty body.

White walls were attached to a white ceiling in the large square room she was in. She remembered that there were others there, before she died. She died. Everything was still and numb when moments before it had felt like her whole body was giving up on her.

The door was close, so she pushed off from the bed, expecting a pain that didn't arrive. She could walk fine, in fact she felt as if she could walk for days.

"Hello?" She spoke out into the empty corridor, receiving no reply. The room she had been in was at the end of a short corridor that led along her right and up a flight of stairs.

Memories of her last moments flashed through her mind. She was so scared, so afraid. They had stabbed her so that she wouldn't turn into a crawler. She would have done the same.

The wooden floor was cold under her bare feet. The dozens of splinters that had been embedded when she ran through the woods didn't hurt anymore. She touched the space above her heart again, rubbing at her chest.

At the top of the stairs there was a set of fire doors. She pushed one open and was met by the smell of grass and the heat of the sun. There was land for miles. Miles of empty land with no obstructions. She turned towards a building she had never seen the likes of before. It was huge, but modern. It felt like the entire second level was made from glass because of how large the windows were.

The girl blocked the sun with one hand and clamped her other around the sheet. It took her only a minute to reach the house. Before she had been in some kind of bunker in the garden of the property. The patio doors were closed but with a push they slid to the side.

An open plan made it easy for her to see the men straight away. They were all sitting at a long breakfast bar in the middle of the kitchen area, eating bread and talking about something she couldn't make out. When she strained to listen, she tried not to gasp when she realised she could hear every single word. She even heard the young one chomping on his food.

Inhaling deeply, she steadied herself and walked out into the open area.

The youngest choked on the food he was eating when he saw her. They all, almost in unison, stood up from the worktop and faced towards her, paling as if they had just seen a ghost. A steady pitter patter of water from the sink by the window could be heard by everyone. 

"Holy Shit."