Kayden and the group had been walking for more ten minutes. They had passed by several buildings — and other types of structures — in the facility as they got closer to the central part of the facility.

They had also begun to encounter more and more tunnels that led to other parts of the mountain facility, so they were hopeful that they would soon find one that would take them to the part of the facility where the secret exit that Serena talked about was located.

After walking a short distance further, Kayden saw that ahead of them, there was fork in the tunnel.

The fork led away from the original path and branched to the right to connect with a much larger hallway. This new massive hallway was centrally positioned and led more directly to the main entrance.

This hallway seemed to be the main pathway of the facility. It seemed like it ran from the main entrance — at the front of under-mountain complex — and to reach deeply into the back of the facility, effectively dividing the facility complex into two halves — the right and the left halves.

The hallway seemed like it was best way to greatly shorten the distance to walk in order to get to both the center of the facility and the main entrance.

“I remember now. The Terminators who captured me used this hallway to bring me in here and take me to my prison cell,” said Serena who had been following behind Kayden and who had also seen the new pathway.

“They also brought us in using this hallway.”

Nadiya and the rest of the group soon saw the new tunnel and also mentioned that they too had been brought in through the large tunnel.

‘This hallway should be the most direct path to the entrance,’ Kayden thought when he heard what they all had said, ‘we should take this way in order to reach the center of this facility as soon as possible.’

“We will be taking this central hallway. It should allow us to get to our destination faster than the tunnel we are currently using.” Kayden said.

“I agree with Kayden. The central hallway leads straight through the whole facility. When I was brought in, the Terminators didn’t have to take any other pathway or diversions until we reached the rear of the facility and took another path to the prison cells.” Serena said.

Nadiya nodded to show that she agreed with Serena. “We experienced the same thing too.”

The rest of the group, who always seemed to follow Nadiya lead, also nodded to show their agreement to Kayden’s decision.

Seeing that everybody accepted his plan, Kayden led them through the adjoining path into the central hallway.

The central hallway had buildings on both of its sides, with tunnels and hallways coming from other parts of the facility to join into it along its length.

After leading the group to walk a short distance down the hallway, and past several buildings, Kayden began to perceive a weird smell wafting up from the deeper down into the hallway.

A thick and pungent smell of iron.

Blood!

Kayden immediately recognized the smell.

It was the smell of blood.

And it must be a great amount of blood judging by the heavy smell that he was perceiving.

“Shh! Careful everyone. There may be danger up ahead.” Kayden warned the group as he slowed his walking pace while also trying to minimize the sound the of his footsteps.

Serena tapped Kayden on the shoulder from behind and asked, “Any problem?”

Slightly turning his head backwards, Kayden answered, “No problem yet. But we are getting closer to the central part of the facility and therefore have a higher chance of encountering Skynet’s Terminators. Even though most of the Terminators should be focused on fighting the Resistance outside, there may some straying Terminators and other types of machines still inside the facility.”

Not wanting Serena to have any suspicions about him and his abilities, Kayden did not say anything about the bloody smell, and he only gave a general reason for his warning.

“That sounds reasonable.” Serena agreed, and she too slowed down her walking pace. the rest of the group behind quickly following.

But after taking few steps forward, Serena paused for a second and she took a deep breath, and a slight frown appeared on her face for a second before quickly disappearing.

Kayden had caught a quick glimpse of it before he turned to face forwards again, but he did not pay any attention to it.

The group sneaked on forward through the hallway for a short distance when Kayden noticed that forty meters in front of him, many things lay scattered around on the floor of the hallway.

Kayden could also see what that looked like stains on the walls of the hallways around the area where those things were.

Just like before, Kayden’s Neural Net Processor brain chip seemed to have an extremely intimate connection to his brain and his mind, with it seeming to be to detect and read his thoughts.

So, seeming to have detected his curiosity, Kayden’s HUD automatically came back online. Then his HUD zoomed in on where he was looking, and it showed him a close view of that part of the hallway.

Immediately, Kayden realized what he was actually looking at and what the source of the bloody smell was.

The stains on the walls of the hallway were not paint or dirt stains.

They were all blood stains!

And it was a lot of blood.

A large amount of blood had been splattered on the walls and it had covered most of the wall surface of that part of the hallway.

And the things lying scattered around on the floor of the hallway?

Corpses!

Human corpses!

Many dead bodies of people were scattered around on the floor of the hallway. Many of the corpses were missing some body parts. The missing body parts could be seen also scattered on the floor, often lying some distance from their original owners’ bodies. Even more blood had pooled around the corpses and slowly flowing along the hallway floor.

The wounds on the bodies did not look like the usual kind of damage caused inflicted by Skynet’s Terminators and their weapons.

With how torn and ripped apart the corpses looked, it almost seemed like the victims had encountered and had been savaged some kind of bloodthirsty wild beast with many large and sharp claws.

Kayden soon noticed something as he saw the face of one of the corpses. He recognized that face.

It was the prisoner who had given Kayden his clothes!

“Fuck!” Kayden cursed out loud, forgetting his own earlier advice.

“Everybody, stay here. Nadiya, don’t let the move from here.”

Kayden told the rest of the group to wait where they were and not move forwards. He did not want the kids to see the horrifying sight up ahead.

Although from his retained memories he had some idea about the current horrible state of human survivors everywhere, he did not believe that those kids had already witnessed something as horrific as what he had just seen. He did not wish to mess them up even more than they already were.

“Serena, come with me.” Kayden said and then dashed towards the bodies.

When Kayden reached where the bodies were, he walked among the bodies, checking their identities, and not minding the blood on the floor.

After checking the more forty heads lying arounds — some heads were not even attached to their bodies —, he was shocked to find out that he recognized the faces of all the heads lying around.

These were faces that he seen only minutes ago.

He immediately figured out who these corpses belonged to.

These were the corpses of forty of the prisoners whom he had freed from the prison cells!

 

*****

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