“Do you know these people?” Serena asked Kayden. It seemed like she had noticed that he was emotionally affected by the corpses.

“Yes, these are some of the prisoners I released from the prison cells before I met you,” Kayden said with a sigh, “and now, it looks like, in the end, they didn’t manage make it out of here alive.”

Kayden kept on checking the corpses and many body parts, trying to find out some clues about how they died and what killed them.

The gruesome nature of the corpse’s injuries and the way that the bodies seemed to have been ripped apart and left strewn around the hallway gave the Kayden the sense that whoever or whatever had killed the prisoners took great pleasure in the act.

One of the more intact corpses, a woman with a broken and twisted neck and with her head turned the full one and eighty degrees and now facing fully backwards, had even been stripped naked.

‘What kind of perverted and homicidal psycho did this! Damn! This does not look the work of a Terminator. The Terminator I fought before did not seem like it had the emotional capacity for such perversions.’ Kayden thought.

“These people don’t look like they were killed by a Terminator….” muttered Serena who seemed curious about what had happened here and had also been examining the bodies, “…there seems to be almost a human touch to this massacre.”

Just then, Kayden, who had was still checking the naked corpse of the woman, noticed that unlike the rest of the corpses and the body parts which were positioned fully within the hallway, the woman’s corpse seemed to have been dragged slightly into a small connecting side hallway. This much smaller hallway opened into right side of the central hallway and 5 meters in front of where Kayden found the prisoners’ corpses.

Kayden looked into this small hallway and he saw that it was built like a cul-de-sac, ending in a solid wall after only running for about 10 meters.

On each side of the hallway was a building with a single door. Both doors were wide open.

Realizing that whatever had killed the prisoners had most like come from those buildings, Kayden was frightened, his heart sped up, pounding wildly. But quickly, after thinking for a second about the fact that he had heard any sounds come out of the two buildings, he realized that the occupants of the buildings had most likely left the area.

“I saw two buildings in this side hallway. I think that whatever had killed these people might have previously stayed there. Wait here and watch the hallway. I want to check and see if I can learn anything from the buildings.”

Now more confident, he ran to check the buildings. The two buildings were built in a similar way. Both had large interior spaces. They were filled with training equipment of all kinds — both for normal physical training and for combat training — and they were even some pre-Judgement Day entertainment devices like televisions, CD/DVD players, boomboxes and loud speakers, and gaming consoles — yeah, them buildings had been fully decked out.

The buildings had obviously been made with the occupants’ comfortability in mind.

Each building had most likely been built according to someone’s taste.

A human taste.

After his quick check of the buildings, Kayden ran back to the hallway to meet Serena and said, “I checked the buildings inside and they were empty like I had expected. The killers must have left some time ago.”

“What do you want to do now?” Serena asked. “I think we should increase our pace and get out of here as fast as we can. We definitely don’t want meet the ones who did this.”

Kayden thought for a short while and then said, “This side hallway leads nowhere. It ends in a solid wall. So, the killers must have left here using this central hallway. The problem is that we don’t know which direction they went. We don’t know whether they left towards the main entrance at the front or towards the back of the facility. If they had left towards the main entrance, we may encounter them if we continue along this central hallway.”

Kayden then glanced at the rest of the group who were waiting some distance away and added, “We have other people coming with us, including children, who we have to protect along the way. If we meet such dangerous psycho murderers along the way, honestly, I don’t think that a single unarmed Resistance fighter and a normal survivor with only one gun will cut it. So, I think we should retrace our steps and return to our original tunnel. Thankfully, we have only walked through this central hallway for a short distance.”

“But we can make it if we are a little more careful, and then quickly join up with the Resistance.” Serena seemed to want to continue traveling along the central hallway in order to escape faster.

Kayden shook his head to disagree. “No, I can’t take that risk. Besides, look at all this gore. Do you want the kids to see all this?”

“We can cover their eyes—”

“No. I have decided. We will return to our original tunnel.”

Kayden did not want to risk getting into any fights with Terminators that would most likely force him to use his abilities in order to win. Although he may end up victorious, he would most likely reveal that he was not the normal human survivor he claimed to be.

This was something he did not wish to reveal, especially to a Resistance soldier like Serena whose hated enemies were Skynet’s Terminators and who would most likely hate anything that might be associated with Skynet, machines and Terminators.

Besides, Kayden did not know whether he could even defeat the prisoners’ murderers with his abilities. The killers seemed to be very powerful and well-trained — they are definitely better trained than he himself — judging by the many physical and combat training equipment in the two buildings.

Not waiting for Serena, Kayden walked back to the rest of the group.

“This hallway is not safe enough. We will return to our original tunnel and continue traveling through it. Okay?”

Nadiya seemed to have noticed Kayden’s firm tone, and after she took a glance at Serena who had a slightly pissed expression, she quickly nodded in agreement.

‘Hopefully, this method will be good enough and will allow us to avoid the prisoners’ killers.’ Kayden thought as he led the group back to their original path.

*****

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