Stage One: Hope in Darkness

Your Friendly Neighborhood Psycho (Lara)

I ran ahead of the group, the others followed on my heels. We all kept our heads down, and crouched as close to the ground as we could while still moving quickly. The echo of an engine bounced all around, getting louder. The headlights of the car quickly came into view. A body strapped to the hood. Ripper patrols. They passed us with no incident.

"Best not go that way," I murmur to myself. I turn the opposite way.

Ryan pulls ahead of me, taking the lead. Why did he need to come? I hold back the not so friendly comments rattling around inside my head. Sam was in the back, and Rose like me ended up sandwiched between the two guys. Could you be any more obvious Sam? He was clearly not over Rose. We all wanted to protect Rose for our own reasons. She was our medic, the only one of us with a working knowledge of what the hell to do if one of us gets hurt.

The sun was setting, it was getting harder to see. We had no choice but to pull out our flashlights. The darkness was even more prominent inside these buildings, in the alleys where the sun could not reach. It would be bad if someone tripped over something and broke an ankle. Worse if we stumbled on a pack of walkers in the dark. I suppress shudders. I cast my flashlight around, something catches the light. Drawing my attention.

There was a tripwire in the doorway.

"Whoa, Ryan" I shined my light and pointed at the wire, it looked like there were more too. all spaced down the hallway. Carefully I avoided the wire and looked around the corner. The wire was carefully placed, it led to a crossbow. It was aimed right at me, a sure kill shot. One tap on the wire and it would be all over.

"Traps, this one is rigged to a crossbow. We should be extra careful." Sam moves forward to get a look at it.

"This thing is pretty good, simple but effective..." he pauses and I can feel his eyes on me,

"What?" I snap quietly at him. Sam flinches slightly, a weird look comes over his face before he speaks.

"You think your friend set these up?" Belle? He thinks Belle set these up? What the hell kind of crazy was that?! Belle wasn't the kind of person to...

I stop that train of thought. That was before. Before everything changed. I had changed, before all this I had never thought I was capable of taking another person's life but... Images of the woman in the woods. Annabelle could be a very different person from the one I knew. Belle had always been good at figuring things out. All those books on engineering and architecture. She had wanted to be an architect. Figuring out how things went together was her passion. All that know how could have led to her making traps like this.

Oddly enough that didn't change anything for me. Belle needed to know I was here for her, always. We were family, no matter what. Whatever else had changed I knew that that never would. Annabelle and I were in this together, even if she didn't know that yet.

"It's possible." Ryan rolls his eyes. He is a pessimist. He thinks we are chasing a ghost and I doubt that will change anytime soon. He can go fuck himself. Belle is alive, I know it. I wasn't sure about what Rose thought. Sam could have just been indulging me.

"Maybe Sam should take the lead," Ryan suggested, more like stated.

"No way I'm leading," I argue. He rolls his eyes and rubs the back of his head with one hand.

"He has a sharper eye than you Lara," Ryan explains. I frown, the more time I spend arguing the farther away she gets. I push aside my pride and shrug.

"Okay" I move out of the doorway and allow Sam to pass me. He does it without even hesitating. The idea of death by crossbow is a lot better than death by walker.