Zero Sum

These bubbling, oozing black pools found on the island's north-eastern side have a sinister appearance. Largely avoided by the miners, the tar pits are found in a grassy expanse of land with a few signs posted containing warnings; over the years, sunlight and rain has worn and corroded some of these signs almost but not quite to the point of unreadability.The biggest pits are obvious at a glance, but smaller patches or tar sometimes burst through the surface unexpectedly, and a number are hidden beneath underbrush. What cannot be mistaken, however, is the strong odor of tar which permeates the whole area.
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Skraal
Posts: 327
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:00 am
Team Affiliation: Jewel's Leviathans

Zero Sum

#1

Post by Skraal »

((Cody Jenkins continued from Wings On My Shoulder Blades, There's No Angel Anywhere))

Cody’s lungs burned as he continued moving forward. Though every step of his feet got slower and clunkier as he walked, the thought of stopping for a rest seemed out of the question. He couldn’t let her get away. There was no question about it anymore. Irene had to be taken down if he wanted to get out of here alive.

Not that he was particularly happy about having to kill her, mind you. She was a killer herself, of course, but Cody still wasn’t at all a fan of the thought of playing along with the rules of this twisted game. Unfortunately, the powers that be had forced him into this situation, and now that the game was winding down, his chances of getting a kill were getting slimmer and slimmer. The last thing he wanted was to be survive to the end and have his collar blown just because he spent the whole game hiding.

Cody sighed. It was an unavoidable flaw in his strategy. Obviously waiting until the end was better than putting a massive target on your head at the beginning, but now that he had made it this far, the pressure was on. Unfortunately for him, it looked like he had realized this far too late. If he hadn’t been so cautious with Irene earlier, he wouldn’t have gotten caught in this situation.

The futility of his chase finally hit home as he passed the entrance to the tar pits. A loud groan made its way out of his lips as he came to a stop near a particularly large and foul smelling hole in the ground, the setting sun slowly draping the place in increasingly dark shadows. He had lost her. How stupid he had been! She was right there, where he had wanted her, where he could have easily turned and blew her away before she could do anything. Why did he let her go?

A loud snapping noise pulled his attention away from his ruminations, his self-recrimination momentarily blocked out by an all too welcome rush of adrenaline. Hefting his weapon in front of him, he swung around, throwing a loud shout in the direction of the sound,

“Hey, who’s the-”

His sentence came to a sudden stop, his final word cut of by a high pitched yelp caused by the sudden sensation of his feet losing contact with the ground. For a single moment, he was weightless, gripping tightly to his gun as he felt his body fly through the air and land with a splat in a pool of thick, sticky liquid.

A quick tug of his arm soon revealed exactly what one would have expected at this point. He was stuck, and slowly yet surely sinking deeper and deeper into the noxious obsidian pool. Panic began to rise in his chest as every attempt to wrench himself free instead resulted in him being pulled even more strongly into the rising tar.

It probably would have been a good idea to let go of the jackhammer at this point, but despite the clear logic behind it, Cody’s fingers still found themselves tightly around its stock. Even in this desperate situation, he still possessed the presence of mind to understand that if he lost his weapon here, he’d be a dead man once he got out, surely killed by whoever was lurking just outside the pit, waiting to take advantage of his misfortune.

And so, the sun sank lower in the sky as Cody kicked and struggled, desperately trying to extricate himself from the liquid prison that was wrapping itself around him. He gave a quick, choking gasp as the combined effect of the pressure on his chest and the horrific smell in his nostrils quickly began to overwhelm his ability to breathe. Within moments, he was enveloped in darkness, though it didn’t matter anymore if it was the sunset or the tar.

B027: Cody Jenkins - DECEASED
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