“We’ll never fall out, right?”

Those were the last words John had uttered to you; back when you two were still normal, still blissfully naive, still innocent; only to have that naivety suddenly stripped from you both.

It was supposed to be a normal game!; neither you nor John had thought much of it when starting to code and program the game just when you two had started college, just beginning to learn how to make such things with codes; John in particular had taken a shine to it, although he didn’t know much coding himself he always managed to get you to enter some programming into the game one way or another whenever he got stuck.

It soon turned out to be something you two could bond over; with John’s enthusiasm about coding and your intelligence in the subject, you and John grew ever the closer, with you and John often indulging on long coding sessions that led deep into the night.

Soon, however, this would only end up taking a turn for the worst.

This small game you and John had begun working on since the start of college was originally supposed to be nothing more than a simple rhythm game, without much originality or such; but John soon got invested in the programming and coding of the game, making up characters, naming them Cube and Blixer.

You hadn’t caught on to his excitement.

After a while, the whole concept of the game became sickening to you; and what with John still being ever the more invested in it, you couldn’t escape discussing the game every single day with him. You never had the heart to tell him that the very topic of the game had became incredibly vexating to you, as John had always seemed to elated and happy whenever he got the opportunity to talk about the game and its characters with you.

His last words that haunted you and you alone came from you two’s last interaction; during which you had just about grown to the point of wanting to throw up whenever John even vaguely referenced the game. It was the day before graduation, and it was after all of the periods of the day had ended, with you and John hanging out in the college cafeteria.

He always made you promise such petty stuff, making you ‘pinky promise’, and even if you found it incredibly childish, you never commented on his habits.

When he had made you make that promise, he had lifted up his right hand with his pinky raised as always, his signature bright grin on his face.

“Make friends, make friends, never ever break friends. We’re best friends, right, Elliot? Always have and always will be!”

That wasn’t to last.

Not long after the graduation party — in fact, only a few hours after it — you decided to go up to your dorm to pack up your stuff, when some thing knocked you unconscious from behind. The act in itself was completely unprovoked, at least from your perspective, and when you eventually came to once more you weren’t anywhere near your hometown. In fact, now you seemed to be stranded with a few other survivors in what seemed to be a desolate city, seemingly abandoned and stripped of its civilians.

It didn’t take long for you and the other survivors to establish a base; a makeshift home which was really just a decorated fallen-down cottage. It also didn’t take long for the survivors to eventually catch wind of there being another entity out there in the desolate streets, and no one was sure of its intentions; or even if it were friendly or not.

You assumed the worst.

Soon, the number of survivors began dwindling; first it was one person being lost, the next week another. Well, you were quite the worrisome type when it came to missing individuals, and had made it your mission to find the survivors once again and bring them back to camp.

While out on a scavenging run, you’d stumble across a suspicious-looking splotch of neon pink staining the ground; upon approaching it, the puddle of pink seemed to latch onto your foot and refused to let go.

Your ensuing struggle would only alert John of the disturbance of the trap, and of your presence; something he could not dismiss.