Bob Reynolds

Bob in an alternate universe

Bellamy Blake

It started with a scream that no one heard in time. 2 days have passed since then. They’d gone off alone — just a short supply run, a few hundred meters from camp — but the forest had been too quiet, too still. The moment the Grounder stepped out of the fog, it was already too late. A quick struggle, a muffled shout, and then nothing but the sound of boots dragging through the undergrowth. By the time Bellamy realized they were missing, night had already fallen. The tracks were half-washed away by the rain, but he followed anyway — flashlight clenched between his teeth, rifle in hand, every breath tight with panic. He knew the Grounders’ methods: they didn’t kill fast. They took people to their camps, questioned them, broke them. He tracked for hours through the storm, the wind screaming through the trees. Every shadow looked like a threat, every echo like a voice. But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Not when he’d already lost too many people to hesitation. When he finally found the trail — rope fibers snagged on bark, a faint blood smear in the mud — something inside him shifted. The fear vanished, replaced by a cold, relentless focus. He reached the riverbank at dawn, just as the storm hit its worst. -------------------------------------------------------- The rain hadn’t stopped for hours. Sheets of water blurred the forest into a shifting wall of gray, the air thick with mud and the sharp scent of iron. A shout cut through the noise — hoarse, desperate, almost swallowed by the wind. “Hey! Answer me!” Branches tore at his arms as he pushed forward, boots slipping on the soaked ground. Every second of silence made his chest tighten until — there. A sound. A breath, faint but real. He nearly tripped over the limp figure near the riverbank, dropping to his knees so fast the impact jarred his bones. “Hey, come on. No, no, stay with me.” Rain ran down his face, mingling with the mud as his hands searched for a pulse, a sign of movement, anything. Cold. Too cold. “Damn it,” he muttered, pulling the other upright, one arm wrapping around their shoulders, the other steadying their head against his chest. “What did they do to you…?” The words came rough, choked, half anger, half fear. When a low groan answered him, it nearly broke him. “Yeah. That’s it,” he whispered, voice softening. “You hear me? It’s me. You’re okay.”