18+ The Four Horsemen || Brothers of the Apocalypse ||

[AlphaZero]

The Four Horsemen

|| Brothers of the Apocalypse ||

 

:: AlphaZero ::

 

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[size=1][font=palatino linotype][color=#ff3333][u]Summary:[/u][/color] 

In the immediate future, a series of natural disasters have turned the earth into a complete wasteland. 
All living organisms, including mankind, have been wiped off the face of the planet. 
The government, who was able to foresee this situation, took extreme measures in order to counter the worst-case scenario. 
The most extreme measure was the creation of the Project "FAMILY”.
Four sets of seven young participants were carefully selected and placed into teams--War, Famine, Conquest, and Death. 
Each individual was then placed under cryogenic sleep in hopes of preserving the continued existence of mankind.
Years later, they awaken to find themselves suddenly thrust into an unknown world. 
Confused and lost, they quickly come to realize that this wasn’t the same world they knew. [/font][/size]

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[AlphaZero]

Chapter 1

||Death||

 

 

:: Awakening ::

 

It was the middle of the afternoon.

 

High above the city of Icrouis, the sky was a brilliant edge-of-summer blue, too bright to even look at for a few mere seconds. Clouds made tiny white smears against it, like whipped cream on top of his mother’s meticulously constructed cakes. And there, hanging in the vault of the heavens, was the sun.

 

Ayries Vlemeles stared up at it, stunned into silence. It burned his eyes, but he squinted and raised a hand above him and peeked through his fingers, not quite being able to look away. He stayed like that for a long time - so long his eyes watered.

 

He told him that that was all it was.

 

---

 

Ayries awoke without warning, eyes flung so wide each iris was a perfect orb of rusty chocolate. After a mere second of silence, his head turns to the side in a robotic fashion, mouth slackened, “I know what happened.”

 

Confusion spread across his visage after a few moments of blankness. The silence lessened as each second passed by while his blurred vision cleared up. His ears perked up to the sound of breathing that wasn’t his own. It heaved rapidly, as if the person had just sprinted an entire marathon without pause. The stranger then tried to speak in futile. All Ayries could make out was, “Get up...drown...hurry!”

 

Now fully awake, Ayries tried desperately to sit up, his muscles screaming out in pain with every little movement he made. His senses adjusted to the unfamiliar environment beheld before him. The gulls were tossed paper in a storm, flashes of white in the grey, tumbling as they struggled against the gale. Beneath them the sea rose as great mountains, anger in the form of water, turbulent and unforgiving. Forked lightning, brilliant and white-hot, flashed through the blackening sky. Crackling thunder rippled; the deafening noise engulfed marble buildings, erect and sleek with water. Rain fell in thick sheets of droplets. A primal scream could be heard beneath the booming thunder and the cracks of lightning. It had a raw intensity to it that told of urgency, of desperate need. The child’s scream came from a place of terror, telling of a mind lost in absolute fear.

 

The wind slammed the rain into his face as if they were bullets. His face felt raw and the water quickly filled his eyes. Ayries could make out four other people on the rubber raft. He noticed the small figure of a child, making his best attempt at hanging onto the raft with simply a one-handed grip on the rubber that looked dangerously wet and slippery. Cries ranging from sharp shrills to low groans were muffled beneath the angry growls of the charcoal colored sky. Ayries’s slight body was tossed about as the raft was bullied into submission by a group of hostile waves surrounding it.

 

“Hey! Hold on to something! It’s dangerous!,” the voice across from him screeched, the cries sounding concerned. He could barely put the face to the voice, but there was sufficient evidence to indicate that the person was slight.

 

His thoughts raced back and forth across his mind as his hands frantically grabbed at anything he could touch. He tried to think of any possible scenario that could have led him to be stranded at sea on raft in a thunderstorm with six complete strangers. The last thing he could remember doing was heading to bed after eating his mother’s cake for dessert. Though, he did recall having a very peculiar dream--a nightmare, more like it. He remembered it to the faintest detail.

There they were, sitting on the couch. Each one of them with a single hole to their temple, purple and brown seepage dried onto their lifeless skin. Maggots crawled from the holes and their ankles showed signs of gnawing from rodents. Eyes that once danced with light are now vacant and staring. The once rosy complexion was waxy and pale. Lying stiff and agape were the mouths that were once quick to smile and full of life. Blue and cold were the once red and warm lips that kissed with affection to their loved ones. The arms that must have held someone tightly in warmth and security were now arranged on the couch like the limbs of a rag doll that was violently abused and tossed away. The legs that must have once chased after someone in the park were twisted up unnaturally into a position that no living person could maintain.

 

Somehow, the raft pressed on, bravely climbing up the waves, and then crashing down in a cascade of water. In the midst of one of these heart stopping plummets a surge of water broke onto the raft, and everyone held on for dear life to anything that might save them. Draining back into the sea, the water retreated to its master, taking Ayries with it. He simply had found the pull of the water to be too strong.

 

A sudden dark indigo body of water enveloped his body the moment the raft slipped out of his grip. Not a moment too soon, the pressure immediately compressed his chest, forcing his lungs to burn as if on fire. The thumps of his beating heart hammered at increasing intensity and speed, like a bird trapped in a cage. His throat seared in great agony as the pressure of trapped air rose and rose and rose with each second he was under. Head pounding with panic and limbs moving about erratically, Ayries gave into the pressure and took a breath of air, only to engulf a gush of salty water. His taste buds took the full brunt of the ocean’s pollution. He opened his mouth again to scream in despair, only to let out a string of bubbles.

 

Icy cold water went up his nostrils, a stream of water cascading into the back of his throat and nose, sending jets of pain throughout his body. Just as the commotion and chaotic sounds of the sea drowned out to a low hum and his vision began to blur as his consciousness faltered, a breath of fresh air crashed into him like a freight train as someone pulled him away from the numbing hands of death.

 

“Hurry up and get in!,” the person howled, his voice raspy and weak yet commanding. “Hang in there! Grab on, quickly!,” a second person shrieked. Ayries flinched at the deafening high-pitched note she made. “Dawww, he risked his life to save you just seconds before you would have died a painful and lonely death. How heroic!” The sarcasm was the only thing Ayries could make out, besides the fact that this voice was another person this time. Being the shy and meek person that he was, he simply kept quiet for fear of confrontation.

 

Just as Ayries began asking if there was anyone else besides them, the raft that they had bundled together on disappeared into the darkness and was swallowed by the waves.