From Marisa

"HELP ME!" Zac woke up to the nightmare of last night's attack, the agonizing screams of Kane and his men begging for their lives while he stood guard and did nothing but listen. His heart thumped so hard and loudly to the point it felt as if it were going to pop right out of his chest. His head did not stop throbbing, leaving Zac with a massive migraine. It was so painful to the point where he thought he was dying.

Zac's exhaling would and could not stop from extreme stress and terror. Wait… Why was he feeling these immense emotions now? From two years ago and up until now, the emotions he had were gone and caged up. The pain did not give Zac time to think but only to remember all the horror he had seen and experienced. The rush of all those years of torture and his recent broken ribs came rushing at him, experiencing it all at once.

He screamed in anguish, his eyes bulging like they were about to pop out of their sockets, he clawed at his chest and head to make the pain go away, but it was too much for him just to brush off. Two minutes is all the time it took before he passed out due to extreme pain. Zac woke up to a loud ringing sound. He opened his eyes to see nothing but the darkened shapes of forest trees blocked by the fog above him, and he realized that he was on the floor. His mind felt foggy and weak, but with the ringing noise going through his ears, he couldn't do anything but writhe in pain for another minute.

After a minute, he stopped feeling the extreme traumatic pain altogether, leaving only a slight headache and aching ribs from the stress and previous injuries. He bears with it as his confusion about why he's able to control his body once again is possible. Katrina was right; he had remembered everything he had witnessed, and everything he wished to forget came at him like a rushing flood in the form of physical pain. He attempts to calm himself down as he tries to figure out what has happened to him.

"Why can I think for myself?" Zac's thoughts keep winding together. He doesn't give himself a break as he forces himself to think of the moment it could have happened. "Did the drugs wear off?" Did they forget to drug him on schedule?" Repeating the moments he had with the bandits, he recalls being drugged; there's no dent in his memories or a blacked-out moment where something in his memories doesn't fit—coming back to the end of what had happened last night.

The Lion like beast pricked him with its claw and simply walked off, where he then blacked out. He woke up the following day and was conscious and able to take actions that weren't against his will. Concluding that the beast had something to do with the drugs wearing off, he relieves himself only for a moment of silence where he can take the time to re-experience free will. There is no pain or discomfort as there once was in his mind when he would be forced to do things against his will. He should have been happy, but now he must think about what happened again.

Plaguing his mind are the deaths he could have prevented or attempted to prevent if his mind were his own. "I'm sorry," he said to himself. "Why did they have to die? Why did this happen?" he cried in sorrow to and mourned those he wished he could have saved. The one's that haunted him the most were the people who were kept in the basement by Katrina.

"No, no, no! No!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. He couldn't control his emotions when everything reminded him of what he was thinking in those moments while trapped inside his mind. He witnessed every moment, but his muscles did not move. If he had someone by his side at this very moment, they would probably tell him, "it's not your fault," but Zac couldn't do anything but burden himself with everything that happened. "There's no going back now," he talked to himself. "I'm now a killer."

*Growl*

His stomach starved. Only eating bits and pieces of the scraps of food the bandits had given him left his stomach yelling out for food. Zac looked around. He didn't know what he was looking for, maybe just a bush with berries. The dense fog did not give him any way to search. He stood up from the ground to look but immediately fell back down. His muscles are sore from the waist down from running away from the beast yesterday. He used up all the strength and stamina that he didn't even have. He could only run and push himself unconsciously to keep up with Kane.

Zac continued to move forward after lying still for some time. "It's better than staying here all day long," he thought. "I won't be able to find anything if I stay in one place." He placed his arms in front of him to avoid accidentally running into anything. Carefully moving in all directions, he searched every bush he felt on his hand. Although hard to see, he tried feeling the berry's physical properties which were just something round and smooth. His search lasted long, and each bush he found pricked him. He searched those too carefully, but he couldn't reach deep into them for anything, making him have to find another.

While searching around, his hands bumped into a large tree, smothering his hands on the tree to make his way around it. His hands touched nothing, making him accidentally fall into the space which the tree had in it. He fell onto the ground and on something soft but hard at the same time that rose from the ground; his eyes opened when he picked himself back up only to see that he found himself back where Kane and his men were slaughtered.

And the thing Zac fell on. The body of Bandit #1 and #2, whose blood had not yet dried up, made Zac's hands all messy. Zac realizing what he had fallen on, gasped loudly while averting his eyes. But after looking again, his shock turns into a vengeful look. Although it's frightening to see a dead body, it was the corpses of men who lived a life of evil, "they did more harm than good. They're better off dead." Zac thought to himself as he smirked at their deaths, believing it was justice and karma at work.

With closer inspection, Zac noticed all the gear they had on them. Having used weapons when training, he thought it a good idea to be prepared in this forest. The only problem was they had long swords, which did not match Zac's size, making him frustrated. Luckily, he dug through the bodies and found a small dagger at bandit #2's hip. Not only did he find a dagger, but he also found two apples in the pocket of #1's jacket. Like there was no tomorrow, he munched into the apples filling his belly only a little bit to give him stamina for the long road ahead of him to try to get out of this jungle.

"Wait… aren't I getting stuck in forests too damn much?" Zac yells, realizing the annoying coincidence of every place he has gotten lost in; it has always been a forest. Squatting down in anger, he looks down outside the tree to find footprints or, more specifically, their footprints. It was his lucky moment. He learned footprint tracking and seeing as how the weather never changes in the forest, there was no risk of the footprints being washed away by rain. As long as he stayed close to the ground, he could find his way back to the exit.

Although he wondered about the beast and why it had helped him, he didn't give it a second thought to find his way back as opposed to finding answers about the beast. Going back into the tree, he feels through the bandits' clothes once more to find anything useful, patting bandit #2's pockets, the sound of a piece of paper crinkled, making Zac curious. Reaching into the pocket, he pulls out a folded piece of paper that looks like it was ripped out of a sketchbook. Unfolding the paper, it reveals a very detailed drawing of a family. "Are they his family?" Zac asked himself. Squinting his eyes in further curiosity, he turned the paper around to see if there was anything else.

`To my beloved Tommy

How are you? I haven't gotten a letter from you in a while. I hope you are doing okay. The kids and I miss you. They keep bugging me about when you will be coming home, haha. Of course, I tell them that you're out making the world a better place. But, It gets more challenging each day having to lie to them about where you're at. I wish you'd tell me, but I know your job doesn't allow you to do so. Ah, you wouldn't believe the rough day I had. My boss at the bakery kept nagging me for hours because I accidentally dropped a plate of bread. The good news was that I got to take them home, and let the kids have something yummy to eat for once in a while! Anyway, I don't want to bore you with my story, please write me when you can.

Your Love, Marisa`

"So, he had a family?" Zac thought while looking at the paper with rage in his eyes. "How dare trash like him receive love?" Zac's blood boiled when knowing that someone as monstrous as Tommy could have a happy family. It was sickening. Zac stuffed the paper into his pocket and headed off to make his way out of the forest, but he made sure to spit on both corpses before walking away.