Winds of Change

By Berry's Ambitions

Chapter 12: Encirclement

A/N: Oh my God, I never thought I would leave a fanfic for more than an entire year without updating it, and words cannot express how truly sorry I am for that. I still love this fandom and this story dearly, but I got swept away by college and other personal stuff that made it hard for make to focus on writing, let alone updating a multi-chaptered fic. It took a while for my HHE inspiration to come back, but it has, and here is the newest chapter to celebrate.

Looking back on the earlier chapters of the story... I'm really not satisfied with them. I don't think I put enough detail in them compared to later ones, and I want to clean them up at some point. As for the Abducted follow-up(s)... yeah, that project is pretty much dead and buried for now. I don't know if anyone was still hoping for a reboot or a sequel, but as of right now, it's not going to happen. Sorry for those who were still looking forward to it even after all this time. :(

Without further delay, here is the first of (hopefully) many new chapters!

DISCLAIMER: I do not own The Hills Have Eyes.

"What the fuck?!"

Those were the first words that tumbled from my lips as soon as it registered what had happened and who I was looking at. My voice startled even me—loud, almost squeaky and coloured with hysteria.

You'd think by now I'd be used to surprises (most of which consisting of people popping out of nowhere and scaring the shit out of me), but it was far from the truth. I stood there, stockstill and staring at my comrades, taking in their grisly injuries.

The both of them had been beaten to a pulp. Their faces were bruised and swollen, and I could see tears in their clothing. Stab wounds, with blood soaking right through. God only knew how deep the wounds were, but then again, the entire existence of this place was making me wonder if there was a God at all.

Everyone else's reactions were instanteous. Amber screamed, running towards them immediately. Napoleon reached out to grab her arm, frantically calling out towards her. Chameleon's eyes flew open wide, his shoulders rising like the hackles on a cat as he looked up. Letch hissed, grabbing me by the shoulder and yanking me backward before I could even try approaching my fallen (and please please please don't let them be dead) friends . Which, FYI, I did not appreciate.

Before I could protest, or even finish process what was going on, he leaned in and growled into my ear, "Forget about them, they're dead meat! We gotta get outta here!"

I whirled around immediately, wide-eyed, but Amber's whimpering made it hard to think straight. Chameleon didn't seem to like it either, because when I turned to look at the large mutant, he was glowering at Napoleon.

"Tell your mate to shut hell up!" he pressed angrily, darting frantic glances back and forth. "She'll draw him right to us!"

Mate? The hell? But now definitely wasn't the time to dwell on it. "Why don't you shut up?" I snapped at him, yanking away from Letch and hurrying over to Delmar and Crank, ignoring the outraged looks the mutants were shooting me. "They need help, just look at them!" Hell, I could barely look at them, because it made me want to throw up. One of Crank's arms was badly broken, while Delmar's nose was bleeding excessively. So much that I could feel a panic attack beginning to come on. How could they still be alive after this?

"Yeah? And who do you think did that to them?" Letch sneered, looking at me like I was an idiot. I might have punched him if he hadn't been hurt already. "Fuckin' Hades! He's prob'ly here right now while we're standin' around with our thumbs up our asses!"

"They're still alive!" Amber gasped, interrupting our little spat. Apparently, she and Napoleon had been checking their pulses.

"Yeah, but barely!" Napoleon reminded her, panic written all over his face. "We have to get them out of here!"

Letch scoffed, clutching the visibly frightened-looking Chameleon's arm and attempted to pulling him forward. "C'mon, Cham, we gotta go!"

We gotta go. As in, I'm so scared of my big mean dad that I'm willing to ditch the girl who saved my sorry, ungrateful, misshapen ass, despite the fact she was not obligated to given the fact I was the one who put her in a situation like this to begin with.

I... was... pissed. In fact, I think I probably would've cussed him there on the spot in front of his stupid brother—who also got us into this mess because he couldn't keep his damn paws to himself—if I weren't so busy worrying about Crank and Delmar.

"Cham, are you there?" Letch was snapping, slugging the older mutant on the arm. "Hurry the fuck up, before he finds us! You just said he knows what now?"

But Chameleon wasn't listening to him at all. He was staring straight ahead, a vacant look in his eyes. I didn't even realizing how intently I was watching him until now—so intently, I could see his almost imperceptable swallow. It made me nervous, especially know that big guys like him didn't—shouldn't—react that way. It reminded me way too much of when Letch... had seen...

Shit.

How none of us but Chameleon could have picked up on those heavy footsteps, I had no fucking clue, but they were approaching—fast. Letch's jaw clenched, and he looked noticably paler. Chameleon trembled violently, his blue eyes large and almost childlike on his face as he stepped in front of Letch, shielding him from harm's way, or trying to.

"Stump," Amber hissed, beginning to drag Delmar backward while Napoleon handled Crank, "get your gun."

I hadn't realized my hands had been shaking until I started to reach for it. I hadn't realized that I was the only one with a gun until now, either. But before I could even pull the weapon out of its holster, I was interrupted by a horrible sound; a sound that reminded me of those thunderstorms that scared me as a kid.

"If you know what's good for ya, you won't try none of that."

If my mouth could have gotten any dryer than it already was, it would have. My knees wobbled, panic seizing my chest as fight or flight instinct kicked in. I wanted so badly to run, but I couldn't. My comrades would never forgive me, and I would never forgive myself.

Though if you die, my common sense pointed out, will it matter anyway?

Ohhhhh no, brain. You are not going to win this time. You were the one who got me in trouble in the first place. I'm not making that same mistake again.

We all watched, fearfully, as the mountainous figure emerged from the shadows, eyes blazing with hatred and lips pulled back in a snarl. As if this wasn't pants-shittingly-terrifying enough, he was armed with a rifle. One of our rifles. If I made any sudden movement to try getting mine, he could easily shoot any one of us.

"Well." Hades stood there, all six feet and then some of him, sweeping his gaze across all of us. It was a cruel gaze, deliberately mocking. "What do we have here?"

Wow. Talk about the most cliche entrance for a villain ever. How many comic books had he read?

Chameleon's eyes were glued to the floor, while Letch stared at his father with unveiled loathing. Neither said a word.

"My own flesh and blood, turned against me?" Hades snarled, curling his lip. He looked ready to spit right in our faces, and frankly I wouldn't put it past him. I wouldn't put anything past him at this point. "You ungrateful little bastards... ain't got any respect for me, even after all I've done for you..."

Glancing at Letch at out of the corner of my eye, I saw that he was clenching his knuckles so hard that they'd turned white. Please, please don't punch the scary man with the gun, I silently begged, throat tightening. You'll only piss him off worse...

"What have you done with Missy?"

Five pairs of eyes, including mine, shifted in Amber's direction. She was glowering up at Hades, chin tilted, a defiant glint those pretty blue eyes of hers. I didn't see any fear there at all, which actually made me more uneasy. We had every right to be afraid of this motherfucker. He was the one who had gotten us into this situation in the first place. He had been calling the shots. Who the hell did Amber think she was? Xena the Warrior Princess? Napoleon looked especially afraid for her, but didn't have the guts to try stopping our friend, either.

Hades' eyes narrowed, and he advanced even closer. All of my training seemed to have gone in one ear and out the other, because I was frozen. I didn't know what to do besides stand there and gawk like an idiot, waiting for something inevitably horrible to happen. Napoleon shifted closer to Amber, while Letch and Chameleon slowly began backing away. I didn't budge, feeling more like I was watching a movie, or standing on the other side of glass.

Amber stayed where she was, not breaking her cool stare, even when Hades loomed right over her, aiming the gun at her head.

"The fuck did you say?" he asked in a low, dangerous voice.

He's giving you a chance to to take it back, I pleaded desperately, trying to push my thoughts towards Amber. If only we humans actually had telepathy. So just take it back, please, for all our sakes...

But Amber did not take it back. Instead, she looked at the mutant straight in the eye, her expression impassive and her gaze steely.

"I said... where... is... Missy?" she repeated, more slowly and deliberately than before.

She just signed her own death sentence, I thought. I feel bleak. He's going to kill her for sure... or worse... Remembering that vile kiss from earlier, bile rose in my throat.

I was so sure he was going to do something horrible to her then and there. Maybe rip her head off with his bare hands, or drag her away to do whatever twisted things he wanted with Amber. We were all waiting for it. Amber looked tense, though I could see the quiver of her lower lip (guess she wasn't as fearless as I thought), while Hades' left eye gave a twitch, those mammoth hands balling into fists. His knuckles had turned white.

Is he gonna hit her? Kill her?

The moment felt like it stretched on forever, but looking back on it, I realize it only lasted a few seconds. Kind of like that feeling you get when you step on a nail—you know what's happening the minute the pointy end goes through your shoe, but your foot keeps going anyway.

Finally, Hades reacted, but not in the way any of us expected. It started with shaking—first his shoulders, then his whole body, before he threw back his head and laughed at us. My stomach rolled at the sound of it, and I flinched away. It was disgusting, guttural laughter, not the good kind that you'd share with your friends after telling a really bad joke. He laughed because he knew how screwed we were, and he was mocking us. But that wasn't just it. I could hear an edge of hysteria there too, and could see the way his eyes bulged from his head. If he ever had a grip on the reality in the first place, it looked as if he was finally starting to lose it.

Which, in case it wasn't already obvious, was really, really bad for the rest of us.

Finally, he settled, but barely. The nasty grin was still on his face, a slightly faraway look in those pitiless, sunken eyes of his. "How cute," he sneered, peering down at Amber as if she were something to eat. The corners of her mouth tugged downwards in disgust. "Two of your comrades lie here half-dead in front of ya, and you're more worried about some girl who might not even be alive."

I didn't get what he was playing at. Didn't he know that we all were aware the truth by now? Why my squad had been summoned here in the first place, what Hades did with the women? I mean, he had been pretty explicit about his plans right in front of me earlier, which made me doubt it was a secret—not that it really mattered anymore.

Amber stood tall, though her breathing was heavy. She was scared (who the hell wouldn't be?) but still refused to back down. "I don't care what you do with me." That seemed like it might've been at least a partial lie. Her face had paled, and her hands were quivering. "I just want to see her. I just want to know where Missy is."

Hades tilted his head to side, seizing her up. I couldn't guess what he was thinking; he was even harder to read than Letch, and that was saying something. He was quiet for a moment, probably mulling it over, before replying. "Tell your friend back there to put the gun down and I might think about it."

"Like hell I will," I spat out automatically, shocking myself and everyone else in the room. That hadn't been planned, but it was too late to turn back now. I would've sooner sold my soul to Satan than listen to any bullshit this son of a bitch was feeding us, though the two actions didn't seem all that different to me.

Immediately, his gaze darkened, the deep hatred from earlier returning. His trigger twitched, and a horrible hot-cold shockwave went through my body. Oh shit oh shit oh shit, he's gonna kill me, he's gonna kill one of us, fuck fuck fuck fuck—

And then I remembered, only seconds later, I still had my gun. I had just as much firepower as he did. Sucking in a sharp breath of air, I did the same thing, preparing to fire at him. Even if he put a bullet through my head like I was expecting, maybe—maybe—I'd be able to kill him first and save the rest of us.

But I never got my chance.

Instead of pulling the trigger, Hades did something else entirely—bring two fingers to his lips and whistle, high and piercing.

It all happened so fast, it's a miracle I remember any of it at all.

The gun fell from my hands, clattering the floor as Letch shoved me to the ground, his large body hovering over mine. I was so disoriented that I couldn't even scream, all the air being forced from my lungs and out of my mouth in one massive whoosh. I heard shouting for a few moments, though I was too out of it to tell the voices apart.

Then came the gunshot. Normally, they would have been deafeningly loud. Down in the mines, every noise was amplified. The minute the gun went off, my ears began ringing, and that was all I can hear for what seemed like a long time. No voices, no sounds. Just ringing.

I might not have been able to hear what was going on, but I felt it. The vibrating impact of something heavy falling to the ground only inches away from where I was. A warm, copper-smelling spray that got into my hair and onto my cheeks. I might have gagged, or even vomited, but before I could even form a coherent thought, I found being pulled into the black hole that was unconsciousness.

I never thought I'd thank anyone for hitting me over the head earlier that day, but at the time, I was genuinely glad that Letch did. I'd reached my limit for all the fucked up things my brain was capable of handling, and I'd silently come to the conclusion that I didn't want to wake up until it was all over—maybe even never.

If only I'd been so lucky.