Sacrifice.

She was there, on a table her body was contorted and her stomach was cut open, several tubes were attached to her arms, thighs and neck. The lights in the lab flickered, casting an ominous glow onto the group and Xavier dropped to the floor in despair his hands on the table in front of him, his fingers wrapped around the leather pads. The warning alarms still were ringing and the red light bounced around the room, the ceiling and walls shook a little and several bottles fell off the shelves around them shattering on the floor and sending pieces of glass across the room. Lucy leaned down and pulled Xavier towards her who fell into her and wrapped his arms around her as he started to cry, she spoke to him with as calm a voice as she could muster,
   "Xavier... I... I'm so sorry. Xavier, we have to go."
   "I'm not... I can't leave her here... Not here... Not like this, not like that." He mumbled to her through the tears.

Lucy and Tom picked him up as he started to shout and hit out at them, Noah joined them and suppressed him,
   "I have no fucking idea what you are going through, nothing, none and I'm not gonna pretend that I do but if we don't get a move on now then all of us, all of us are going to die here, like that!"
  "Okay... Okay..." Xavier mumbled, although he had no personal desire of leaving the bunker. They got to their feet and ran for the door and into the corridor, Noah pointed to a vent which he and Emily had spotted on their exploration the last night, 
   "There! Now!"
The group hurdled into the vent and just as they started to make their way through, to the adjacent corridor a group of men, and a woman, The Mad Queen, walked past armed with axes, bats and knives.
   "Where'd they go? 'ey were just 'ere, I can smell 'em... Delicious." A rather foul looking man named Matheius, almost certainly a cannibal and murderer whose appearance could much more closely be linked to a troll than a man.
   "They must be heading to the Surface Door! Head them off!" Aria shouted over the sirens, the men tore off into another door while Aria walked back into her chambers holding Bethany's caved-in head in her arms.

Tom, Lucy, Emily, Xavier, August and Noah froze for a moment but quickly made their way through the vent and into the next corridor where they were faced with the Surface Door, the group hurdled towards it with extreme pace but they were met with a thumb scanner. 
   "Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Lucy yelled, sinking to her knees while hammering on the door.
   "You're not going to die in here!" Xavier yelled, "stay here!" he shouted as he sprinted towards the kitchens they had passed earlier. Sure enough two cultists walked by on patrol visiting the kitchens to steal from the fridges, Xavier turned off the lights and approached one of them and in the confusion managed to cut off one of their thumbs and slice the other's throat. He ran back towards the group and scanned the thumb just as the group of men seen earlier from the vent ran around the corner behind them, just as the door started to open Matheius shouted out to them,
   "'Ere they are! Get em!" and they started to run down the corridor towards Xavier and the group.
  "Lets go!" Noah shouted, and just as he ran with the others into the tunnel to the surface he shut the door, Xavier tripped Noah as they ran through and swiped the knife from his pocket as the door shut, the hiss of air rattled in Xavier's ears.
   "NO! What are you doing?" Noah slammed his hands on the door window, looking in at Xavier, "No, why! We can all make it together!".
   "Go. I have this sacrifice to make, for Bethany, and my sister, and so that you guys can live!" As the doors sealed and the air vent locked Xavier turned back to face the group of thugs as they drew nearer, their hollow laughs echoed around the now silent corridor. They slowed and walked towards him, their apparel putrid, bloody and discoloured. Xavier could see their scarred, burnt faces and their voices punctured through his ears like swords through a brittle sheet of ice, he felt a bead of sweat drop from his hair and another run down the side of his arm, he clenched his fists and raised the knife up. He ran towards the group of men, dodging an intended blow to the head and slicing away at the thugs at any skin he could see, Matheius however caught the blade in his hand and ripped it from Xavier, he grabbed Xavier and threw him against the wall, as Xavier looked up he saw a boot flying down towards his face.

Xavier awoke in the cold, icy outdoors. He wasn't alone, three masked men were with him and as he awoke and tried to stand they set upon him. He felt his bone splinter and his teeth grind against each other as the knuckles impacted on his jaw, then he felt a rib crack and a searing pain shot up his right side and down his arm. He could taste the copper, and feel the fragments of his own teeth amidst the blood and grains of dirt in his mouth. His eyes flooded with tears that flowed over the cuts and burns in his cheeks and splashed into the snow as he fell to his knees, they kicked the water from his reach and laughed as he spat blood and shards of his teeth onto the icy, frosty floor. The snow under his fingers burned to the touch but Xavier didn't care, he could only think about the body, his sister's body, on that table like an animal. One of the men took off his mask to reveal, Matheius, the thug that the group had seen by the shrine earlier that day and the man that had eaten Bethany's organs in front of them. He grabbed Xavier by the scruff of his shirt and picked him up, it tore but not so fast that the man couldn't land a series of punches with his spiked knucles to Xavier's battered, bloodied face and he felt his nose break as warm blood poured over his lips, over his chin and down his neck. Xavier was thrown into the snow that swallowed his hands and arms whole and Matheius turned around, kneeling in front of a bag while the others looked down at Xavier and sneered. Matheius turned to reveal an axe and a saw, 
   "Take hold of his legs!" he growled to the other two, and as they did so he stamped on Xavier's hand, breaking a finger and he snorted, derranged.
   "You, boy, you are going to tell me where the others went." He flexed the axe in his hand. Xavier looked up through bloody, glazed eyes and then looked down to Matheius' boots, polished and steel capped, with a knife attached to the ankle. Xavier quickly grabbed the knife and pierced it into Matheius' calf who let out a deafening howl of pain but just as fast removed the knife and kicked Xavier back into the snow.
   "That's the way this is, is it? Don't value your fingers much do you? Neither did your little sis. Poor little sis. Crying, begging, as she was violated, set upon by twenty men." He started to sneer and laugh over Xavier's muffled shouts and struggles.
Matheius knelt down next to Xavier and whispered in his ear,
   "You 'ave until the count of three to tell me, and my merry men where your tasty group are headin'... One... Two... Three..."
Matheius slammed the axe down on Xavier's right knuckles.
The pain was excruciating as Xavier looked up to see his hand, he raised it to his eyes and squinted... Only thumb and finger attached, and he screamed.