Shots are being fired, screams of agony sounding through our whole town, people dropping to the ground left and right. I pull my older brother Damien along by the wrist, navigating across the bloody ruins of our hometown. Suddenly, I hear a sickening sound: a loud crunch, the sound of a bullet penetrating the flesh of a human being, shattering their bones. I turn around and nearly scream. My brother has a bullet lodged into his hip, the bone is poking out of the bloody hole it tore into his side. I pull Damien into a makeshift shelter, a broken-down building, maybe a store of sorts, and start rummaging around for something I could use to stop the blood flow. When I don't find anything, I rip the sleeve of my shirt and press it onto the wound tightly. The outside world is still screaming in unbearable pain, the sounds of guns and government officials' loud commands nearly bursting my eardrums, but it's nothing compared to what's going on inside my head. Damien's pulse is dangerously low, a fever running higher than the heavens above, and a pale grey tint has replaced his usual olive skin tone. Breathing heavily, he forces a smile onto his face that looks more like a grimace.

"Don't say anything! You're going to make it, you will, understood?" I say quietly, but we both know he won't.

"Hey, Kie, look at me." My eyes are stinging, but I do what he asks me to. I always do.

"Kiara, I want you to go. Run as fast as you can, away from this place, away from the pain and sorrow and suffering, away from me. Run to safety, and don't stop till you get there. I love you, never forget that, Kie, okay? Trust your instincts; it's a dangerous world out there." He takes a few deep, shaky breaths; I can hear his lungs rattling at the effort to keep someone who's already dead alive, and it breaks my heart.

"Be careful out there, kid," he says before closing his eyes. His heart stops soon after, his whole body goes limp. I scream and grip onto his lifeless frame, crying, hugging him one last time, the last time I could ever truly breathe, before doing as he told me and running like my life depended on it. Because it did.

Note: This was supposed to be dystopian fiction, it’s my first time writing like this so I‘d love it if you left some feedback!!