I needed out.
The truth just being laid out in the open, just one after another made me feel sick, nauseous even. It was unbearable.
I'm really more of a family person compared to my brother. He's like a star in the night that can shine brightly on his own. Of course, he cares for our parents but he's pretty much independent and can live without them. I, on the other hand, can't even think about what I'll do when the time comes and they die. It's a dark thought, but it happens.
I'm more attached to our parents than Ashton ever was, that's because he was a very independent kid. Unlike me, who cried when I was left by my parents for daycare, and it continued to happen till I was in elementary. Then high school came around and Ashton's independence completely turned into solitude, While I made tons of friends. But that was years ago, right now it's just me and Ash, against the cruel truth that the government is hiding from the rest of the world.
Right now, there was nothing but silence. He just sat beside me twiddling his thumbs as I tried to gather myself back into someone that can function.
"I had noticed signs, years before, that dad didn't really love mom." Ashton narrated on his own, I was idly listening to him as I stared down the chasm, it's beautiful, tiny multitudes of gem dust reflected the light, making it seem that the cave walls were glowing. The stream of water looked so clear, I can see the bottom of it, weird and small fishes swam around. "He never really looked at her the way that Hayden used to look at the spandex-wearing superheroes of the 2000s."
"PFFTTT," I remember that time when we were still young and dumb to the world. "To think he would wish to live back then compared to now?"
"He even wished to make a time machine, remember? Just so he can go back hundreds of years back." He had a faint smile on his face, Hayden was really close and dear to us when we were young. But one day, something just snapped in him and he, changed somehow like he wasn't the boy that we used to play with. "Now, look at us, it just went full circle huh?"
"I guess," If I think about it, which I don't want to do as much, there are billions out there living a lie, unaware of the true situation that the world is facing, that we're all doomed to die in a dead world with nothing but toxins and false hope, "What do we do now? That man just told us to stay put here, and you saw those creatures out there, we won't be able to take care of those on our own."
"Then we stay put, nothing much to it, really," Ashton said simply, leaning back on the bench.
Time passed like that, just the two of us idly sitting down on that bench with the conversation being thrown in here and there. Being there with him just solidified the fact into me that, there's really no going back, that we're in the eye of the storm now. And there's no sign of it stopping any time soon. There were bits of glass on the cave roof, some that gave view to the outside world, it showed that it was getting dark.
"First night as an exiled," Ash chuckled from beside me.
I looked back at him, and yeah, we look so much alike but so different at the same time."Thrilling?" I said, and yeah in a way it was. Sure, our lives are on the line but it feels so nice to just be free for once. It's like I learned how to breathe after being suffocated for years.
"Weirdly, I feel the same, It's like there's no more noose around my neck." He touched his neck as if there was a literal noose that was tied to it.
"There you both are!" Mave came up from where Ash came from earlier, sweating buckets as she ran towards us. "Come on, help me find your friend, It's night and he still wasn't back, and if I think he's gone where I think he went then he's screwed."
"Friend? You're talking about-"
"Of course that Heir that you came here with, who else?!"
"He's no longer an heir tho," I pointed out, the fact that he helped me and Ash escaped our sentence, was enough for him to be put under the same trial as us.
"Nope, his situation's different, anyways we're wasting time here people, we need to move." Mave immediately went on the move, pushing past the thinning crowd. "Rendezvous back at the main house in 10 mins stat. Ask around. Right now"
And the two of us did as we were told, we split up and asked around to anyone that may have seen him. I even tried and quickly ask around two floors up to see if he may have just gone somewhere to cool off, but no one saw him and those that did, with a sour face, said they didn't know where he went. After about 15 minutes of running around, I tried one last place, the gates. I do hope to all that is holy, that he wasn't stupid enough to actually leave but there's still that small probability that he did. Just in time, it looks like the guys were switching shifts.
"Hey, who were the ones who were in the earlier shift," I said and two of them stepped up.
"Sir,"
I proceeded to ask them about Hayden, which they confirmed that they did let him out the gates around the afternoon. Hours before.
"WHAT?! Why did you let him out?!"
"It's not prohibited to leave the base, everyone's able to leave anytime they want."
I pulled at my hair, frustrated. I decided to just run back to the main house to tell the other two what I just found out. Collapsing as I barged through the double doors, I clutched at my knees as I tried to regain my breath. Mave and Ashton went over towards me immediately, Mave reprimanding me for taking too long.
"He went out," The talking stopped altogether, plunging the whole room into silence.
"Fuck, that kid's dead for sure," Mave said, turning away from the door and headed towards the couches.
"What do you mean? We should go out there and look for him!" Anthony went right up to Mave, me following behind him.
"What ?!" Mave whipped around, stopping both of us in our tracks, "I'll forgive both of you since you're new out here but I'm telling you, take a single step out of here at night and you're good as dead."
"We owe him our lives, Mave," I said simply.
"We're going out there, with or without you."
She looked taken aback at this, her face scrunching up in thought as she paced in front of us. I looked at Ashton, who looked really dedicated to risking our lives just for Hayden, and I sympathize with his sentiments. Mave was silent for a long time, I'm getting antsy and was just ready to get out there right now.
"Fine, I'm coming with, " She sighed, "Rather die in the hands of a wraith than Ken's fury."
"A wraith?"
"You'll see soon enough." I sent a nervous glance towards Ashton, who didn't look affected by this at all. He just has this stoic look on his face as Mave leads the two of us out of the house and towards the main gates. But before we even got there, we took an unexpected turn towards a silver door just a few feet away from the main gates.
"What're we doing here?" I asked, there was nothing simple about the door, it was just a metal door with bolts on the side, there was a hand-sized hole, from where you can possibly pull it open. And finally, a red, menacing light blinked on top of it.
"Armory, We can't go out there without anything, we'll die immediately." Mave stood in front of the metal door and the light just turned green on it's own, After that, Mave was able to slide the door open with ease. "Come on in."
We took cautious steps towards the room, which looked nothing like an armory.
"It's empty."
Mave smirked, flipped a switch and it's like a blanket was pulled off from the room and the walls, a hologram field slowly dispersing. Rows and rows of guns and different kinds of weapons were laid out in front of us, batteries, plasma guns, and even melee weapons like this charged katana. "Careful with that, the blade amplifies the temp of whatever it touches, slice something warm, it'll melt it, slice something cold, it'll freeze it." I held the blade to my face, and sure enough, I heard a silent thrum of energy, as my name carved itself into the blade.
"Mave, my name's here."
"Yeah, Ken did plan on giving that one to you, said it was Josephine's."
"A flashlight?" Ashton said holding up what looked to be just your run-of-the-mill flashlight and pointed it at us.
"DON"T POINT IT AT US!" Mave immediately ducked behind a table, Ashton immediately dropped the flashlight. "Bring that with us, we'll be needing that." She said as she took another flashlight like it. I took one too just in case. "You bringing that with you?" She smirked, nodding to the sheathed katana on my back.
"Yeah, it just feels right."
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