Young Writers Society

For the first few moments, all Nadira could do was stare at the now open cell. Bo had gotten them out. It hadn't been intentional, but he had and now...

She forced herself to focus, taking a step out from the cell and peering down the hallway that it was a part of. She tried to observe anything that could possibly be useful, but she quickly realized that there was only so much they could use.

"I see a hallway," she said. "It's made of the same material as the cell. Besides that, there's nothing special about it. We're the only ones here - I see other cells, but none of them have anyone inside of them. There's also no wraiths coming."

She glanced back at the others.

"...I think it's safe to leave."

Bo had been wondering if there was camera surveillance or something of the sort, but he supposed if none could be seen, nothing could be done. He nodded.

“Okay. Nadira, lead me out front with you.” She was the least injured, and if she got shot or hit, there was less chance of it immediately being a mortal wound. It sounded calloused, but she wasn’t made of flesh. She could be recovered more easily than the rest. Or at least... that was what he was choosing to hope for. He didn’t want Boris leading now, not with his recently scorched body.

“I need you to be my eyes and lead me,” he said to Nadira. “Others follow behind. No talking unless absolutely necessary,” he ordered, his voice hushed.

She nodded.

Returning to Bo's side, she helped him to his feet and started guiding him towards the hallway beyond the cell. She made sure to keep her footwork quiet but steady. It was hard adjusting to all of his weight at first, but she was able to manage after a few moments.

She gestured for the others to follow.

Boris brought up the rear, useless, but vigilant.

The halls were indistinguishable from one another, and made of the same vile texture as the cell, though while the ceiling of the cell was uncomfortably low, the ceilings outside were so high as to be difficult to even see. The corridors compensated by having narrow walls.

Worrisome sounds from around a corner forced the group into a nearby room, where the door grew automatically behind them to close itself. Presumably it would do the same in reverse.

This refuge was a store-room, whereupon they found their confiscated weapons dumped in a corner.

Boris hung back, grateful for the re-arming of his companions, but uninterested in the pile himself, for his rifle had exploded earlier in the fight with the venus leopard.

Until he saw it there. The phone from Kartiel. His heart skipped a beat.

Flawlessly, he reverted to ignoring the object, and busied himself with looking for a weapon among the belongings of older, by now deceased prisoners, while keeping an eye out for one of his various back-up daggers.

It would only draw attention to the phone if he tried to take it, so there was nothing for it but to ignore it and hope that the others would remain occupied.

Hm. If Bo had managed to open the cell by throwing a rock at a switch he hadn't even know had been there, maybe Aegeas would have been fine trying to burn the bars down.

Not that it mattered - Aegeas had sat back and let the others work out a solution, had watched them open the cell, had pushed his back against the wall to get back onto his feet, had wandered around a disgusting labyrinth, and had ended up in a strange room.

A strange room that just so happened to have his scimitars in the middle of pile of weapons lying in a corner.

"Really neat and tidy," Aegeas said, nodding his head towards the pile. Walking over to it, he nudged one of his scimitars with a foot. Nope, they were both towards the bottom of the pile, and he didn't feel confident that he could bend down, much less grab them and pull them out. Stupid casts.

Well, Boris looked pretty interested in finding a new weapon. "Boris, could you pick these up?" Aegeas said, trying his best to lower his casts so they pointed at his swords while staring over at the man in question. Not directly, since Aegeas wasn't in the mood to see burned flesh, but Aegeas could spot Boris out of the corner of his -

Something buzzed under the otter's foot. Lifting the foot and staring down, Aegeas found himself looking at some kind of rectangle glowing with blue light, set in the middle of an oval.

And then the rectangle started speaking.

Boris looked at the device, stunned. But all was not lost yet. That was a natural reaction for a non guilty party, innocently confused by the turn of events.
...Why did the bloody thing have to talk so damned slowly.

Boris continued to err on the more innocent side of visibly confused, and breathed in and out, mentally reciting the two words that helped to calm him down in moments like this.

Plausible deniability. Plausible deniability.

Then it said his name.

Boris immediately shoved aside whomever was in the way, and ran for the door.

Bo didn't know what triggered it, but he knew an audio recording when he heard one. It sounded like it was coming from a low-grade phone, probably something made before 2015, not that it mattered. What the messages were relaying was far more important, or so he assumed, as he was piecing things together. Context. Content. Boris.

He felt someone brush past his arm, pushing past him, and without thinking, he reached out and grabbed their shirt with an iron grip. It was Boris. He could still smell the burnt flesh as he pulled him towards him, keeping him from leaving.

His mind was slow to piece things together. He could feel the wheels turning in his mind.

Boris didn't have a phone. He was from an alternate victorian era type of world, and it couldn't be his own phone relaying those messages. Who gave Boris a phone? Who was - oh.

Kartiel.

Boris had been playing as a double agent? What possible benefit was there in that? He pulled Boris into something of a hug, but it definitely wasn't that. His arms were locked around Boris's chest, holding him against his own.

"Don't," was all he could manage to get out as his mind started racing. His heart was aching. Everything, everything was going wrong, but if he fell apart now, would they ever get out of this death trap? Would he have a chance? Did he even have a chance in the first place?

At first, the words didn't really register.

She had been trying to collect everything that the wraith had taken from her, but she hadn't been able to decide if she should grab Codix's belongings. She wanted to. She knew she should. But she also knew that if he...he really was dead - something that she couldn't let herself accept - carrying his weapons on top of her own was just going to put her at a disadvantage when they inevitably ran into the wraith.

And Codix wouldn't have wanted her to risk that.

Then the words finally clicked, and Nadira turned to see the chaos right beside her. Aegeas standing a few inches away from what looked like an old phone. Boris running towards the door, only to be stopped by Bo. And she could feel her metaphorical heart - a mass of metal, not organs and blood - beating faster and faster as she approached the phone.

She picked it up.

She didn't play the messages again. That must have been an accident. But she read through each and every one of them, the bigger picture slowly coming together with each new text. She didn't know why Boris had chosen to do it. But she couldn't deny that it wasn't really Kartiel at fault for this. Kartiel had warned Boris. He had told him to stay away from the village - to stay away from the monster that had blinded Bo. Nadira didn't know why. She didn't really care.

All that she really cared about was that Boris was the one responsible.

She closed the phone.

Then she walked over to Boris, a cold, emotionless look on her face. There was an anger bubbling up inside - an anger she hadn't ever really felt before, but an anger she couldn't ignore.

"How could you?" she whispered. "How could you do this?"

She glanced at the others.

She didn't wait for them to add in.

She just looked right back at Boris, thinking, in the back of her mind, that he was lucky that he was already burnt and in pain, because every inch of her was screaming to make him feel the same pain that she felt right now.

"You're the reason we're here," she said. Her voice was growing steadily louder. "You're the reason that Aegeas got injured. That Bo's blind. That...That..."

She didn't let herself finish the sentence.

"You could have chosen a safer path," she said. "You could have chosen a different path that would have kept putting us in danger's way. You could have listened to what Kartiel said, but you didn't. And I shouldn't have just followed you so blindly, because trusting is a dangerous thing to give a stranger - trust is the reason Codix's parents died. Trust is the one thing we never gave to anyone on Earth besides each other, and you-you..."

She gave him a weak punch in the chest, eyes welling up with fake, artificial tears.

Her hand fell to the side.

"Maahes and Codix are gone, Boris," she whispered. "They're...They're dead. Maahes wasn't even a part of Kartiel's stupid experiment, and Codix...Codix..."

She faltered.

"Codix was my best friend," she said. "He was my creator, and my best friend, and the only person who I ever really knew in my entire life. And you-you took him away from me. Even when Kartiel lets us go back home, it isn't going to be the same. My home's going to be dark, and empty, and there's going to come a day where I can't fix myself anymore. And I-I'll be happy when that day comes, because I never wanted to live in a world without my best friend!"

Boris risked few glances, but listened well to the child's lament, and nodded. He felt his conscience shutting on, and off throughout, as it was wont. At the time it was nothing to distance himself, to set the acts in motion, and forget. He would survive, he would do his best to aid the others that they may survive, but if any of them died, so be it. He had no business having a heart now.

But Boris felt something else, when Nadira's little fist hit him. It was gentle. He could feel the metal underneath, like cast iron, so solid she could probably beat him to death with little exertion, if she had wanted to. But she had shown him mercy. The poor girl.

She would grow into a woman. Her wounds would be with her always, but she would move on. She was still young. Her enemy was right in front of her. She had a far better chance than he ever would.


"You should hit harder than that, young one." said Boris, with a strange gruff gentleness. "You may not have the chance again."


He looked up, he met the eyes of the others, and carefully spoke. Initially. He soon began to rush his words, in a roomful of the armed and betrayed.

"There was no time to check those messages. I didn't know about the cultists, I didn't know about the Wraith, I never would have led us here if I did. Even I have limits.

But the leopard was my fault. I'm sorry, Bo. It should have been me. But it was the only way to-"

There's a good traitor.

Aegeas let out a very long sigh, shaking his head (if it weren't for his casts, he would've buried his head in his paws). He'd spent this whole time thinking that Boris had just been clueless, naive, stubborn. And, if those messages were anything to go by, Aegeas was right. Just not in the way he'd thought.

"But it was the only way to-"

The otter didn't need a reason to lash out at Boris, but here Boris was, happily giving one. Blinking, Aegeas found himself standing halfway across the room, jabbing a cast into Boris's stomach.

"Bulls***," Aegeas said with a deep and gravelly voice that sounded almost unfamiliar. He glared up at Boris, wishing he could raise his arms up enough to punch the singed man in his face. "You've been running around with your a** on fire, haven't you?"

Aegeas punched Boris again, using the other cast this time. "You could've just stepped aside" - punch - "You could've just fallen back" - punch - "You could've made up some excuse so you could read those messages, but no," - punch - "You nearly killed all of us for the sake of someone who didn't even want you to do what you did!" Taking a deep breath, Aegeas's voice started getting more choppy. "And now we're here" - punch - "and I won't even get to see my boyfriend again" - punch - "and I won't even get to see my girlfriend again" - punch - "And you're trying to sound all composed and smart and clever" - punch - "But you're just full of s***!"

Spots dancing across his eyes, the otter staggered back. He felt just enough adrenaline running through him that he didn't quite notice the damage he'd just done to his already battered arms, but he didn't care.

"Was it worth it, Boris?" Aegeas shouted, tears starting to run down his face. "Was it really worth it?"

All Bo could hear was the rising voices of Nadira and Aegeas over the pounding in his ears. He didn’t know how he felt about holding Boris in place as a punching bag.

He understood their anger. It was justified, and he wanted to be angry too, but all he could focus on was the ever-present fear of getting caught pounding at the back of his mind. This was the last thing they needed right now.

“Guys. We need to keep it down,” he whispered.

She heard what Bo said. In the back of her mind, she knew he was right. They had the element of surprise and weapons now. It was the only thing that could assure their safety. With Maahes and Codix gone (gone and not dead, because dead was too harsh and distant of a word), the only person without any kind of injury was Nadira. She couldn't possibly protect them all, especially when she was struggling to push back her rage and grief and regret.

She should have seen it coming.

She shouldn't have let herself trust the others. She doubted more would traitor, but closing off from all of them would have done something. She could have checked the path herself, noticed the phone, or even just questioned why the village was so kind to a strange group of strangers.

But she hadn't.

...And now Codix was gone, and it was all her fault.

"We can figure out what to do with Boris later," Nadira said. She started to head towards the door, but turned around to look at the array of weapons to make sure she hadn't missed grabbing something important.

That was when she was attacked from behind.

A sudden, powerful force went barreling into her. She faltered - she was easily knocked off balance, and it was impossible to get back on her feet before a pair of strong arms wrapped around her.

A pair of strong wraith arms.

She immediately started struggling, but she didn't stand a chance - the wraith had her arms pinned to her side, and his head was resting on her shoulder. When she glanced back, she saw another wraith standing in the doorway - looking at them all with what could have almost been confusion.

"I'm never going to let you go," the wraith whispered in her ear. Only she could hear him. The voice wasn't familiar in the slightest, but the tone was. She didn't want to get her hopes up, but...

His grip tightened.

"We couldn't find you," he said. "The cell was empty. I thought I had lost you. But I found you and you're okay and I'm never, ever leaving your side again, Nad."

Her eyes widened.

When he spun her around a second later, Nadira went running into his arms and returned the hug - head resting on his chest as she gently closed her eyes. She had never been one for crying, but she just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

Bo was very, very confused. He heard a whap, then a thump, and then Nadira started crying. Was Nadira okay? Did someone push her?

He reached out, still with one arm around Boris, trying to find her.

"Nadira?" he asked, his voice quiet and hesitant. He didn't want to make more noise than necessary. "Guys, what's going on?"

Was it worth it? Boris indulged the task of thought, while his lungs heaved and shook, and a thread of reddish saliva fell from his lips, as he struggled to take in a breath.

No. Not really, no. He wasn’t dead yet. But he could hardly take credit for that.

His torso was bruised purple, a few lower ribs threatened to fracture.
It was not the scratches from the otter’s blunt claws that bothered him, so much as the blood that trickled into the raw chemical burns that splashed his side.
There was little blood, really, but little was needed. Boris sucked in air through his teeth, hissing as quietly as he could manage.

Oh, splendid, he was breathing again.

“I’ll never let you go,” said a rumbling, multilayered voice. A phrase that should be met with precaution and skepticism, even from a more regular voice. It was male, and therefore ill news in either case.

Boris looked up to find a wraith, embracing Nadira, and the latter, tearfully embracing the creature back.

She had gone mad. She’d lost it entirely. The creature would destroy her and devour the rest of them, in seconds.

Boris struggled briefly in Bo’s grip. The man was made of bricks and mortar.
But in any case, two wraiths, and the soon-to-be remnants of Nadira, were blocking the only door.

Boris’ eyes darted desperately to the door, the floor, the walls, looking for trapdoors, rubbish chutes, compartments, anything.

Then he actually listened to what the wraith said.

And he remembered.

...Shapeshifters. God-damned, shapeshifters.

Lowering his casts as much as he could, Aegeas let out a few slow breaths. He wasn't quite sure what had happened - he had seen Nadira run towards something, and he had picked out a couple words about someone being lost. But the sound of his heartbeat drowned out any other sounds; black spots ran across his eyes; and his arms started throbbing.

He focused on the blood seeping into Boris's cuts, tricked slightly from Boris's lips. The otter took a step back, getting the feeling he didn't want to see what his casts looked like.

"Yeah," Aegeas said quietly, keeping his gaze away from Boris's eyes. "D-don't do tha-at e-ever again."