Young Writers Society

The wraith by the door - who Nadira was starting to suspect was Maahes with a different guise - gave Aegeas a worried look when he barely managed a quiet response. Nadira hadn't entirely stopped crying; she was still sobbing and leaning into Codix. It was still hard to see what was going on in the rest of the room. But she saw the wraith move from his spot by the door and approach Aegeas, putting the hand with his feeding organ on the otter's shoulder to steady him.

"Codix is alright," Nadira said to Bo, her grip on Codix tightening. Her best friend gave a startled yelp at the sudden change in tightness, but didn't fight it. "I-I still have my best friend..."

Bo couldn't find Nadira with his one-armed swiping, but he could feel Boris putting up the weak struggle against his grip, and a pit in his stomach formed. Boris's breathing felt ragged, and he felt something sticky - like blood - drip on his hand.

He loosened his grip, returning his other arm around Boris for security's sake, but with a much more gentle hold on the severely injured man.

He didn't want Boris to run for a lot of reasons, but mainly because he didn't want to lose anyone else. Even if they were a traitor.

Nadira's response though, didn't make a whole lot of sense. Was Codix... there? Did she have a vision? Was Nadira losing it? Did something happen to her coding?

"Okay... that's great, Nadira," he whispered. "But I need someone to like, actually explain what's going on to me, because I still don't know. Are we safe? Do you need me to do anything?"

"We're safe," Nadira reassured Bo. Her voice was still shaking a little, but it was nowhere as bad as it could have been. "You don't have to do anything. Codix and Maahes are here - Codix surprised me with a hug when I was about to leave, and Maahes is over by you."

"Hi," Codix managed to squeak out, giving an awkward wave both Nadira and him quickly realized Bo couldn't see. He glanced down at Nadira, his voice getting a little softer. "Nad, could you hug me a little looser? I-I think you might break my ribs if you keep hugging me like that."

Nadira faltered, but did as requested.

Relief flooded Bo and he couldn’t withhold he shaky sigh that escaped right after. He continued to hold Boris gently.

Codix and Maahes were back. They weren’t dead. He hadn’t lied to Nadira about them being okay. They didn’t have to worry about finding them now, just making it out of this alive, together. But the voices of two wraith voices threw him for a moment, and his breath caught in his chest.

Wait.

Maahes and Codix could shape shift. They would’ve had to pretend to be wraiths to even find them. Right? Why would Nadira lie?

He looked around, unsure of where wraith Maahes might be.

“Did you guys see anything about a way out?” he whispered.

Aegeas blinked, trying to clear up his eyesight. He was pretty sure that Nadira was talking - she sounded mostly calm, even though her voice was breaking a little - but she wasn't walking over towards him. Thanks to his nearsightedness, he couldn't figure out who was heading his way until they had set their (strangely bumpy) hand on his shoulder, until he looked up and-

Oh, f***.

The otter froze, fur standing on end. He tried not to think about what his shoulder was brushing up against, reminding himself that Nadira was still talking. And Bo was still talking. And Codix was still talking? Where'd he come from? But they were all still talking, and he was pretty sure they weren't leaving him to die. Or, if they were, they weren't going to be so calm about it.

He took a deep breath. This was fine. Probably. And at least he had something to lean against.

"We haven't," Codix said. He knew that the group wasn't in a good shape when they got captured, but there had been less injured people - what had Boris done in the time that they were gone? It looked like he had stood in the cell door's acid for a long time, but wouldn't someone have stopped him from doing that?

"We were focused on finding your cell," Maahes added. "Codix and I were taken to a separate one."

"They took Maahes first," he said. "I snuck out on my own after he escaped them, but I didn't know..."

And then a hand - the hand with the feeding organ, and the hand that was the most deadly part of the wraith - shot out, grabbed him by the shirt, and tugged him into a room that had to be some kind of small storage closet.

A very small storage closet, because there was absolutely no way for him to get free from the wraith pinning him up against the wall in the darkness. Tears finally began to well up in Codix's eyes. He wasn't going to find Nad. He wasn't even going to see her again. He was going to die here, in this closet, with a wraith sucking away every last bit of his life.

After everything he had been through, this was how he was going to die-

The other wraith passed by the closest. Codix couldn't make so much as a peep - not that he wanted to. If he was going to die from a wraith, he'd want to stick to one.

But then the wraith drew his hand away. Codix collapsed at his feet, thick torrents of tears streaming down his face as he stared at the ground. A second later, the wraith was crouching in front of him, digging around in the closet until he found a piece of cloth that could be considered a makeshift tissue.

"Codix," the wraith whispered. "It's alright. I'm not going to hurt you - I'm Maahes."

Codix blew his nose in the tissue. That made a lot more sense, now that he thought about it. "I thought they got you," he said.

"I took care of the wraith escorting me," Maahes explained. "I guess you weren't awake enough to hear my plan. Which also explains why you were gone when I got there..."

He let out a sigh and sat down across from Codix.

"I thought they took you out of your cell," Maahes said. "I don't know where the others are yet, but I was going to look for you first - until I found you in the hallway. Now we just need to find the others."

Codix looked down at himself, then back up at Maahes.

"...I can change my form," he slowly said. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Maahes glanced down at himself before looking back at him, giving the small kind of smile you give in a situation like this.

"Yes," he said. "I am."

Bo nodded slowly.

No known escape. Codix and Maahes were back. They were all together - wounded, and messed up, with little chances of survival, but they were together at least.

"Maahes... do you know anything about wraith ships?" he whispered again. "Where we could look for an uh, escape pod or ship or something? They have those, right?"

But that meant... but that meant that Maahes, and Codix, they were alive. Thank Christ. They were alive! Not that Boris had the right to care, to think himself a caring man, after what he had done. No, he was grateful because his life depended on the survival of the group.

Boris' normally Herculean denial reflex was beginning to tire out.
He missed it immediately when it faltered, for the things that demanded his notice.

Bo's grip had only loosened since the last escape attempt. One could argue it was due to fatigue, or the dearth of places for his prisoner to run to, but so deliberate this embrace felt, that was undeniably what it was. It was madness. It was a coping mechanism on Bo's part, one he would rescind as soon as he came to his senses.

And Boris, the rightfully damned, felt a guilty comfort from it.

In the arms of the man who he had blinded, he begged for hatred, so that it could only make sense.

"Escape what? Escape pod?" Aegeas said, blinking his eyes. "Yeah, we, we really should get out of here. Wherever here is?"

"Escape pods," Maahes clarified. "They let you escape from a ship like this - one that goes through space instead of the ocean. They're like life boats."

Codix didn't like the look on his face. With Nadira still hugging him and Codix returning the hug with a one-armed one of his own, he hesitantly asked, "Do they have them?"

Maahes shook his head.

"They don't," he said.

A sinking feeling formed in his gut.

"So what do we do?" he whispered.

Maahes thought over it for a moment.

"Wraith ships have darts," he said. "They use them to cull planets. You don't ride in them like you think you would. They have transporter beams that take you into the ship. We could use one of those to leave the ship, but you usually need a wraith to pilot them because they're the only one familiar with the technology. I could try piloting the ship, but I've never flown in one..."

"I could try," Nadira offered. She finally let go of Codix, but didn't move away from him. Codix didn't argue with that decision - he just put his arms over her shoulders and held his hands together as he stood behind her. "I could probably hook up to the systems. It wouldn't be as hard for me to fly it as it would be for Maahes."

Bo nodded slowly as Maahes explained their options. Or, well, their only option.

“That sounds like a good idea,” he said to Nadira. “Do you know where to find one of them? The darts?”

Nadira shook her head.

A second later, Maahes awkwardly cleared his throat - which, Nadira decided, was a very strange noise to hear a wraith make. "They have a place where they keep all of their ships. There's just one problem..."

"Are there a lot of wraiths there?" Codix asked, his voice just barely above a whisper.

Maahes nodded.

After a second - seeming to remember Bo couldn't see the nod - he added in a hesitant, "Yes."

"I'll go out." said Boris, voice scratchy, but serious as ever.

"Let me go. I'll scout the corridor ahead. If you hear shouting, don't follow."

Bo's face contorted in worry, but it pained him to do so.

"Wh-what? There's no reason you should have to go alone. And we're not even there yet. Can we figure something else out? Are-are you sure?"

Boris almost laughed. He'd expected some resistance, but more of the 'I remember what happened last time you offered to scout for us' variety.

"Bo, I'm not dying in a goddamned closet." Boris asserted.

Let me go. It's about time I did something useful."