13.

Stray

"Are you sure we shouldn't tell Casper?" Tohka hissed.

It was hours past lights out in the housing units, pitch black corridors and the inkling feeling of being watched by shadows surrounded us. Every door had been shut, their locks snapped on as soon as the corridor lights were switched off. I wouldn't have been able to sleep, anyways. The girl with purple hair kept humming right next to my freaking ear. I had tried to block out the sound, but I just couldn't. I'd ended up sneaking to Tohka's room until it was go time.

And here we were: go time. Crouching in front of the room that Hunter used to keep his gear. Masks, throwing knives, throwing axes, and everything in between. I'd felt guilty after stealing the mask with the whiskers, but I didn't feel guilty this time. I felt jumpy, amped up and ready. Screw him for lying to me, he deserved to lose a few things. And anyways, what was he going to do, kill me? Yeah, right, Hunter wouldn't do anything to me.

"Tohka." I faced her. "You saw him at dinner."

She twisted her fingers. She'd borrowed a pair of black trousers and a t-shirt, both of them too big for her, but we weren't going to sneak around in the dark with her in pure white. I'm not a genius by any standard, but that isn't too smart. Does that fall into the talent category? No, probably just the common sense department.

"I know, I just…Dan, maybe we shouldn't do this."

"I'm going to do this."

"Let's get Casper."

"Casper looked at us like we were crazy when we asked him," I whispered. "He wouldn't help us. And either way, Hunter bruised him up pretty bad. He'd slow us down."

She scrunched up her eyebrows. "I know you have something against your brother right now but don't spread it to Casper."

"I'm not-"

She clamped her hand over my mouth, forcefully until her nails dug into my cheeks. The sound of boots patting against the thick carpet was coming down the corridor. From the front entrance to be exact. She slid her hand off of my mouth and pressed a finger to her lips. We inched backwards, our backs scraping against the wall. The sound of the heavy boots came closer, each step louder than the last.

The footsteps were heading towards us.

Tohka gripped onto my forearm and pulled me back into a little hobble. A locker – cramped and claustrophobic. The metal was cold against my cheek as I squeezed in next to Tohka, her breath tickled my neck and her hair brushed against my ear. The footsteps paused as we shut the thin metal doors. I held my breath, but my heart had other ideas. It hammered against my chest, blood raged in my ears. My breathing was a little too shallow to stop my lungs from aching.

Killing Grace needed to happen. If we were caught, we'd be well and truly fucked. And I'd dragged Tohka down my little rabbit hole, so I was going to see this through. At least for her.

The boots tapped against the floor lightly now, as the person stalked closer towards the locker. The grating near my face would show us off pretty easily. Down the rabbit hole, and now the jackal was coming, because only one person could walk that lightly but have the presence of a thunderstorm.

Tohka's elbow pressed into my side as she shifted. I shot her a glance to stop it before Hunter blew apart our plans. But she was too busy shimmying out of her t-shirt. I looked away, out of respect, and to hide the blush blooming into my cheeks. She pressed the t-shirt on the grate, shutting off the spikes of stray light that had been peeking through it.

The footsteps paused right outside the locker. I held my breath and Tohka did the same. I switched on the Unit, and his heat signature popped into my vision. He had his back to us, hands running through his hair and looking either side of the corridor. He shrugged and left, going down the hall towards his small gear room and locking the door – the small beeps of the pad on the door flashing green as he walked away.

We stood like that for a while. Her arms either side of my head, breaths tickling my neck and body pressed against mine. Sweaty. That's what I was, was the locker this hot? No, it couldn't be. Adrenaline, that's what was making it so hot. It thumped through my body with every hammering heartbeat, it was go time.

I forced the door open and stepped out into the hallway. Tohka slid into her t-shirt and followed as we slinked back towards the door. Hunter was long gone, his annoying presence gone with him as well.

"What the hell are we going to do now?" she hissed.

"How the hell should I know?"

She ran her hands through her long hair. "Don't you know the password?'

I shook my head. "We could just break it."

She blinked. "That would probably just set off an alarm, genius."

Yeah, I was definitely in the common sense department and not the genius or talented department. I tried the handle, and the door clicked open. He hadn't locked it, he'd opened it. Green for open, red for shut, idiot. Well, at least I had some sort of common sense. But…if he'd opened it, then he'd known we were here. Hunter was a jackass, but he wasn't stupid. Dense but not dumb. Was this all part of his act? Part of that stupid game he'd been playing with me?

Fuck it. Fuck him. Grace – she needed a knife between her eyes. And then the purple haired girl leaning against the wall would disappear.

It's time to throw common sense out the window.

I jerked my head towards the room and entered. As soon as she was in I flicked on the light, a tiny bulb in the center of the white ceiling buzzed into life. Masks on one wall, axes and knives to our left, and a mirror to our right. Of course he had a mirror in here. The mirror showed Tohka and someone else. Me, but I had dark circles around my eyes, bloodshot with pupils' almost as large as my green and blue irises. This was all Hunter's doing. If I cared enough, I'd mess up this entire room, but I had better things to do.

Tohka dug through a metal box on the floor and came up with a silver gun – a desert eagle. Huge and thirsting, humming in her slim hands.

"I want this," she murmured.

I shrugged. She could take whatever, it would piss Hunter off, but that's not a Dan problem.

I would keep my whiskered mask. It had grown onto me, and it would feel like a disservice changing it for a new mask. Like I didn't care about the people I'd killed. Is that why Hunter had so many? If so, he made my stomach bubble with disgust even more.

I grabbed a pair of black bladed combat knives and strapped them to my thighs. Tohka holstered the desert eagle onto the small of her back, slamming in a full clip of silver bullets – several clips on each thigh followed.

"Ready?" I asked.

She took a deep and shaky breath: "Ready."

We switched off the lights and snuck out of the room. No sign of the jackass, and no sign of the guard that normally wanders in the hall at night. The purple haired girl appeared next to me, her cold aura forcing a chill down my back.

Tohka gave me a look as I shivered, I gave her a thumbs up and grinned. Another genius act, because she could see my smile through the mask, right? Get your head together, Dan. Game time.

It felt like hours had slipped through our fingers as we snaked our way through the maze of corridors. We came across a guard at a point, but she was half asleep and flicking through her phone. Our boots sounded like cannons going off as we hit the reception area, the old man wasn't there, and neither were his cookies. Hopefully no cookies meant a good omen.

I pressed my hand against the glass door, metal clicking against crystal. There weren't any cameras in the housing unit ever since Grace had stepped in, apparently. She used a trust method, but break her trust and you'd probably end up as an exhibition in a surgical room. Or so I've heard, but then again, you hear a lot on the Island.

Shut.

Tohka glanced at me and in a voice barely above the silence, said, "Game over?"

I shook my head. "Not yet."

I switched on the Unit, numbers crossed my eyes and information buzzed into my head. Most of it useless, but a lot of it useful. Scratch that, all of it useless. No way to open a glass door without breaking it, and this is important, it would create a really loud sound if we did that. We needed a distraction to open it.

Thanks, Unit, for always being so helpful.

Tohka slipped the gun out of her holster and cocked it. "I have a plan."

"Are you going to shoot me?" I took a step back. She'd shot be before, but with rubber bullets. Hadn't stopped the embarrassment of having cream put onto places that the nurse shouldn't have seen. "Because that's not a great idea."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to shoot you. Just get ready to run."

"Run?"

"Run."

Before I could question her, she bolted back down the corridor. She screamed and emptied the gun's clip, the rounds blowing apart the concrete ceiling. The corridor lights snapped on, Tohka's screams grew louder, the bark of the gun ricocheted down the tunnel like hallway.

It was about time to get going.

I smashed the glass – my fist going through it after three heavy hits. The glass clinging onto the metal frame nicked my cheeks and sides, but adrenaline was roaring in my ears and numbing the pain. I broke out into the cool air and sprinted down the steps, my boots slamming against the concrete and my heart beating in my skull

Someone was shouting my name behind me, deeper than Tohka's, so I wasn't going to look back.

Across the road, my stomach climbing my throat. Over construction equipment, my breathing sharp and shallow. Through the park, my head swimming.

Straight to Grace's building. Her tall, mottled and mangled masterpiece of a head office. It's blurring paint, awkward window angels and staggering height trying to intimidate me. I'd been intimidated the first time I'd ever seen it, but now I was just angry. Full of hate and rage. She'd given the Unit those orders, and someone I'd known was dead now. The life I'd lived for the past year was a lie, the people I knew all just white clothes with plain faces, and the one person I'd trusted had been the cause of all this.

But before him, Grace. I was going to try out art and paint her white desk with her insides. Red was her favorite color, so she'd love it.

I pushed through the thick bushes in the park, my breaths pushing against the mask. I didn't stop across the road, I didn't stop when the guards shouted at me to stop and identify myself, I didn't stop when I slammed both of their heads into the glass doors as they blacked out. They'd survive, I wasn't going to kill anyone else. Just Grace. Only Grace.

The receptionist shrieked as I burst through the doors. She fiddled with a red button in her palm and forced her finger down on it. The building's white lights popped off and blurred back as a red hue. It was impossible to see, so I'd have to use the one thing that hadn't lied to me. That had been here before Hunter had started lying to me.

Guards stormed out of the three elevators across the lobby, more of them flowing through the doors behind me.

I took a deep breath to steady my vision, and switched on the Unit.

The guards didn't wait, they shot at me on sight.

I dived towards the receptionist's desk, tackling her as she scrambled underneath it. She kept screaming, the gun's kept roaring, and the purple haired girl kept humming.

No killing, Dan.

I punched the woman, just hard enough to knock her out. I stuffed her limp body deeper into the desk– a sentence that sounds worse than it actually is – and darted out from behind the mammoth piece of white metal.

I smacked straight into the wall of guards that had come from the elevator, a calculated risk, and a risk that paid. The other guards coming from the door hesitated, they wouldn't shoot their own.

I was wrong. They would. They opened fire and bullets tore through the group of men and women trying to clamp their gloved white fists onto me and end my little foray into treason. They shrieked and screamed at the other group to stop to no avail, their screams cutting off just before I started on the stairs. The smell of blood hadn't broken through the mask yet, it had made bearing with the sight of bodies being torn apart easier.

But not bearable.

Screw you, Hunter.

The building had the most floors out of any on the Island, so I was up for some cardio with a few of the guard trying to riddle my body with bullets.

I swung around corners, my lungs threatening to pop in my chest. Shouts came from every direction and disorientated me, their voices blending and become a hum. I spared a glance at the girl, still smiling, and right on my heels as I leaped over potted plants and flew up the cramped stairwell.

All of it in red, all of it blurring together and creating a tunnel that led upwards. Hunter had once told me about hell and heaven, how the good go upstairs and the bad go down. How heaven was white and pure, and hell was dark and cruel. Going up in a tunnel bathed in red, with the smell of blood slowly seeping into my mask, and the harsh scent of gunpowder clinging onto me.

A new talent: going up to the big guy with blood gripping onto me and bodies lying in piles at my feet. I bet no one had ever done that before.

Gunfire ripped the wall inches in front of my face. I ducked and rolled, coming to a stop on the other side of the corridor. A potted plant brushed my mask as I came to a halt.

"Stray, Stray, Stray," the voice called, leisurely and slow. "Come on out. We have things to talk about."

I took a second to suck air through the mask, my nostrils filled with nothing but the sour pang of gunpowder. Whoever that was didn't sound like they just wanted to talk. And I didn't have time to talk. I was just a few floors below Grace's office. I know she's there, I can see her pulse, her heat signature, and that distinct movement of her hand flowing over a canvas.

I gripped onto the black blades. I was about to have my first art lesson. My mouth frothed with adrenaline as I stood up, my back against the wall and facing a painting of a little girl in a red dress. Disgusting. I slid my knife through the canvas, cutting off the girl's head. I stepped back to the wall and peaked around the corner, a boy with a red arm and a red cigarette cylinder stood in the hallway. His back pressed against the wall along with his head. He was looking up at the crimson lights like they were telling him a story.

"I said," the boy called again, louder now. "Come on out. I hate repeating myself, dipshit."

He was blocking the next flight of stairs. I needed to move fast, the way he flipped the knife in his hand was too easy for someone who looked like he'd never been in the training rooms.

Two quick breaths, three slow breaths, and I was moving. My boots hammering against the red carpet as I stormed towards the boy. The Unit was buzzing, my ears ringing as soon as I got close to him. He had been smiling, but now he was clutching his head. The pain that wracked through my body was immeasurably. Like getting run over, set on fire and then thrown into a cell with a Skin type of pain.

It jackhammered down my spine and I stumbled, my face smacking the floor. The boy with the red arm was on the floor as well, wheezing and clutching his neck. The Unit wasn't doing me any favours, every time I got to my knees and hands it would shoot a bold of heat through my body and make my stomach flip.

I switched it off and the pain dissipated. The vice squeezing my skull had suddenly stopped. I got onto my feet, using the wall to steady myself. My eyes blurred with tears and sweat glued my t-shirt to my back, but I could focus again.

I stumbled over the Japanese boy.

His hand shot out and clamped onto my ankle.

My face met the floor again, and just as hard as the first time.

I kicked at his hand, but my boot clanked against his metal fist. He had a sick grin on his face as he put the knife's handle in his mouth. I kicked out again, this time aiming for his jaw, but he dodged easily and clambered on top of me.

"You remember me, bitch?" he growled.

"I think I would if I did," I wheezed as he stood up, his boot pressing into my gut.

"Heard you went to the Gray." He slammed a boot into my side, hot pain crashed through my lungs. "Killed one of our own. What am I saying? One of my own."

"What are you talking about?" My voice barely audible. Grace. That was the priority, but the boy had an agenda. The way his near black eyes shown with hate in the pulsing red lights was ravenous, full of disgust, full of something deeper. Like I'd broken a promise.

He grabbed my t-shirt collar and forced me against the wall, the knife blade bit into my throat, his cologne serenaded my nose and made me flinch. "Mei. You fucking killed her. I saw the footage."

"Who's-"

He punched me and my vision flickered. "Mei!" he screamed. "You killed her and then ran away. Just like every other time when you get too deep into shit." He got close to me, his nose touched my mask. "Just like Young Haven. Just like the years before that."

Young Haven? The years before that? Questions ran through my mind, pain throbbed through my body, and anger swelled in my heart. I needed to focus on why I was here. Because of Grace.

The purple haired girl hummed and touched the boy's cheek.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I gasped as he wrapped his hand around my throat. I gripped onto his metal arm, but his blade waved just underneath my jaw, the sharp metal threatening to split the clammy skin.

"You disgust me."

"I disgust myself." The smell of blood holding onto me from last night hadn't left. Won't you look at that, I was just like the jackass himself.

He pressed the blade against my throat, but just before he could draw blood, a deafening explosion rang out in the corridor. The boy shrieked and backpedalled, his black t-shirt damp, the liquid running in between his pressed fingers dark.

Tohka stood at the end of the corridor, her eye black and shut, hair jagged and clothes shredded. The silver desert eagle stoic and smoking in her fists.

"What the hell are you waiting for?" she screamed. "Go!"

I glanced at the boy on the floor, the look in his eyes hadn't changed. It only grew deeper.

Grace, Dan, that's what we're here for.

I sprinted down the corridor, leaving Tohka and the boy in my wake. Up the stairs, pause as gunfire rained from above. Dive in between two potted plants, spring back up and race on. Too many things buzzed in my head, too many feelings raged in my chest. That boy had answers, he knew things about me that I didn't. He'd been in that picture with the purple haired girl…that picture with Mei, but he'd been in the corner of it and glaring. Glaring at me.

I shook my head. The last time I'd had thoughts flying through my head, I'd let the Unit take over, and I'd done things that now carved themselves into the back of my eyelids.

Clear mind, straight target.

I finally hit Grace's floor, the walls to her office were lined with paintings. Some new, some old, some half-finished, some blank canvases. I wasn't here for an art exhibition. I was here to get revenge on the one person that had been the root of my pain.

Gripping onto my knives I slammed my boot against her office doors, the heavy wood swung open, and revealed the person I hated most. Her office was bathed in white, her body downed in red, and her face painted with a bright smile.

"Well, well, well," she said, "the prodigal son has returned."

I gripped onto the blade's handle. "You made me kill. For no reason. You could have gotten that information yourself."

She nodded and threaded her fingers, letting her chin rest on them. "You're not as dumb as you look, Daniel. Shame that you're a Fallow."

I threw the knife. The blade sung as it cut through the air and embedded itself next to her head. "Shut the fuck up if you're going to talk down on my family."

"Our," she corrected.

The ringing in my ears and Mei's humming must be messing with me. Ours? What the hell did she mean ours? Games. She was playing games. Just like Hunter had been. Fuck her. Fuck him. Fuck this entire Island. I'm done here.

I tensed my shoulder, ready to pin her to her leather chair.

"Grace Fallow," she muttered. "Yes. A full name I hate so much." She stood. "You want something, don't you?"

I blinked. Fallow? No. She was lying. She hated my family. She wasn't one of us.

"You want the truth, judging from those eyes." She sat on her desk. I could lunge at her, gut her like a fish, but my arms couldn't move. My feet were welded to the floor. "Truth, truth, truth. Oh, how there are so many ways to tell it. But you're a grown up, so I'll be straight with you." She folded her arms. "We're from different branches of the oh-so-great Fallow family."

"W-what the hell are you talking about?" A vice around my throat now.

"It's not too hard to understand, really," she drawled. "My…our great grandfather had two children, my grandfather and yours, of course. I can say that there was a lot of bad blood. They both wanted great granddaddy Fallow's riches, but they couldn't decide who should take what. So things happened, blah blah blah, my grandfather killed yours, blah blah blah, your father killed my parents and grandfather, and now we're here."

Questions sprouting like weeds, my stomach lurching and threatening to empty itself, the floor like tidal waves, and my heart near silent. But one thing clicked. One tiny thing clicked. She wanted the Gray because our grandfather had owned this place a long time ago. Greed still plagued both sides of the family. Grace wanted everything our family used to own, and Hunter wanted to play his stupid, self-righteous game for his own hidden agenda.

And I wanted to kill my second cousin to get revenge. I wanted a life that I couldn't remember. A life I didn't deserve after what I've done.

"Do you want to know another truth, Daniel?" Her razor like nail lingered above the scar over my eye. "Your father, that drunken bastard, killed my father out of hatred and jealousy. There's a reason why my branch of the family inherited everything whilst you…you're nothing but the filth of the Fallow. You degrade the family's name."

"You killed….you made me kill my friend," I whispered, tears hot streaks down my cheeks.

She blinked, and then chuckled, and then laughed. "Oh, what ever do you mean, cousin?"

I slapped away her hand and drank in oxygen. "You gave the Unit orders to kill people! I killed Mei because of you!" I drew the blade in my fist.

She kept laughing, hysterical now, throwing her head back and filling the room with it. "Ironic. I absolutely love it." She brushed away a tear, delicate on her rainbow colored nails. "Your father killed grandfather before he could create a control system for the Unit. You created that narrative so you wouldn't come to the harsh truth."

"Harsh truth?" No. Lies. Lies layered in lies.

"You murdered your friend on your own free will." She grinned. "Protecting your sanity just to delve deeper into insanity. Isn't it wonderful to be a Fallow?"