38 Backfired!

I opened the door to the Lordes Mansion and got inside. My mind was blank, a stone slate, as I went inside and did the dirty work. In a daze, I opened up the latches on the necks of the rest of the boys and switched off survival mode one by one, like a robot.

Ha. The irony. 

After I was done, I decided to distract myself. So I worked even harder to take each of the boys to their rooms. I dragged Ethan up the stairs, panting heavily. I lay him on the floor in front of his room and opened that door for the first time.

Sunlight rushed in like a bright flash. 

Adrien hated the sun. Thinking of that…now I knew why.

"It's so bright…" I mumbled and peered inside the room. There was a bed against a wall and a mattress on the floor with the blanket neatly folded in the centre.

This was where Adrien slept after Saye moved in to his room.

I closed my eyes and took in a breath before opening them up again. I bent down and pulled Ethan by his legs into the room. 

Standing up straight, I wiped off the sweat on my forehead and stared out of the window. There was a clear view of the woods from here. 

Tens of birds flew away from the trees and into the sky. 

I forced myself to look back inside the room. Still in the daze, I opened their wardrobe. It was divided into two. One half had after shave and razors. On the hangers were a few shirts. Folded neatly and stacked inside the shelf were jogging pants and normal pants and a couple of trousers.

But the other half was so close to empty. A single pair of grey shirt and a black pant lay on the plank.

I was about to close the wardrobe when I noticed something glint in the corner of the almost empty half of the wardrobe. I reached inside and took it out.

A silver blade. 

There was no blood on it, so that was a relief. I tilted my head and examined it, "Why is there a blade in your side of the wardrobe, Adrien?"

I looked further inside to see if I would find more blades. There were none, but I found out what the blade was used for. 

On the wood inside, were hashed markings, little lines scraped by the blade. I crouched in further to read what he had written inside. 

I didn't understand a thing. It mostly looked like random lines to me. Maybe he could have done it when he was bored. I narrowed my eyes and looked closer.

My fingers traced the words and I read what I could understand out loud, "Inexas…Kai…." I looked below that and there were even smaller words carved in. 

"Obliterator…Hailstorm…High Commander…" and there were other random words which I didn't know the meaning of. High Commander, I knew though.

It was the highest military rank a player could get if they joined the Elite. A group of competent soldiers assigned to protect the borders of Auria from the Firelord's Demon Army of Heaven Realm. 

You must be laughing right now. Demons in heaven, you say? What kind of messed up logic is that? Imagine me shrugging, I don't know, reader. My dad was crazy when he came to designing his games. 

So confusing, yet so brilliant.

These demons looked like angels, white and shining with silver swords and golden arrows. They had kind eyes and golden hair that radiated power and energy. And players would be lead to trust them and accept their help and rewards in the game. Until, in the battlefield, the angels remove their disguise and turn into monstrous demons, draining more than half of the player's hard earned inventory and coins. 

Breakfire Online was not just an ordinary game. It was a game of choices which only the smartest could win. That was the no. 1 reason dad's creation took over the world by storm. 

Enough about Dad. What kind of memories did Darren and his team even give Adrien? The Obliterator and Hailstorm weren't even a part of the game. 

I read the last word Adrien had scraped on to the inner boards of the wardrobe. 

'Ashe Florence Hermann.' 

I wiped the dust over it and read it again. It was my name. Why? Why would he write my name inside his wardrobe? 

I was supposed to shrug it off, thinking maybe he wrote it because he wanted to remind himself to beware me. I mean, what other reason could there be? My fingers didn't leave the imprints for a long time. I was confused.

How did Adrien even know my middle name? I had never shared that to anyone and as a result, the only people who knew it were only Mom and Darren. 

Mom didn't even know Adrien existed and I doubted Darren would have randomly shared such personal information with something he considered as a folder. 

I remembered how Adrien knew about Saye treating me badly too. It was really confusing.

I closed my eyes and let out a breath and stood up straight. "Stop overthinking Ashe. After today, he'll be gone, along with the rest of the boys. They will all turn back into atoms in the air and the code that makes them up will return to the computers. All this won't matter anymore," I told myself sternly and banged the wardrobe door close.

I made my way down to check Saye's temperature. Her face was slowly regaining its colour. A tinge of dejavu hit back on me. I had been in the same state as her last year. She had pulled my hair when we are alone in the lab after class.

It was the one time I had tried to resist and fight back, but she hit back harder and soon it ended up in a bloodbath and nail scratches on my face. It was evening, and all Saye did was toss a bunch of cash towards me and walk out the door.

Her last words being, "Take the money. Use it to stitch up your ugly head. I need it fixed so I can break it again. When someone asks, say I helped you," she laughed, "That's the truth after all. You wouldn't lie would you?" 

I cried a lot that night, and nobody at home even noticed.

I laughed, looking at Saye, sleeping on the bed, her face so serene. You'd think she was an angel. Well, anyway, things were better now. She didn't hurt me anymore and we were working together…but that made me scared. Now that all this was going to be over, would she go back to being my bully?

I sat alone in my room after that, thinking about the only boy I was so close to liking. What if we had made it out of that forest with both of us alive? Would we be laughing and having fun right now? Or maybe go collecting squirrels, who knew. 

How did he know my middle name, though? 

"Huh?" I found myself saying when I felt something in my pocket. "I thought this was gone…"

I flipped the card in my hand. It was the game invitation card, once again in my hands. I guessed the card was made of bio-code too, disappearing and reappearing at random times. 

But that kind of technology was too advanced for my dad to create. I should have known then that there was some other force behind it. I should have realised. But I shrugged and kept the card back in my pocket safely. 

My head was about to touch my pillow as I laid down to sleep when the doorbell rang. I stopped midway and sat back up again. "Darren?" 

I jumped up and ran to the door and looked through the eyehole. 

My hands trembling, I turned the door knob and slowly opened the door. 

"Wh-what are you doing here?"

He looked up from his messed up hair and wiped his mouth. Narrowing his eyes at me, I heard his voice once again, "Why did you leave without getting me deer?"