Chapter 3

Lucella was laying on the bed, her arms were tightly wrapped around her shoulders as she curled up into a ball. Her nose was runny and her pretty blue eyes were blood-shot and red. She unwrapped her arms from her shoulders and brought her hands to her face so she could cry more peacefully.

Three days had passed since Aidan had been taken away, and the guilt and pain were consuming poor Lucella. She should've done something to prevent that from happening, she should've ignored the fatigue and the aching in her bones and should've tried to stay strong so nothing would happen to Aidan. . . So she could keep him and her other friends from suffering the same destiny that Adan had met.

Adan, hearing that name still made her feel heartbroken and lost.

Who could blame her though, you never really forget your first love just like that. It was a deep pain, a non-physical scar slashed right across your heart, causing you to bleed and slowly die from the blood loss and the huge grieve set deep within yourself.

After Adan had gone, she had promised herself that she would take care of her friends and never let them meet the same destiny that Adan had met. . . But here she was, crying and weeping on her top bunk and feeling entirely helpless for not assisting to Aidan when he most needed it.

Due to her heavy sobbing, Lucella hadn't noticed that a pair of leaf-green eyes that were filled with nothing but pity towards her were staring at her.

Hazlet let out a small pout, he fidgeted with the heavy door's doorknob and slowly pushed the door open. "Lucella?" He called in a quiet tone. "Are you alright?" The crying had stopped as soon as he had spoken, but that only let the sounds of sniffles and small pitiful weeps to fill the silence.

Hazlet's shoulder's dropped a little, he couldn't keep on listening to his friend crying, not anymore. He quickly carried himself over to the bunk bed and climbed over the ladder faster than one of Lucella's fastest lightning.

After he had made spot for himself beside Lucella, his friend immediatelly wrapped her arms around his torso tightly. Hazlet too, wrapped his arms around her and began to console her by whispering comforting things into her ear.

As Hazlet continued, Lucella's eyes were able to dry off after a few minutes. She wiped her leftover tears away from her rosy cheeks and rested her head against the crevice of his neck, her breathing had calmed down as well and now she felt even more exhausted than before.

"W-Where's Nanshe? I . . . I thought you two went to the experimentation rooms together." She said, her voice sounding hoarse due to the sobbing.

Hazlet brushed her hair. "She went to the shower rooms to check on Aidan."

At the mention of the boy, Lucella's head shot upwards. "Really?" She asked before going on more frantically. "sI he okay, did the monsters hurt him?" Lucella then sat up and gazed at Hazlet with big sapphire blue eyes.

Hazlet made her lie down once more by grabbing her by the arm and pulling her down. "He's fine, he's fine." He replied twice before hugging Lucella again to calm her distress once again. "He's okay, they didn't do anything to him."

Hazlet knew that he shouldn't be saying things that he wasn't too sure about, but having Lucella crying non-stop wasn't good for her mental health. She needed reassurance, specially now at times like these.

~

Aidan was sitting down at the shower room's floor. Water sprinkled down from the water head above him and drizzled down his back. The tiny speckles of water sank deep into his opened wounds, making him wince and growl at the sudden sting of pain.

You wouldn't be able to tell, but the young tiger-like boy had been crying. The new traumas of getting whipped and having a knife sink into his body was driving him crazy. He closed his eyes tightly, but the memories would always go back more fresh and more livid than before.

He wanted to escape this, he wanted everything to just go away and be over, but this cruel game of survival wouldn't be too easy to finish. . . At least not if he finished it that way. It would be selfish of him, he would be leaving other three teenagers like him unprotected and vulnerable to even more trauma.

As he continued with the shower, water kept drizzling over his back, letting the dried and the fresh blood to trail down from his back towards the floor. Aidan looked at the scarlet red liquid as it spiraled along with water in a race to see who could reach the drain first.

As he looked distractedly at the floor, the white curtains of the shower suddenly slid open. Aidan immediately looked up. His teeth were bared to the point his gums were showing and a deep aggressive and menacing growl rumbled in his throat, warning the person to stay away from him or else they'd get light up by him.

"Calm down. . . It's me." Nanshe said quietly, slowly stepping into the shower with him.

At the sight of the siren, Aidan immediately relaxed his tense muscles, he hid his fangs away and lowered his head as Nanshe softly ran her webbed fingers through his dampened brown hair.

Aidan let out a soft smile, but his slight happiness vanished when he noticed that 17-year old was trembling too; her gray scales were flickering off her body as water touched them, and if you squinted your eyes really good, you would see that some parts of her body were bruised and burned. There was a slight cut on her right cheek and her eyes looked droopy, reflecting her exhaustion.

Forgetting about his own pain, Aidan pressed his hand against Nanshe's cheek, slight fury rising in his chest at the thought of someone being able to cause any kind of harm to his friend. "They hurt you. . ."

"I'm fine," Nanshe whispered, softly grabbing Aidan's hand and pulling it away from her face. She crouched beside him and pressed her forehead to his. It was something that Nanshe would often do, it was a small gesture that for reason could make Aidan feel relaxed and somewhat comforted.

After a few minutes, Nanshe pulled away and looked to the side where she spotted the same old dirty sponge that she used to clean Aidan's wounds with. Nanshe stretched her arm and reached for it. She tried whipping away some of the grime off of it before lifting the soft sponge so it could soak up some of the water from the shower head.

Aidan let out a hiss as soon as he felt the surface of the sponge being pressed against his back, making strings of pain to travel all over his spine. Aidan almost fell to the side, he was starting to feel dizzy and exhausted, everything within him hurt. he wanted everything to stop. He wanted to end all of this.

One of their friends had already died because of the torture and experiments. How many of them would have to lose their lives before everything could end?

Two arms wrapped around him, it didn't take long for Aidan to realize that Nanshe was hugging him when he too began to cling on to her, desperate to feel reassured between his painful clamour.

Nanshe pressed her cheek against Aidan's head. She bit lip to try and stop her own tears from falling as she caught a glance of the blood on the ground waiting to be washed away by the water. Without much effort to stop it, tears built up in Nanshe's eyes, the sponge she held was then dropped onto the floor with a slight splash as she held her friend closer to her.

Aidan's shoulders shook, he hid his face at the crevice of Nanshe's neck and let his sobs echo all throughout the showers.

"Shh, it's okay," Nanshe told him, her cheek tightly pressed against his cheek as a few tears ran down her face as well. She gently pulled away from him and held his face with her hands. "We'll all be okay. We'll all survive this, I promise." Despite her own storm raging inside of her, she gave Aidan a reassuring smile.

The older's heart made a small fluter. He stared back at her shining gray orbs, he could tell her that Nanshe was feeling as unsure as he did, he knew she was in despair too. . . But he was able to let out a small smile too and wipe his eyes to stop them from letting his tears fall down.

They both needed to stay strong.

They both needed to survive. . .