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  "It was me," Max said, voice trailing, almost imperceptible at the end.

  Their eyes fell on him, his face infested with doubts. Alec's eyes almost jumped from his face, Lucy unable to look into his eyes and Neil clenched his fist and told Neil to get closer.

  "I ... I needed to save you!" Max shouted.

  "And you gave up our only chance to get out of here? What do you think will happen after we get out of here? We have nowhere to go! We cannot appear in Relics without the spirit animal!" Neil shouted, waking James who was still in a state of trance because of the pain.

  "But... the torture..." Max continued.

  "We were going to take it!" Neil said as he reached out to grab Max.

  "Excu ... excuse me!" Max asked, backing away two steps, enough to get out of Neil's range.

  Max stumbled over his own words. He avoided telling them the truth. He had seen everything, resisted torture and overcame adversity, but everything fell, like a stone thrown from a ravine, when Alec was at stake. A dagger stuck in his heart, pushed down as he knew he was about to watch the desperation of the one who was urging him not to give up. The irony was that he saved Alec but lost him anyway. No one answered.

  "They'll free us!" Max said, trying to make them realize he did what he could.

  "For someone so smart you have a hard time noticing that you made a mistake," Neil said, serious as never before.

  Max walked forward, swung his wand and watched as a few threads of lights joined the fingers back onto Neil’s hand.

  "It's no use crying about it now. We have to arrange a plan to save Lucian and get out of this town as soon as possible." Alec said, looking to the door.

  Lucy opened her mouth but closed it before speaking as two distinct kinds of footsteps approached. They were already near the door, and there was a bunch of keys banging on the belt buckle every 3 seconds. She was still slightly dizzy, but whatever they had given her was beginning to wear off. Two guards appeared at the entrance. They didn’t talk to them at all. They went to the chairs and opened the chains, whenever one would open a chain, the other would face the group in case the boys decided to make the mistake of trying to subdue them. It was almost impossible without energy and given their power it was even more ridiculous. However, they didn’t seem to underestimate them despite the youngsters' unwillingness to fight.

  The chain’s metal hit the floor and echoed through the tunnel. James was the last one, because of his wounds, and Alec had to hold him before he spilled out. His leg was undone. It resembled more grated fruit than a limb of the human body, and the young man, still with half-open eyes, trembled whenever his foot touched the ground. His hand, glued to his body, stretched as if there were no shoulder, hiding the dried blood from the eyes of others.

  Lucy stayed on the chair. She shifted only a few inches, giving Neil room to sit beside her, worried, confirming that she was okay. As soon as they were released, one of the guards took the chains, while the other gave Max the bag with the promised items. His face expressed disgust, with creases between his cheeks and nose, and salient lines on his forehead. He turned and moved on. The last thing the group heard coming from the men was one of them, the slacker and the one who carried the chains, letting out a sincere outburst:

  "I see why, but the doctor always overdoes it with children," he said, ending with a sigh.

  The room sank back into an embarrassing silence, driven by the inability of the young people to know how to confront what was in their hearts. Max cleared his throat. He waited for everyone to look at him and opened the sack, removing the bottles they still had and giving one to each one of his friends.

  "You could start by using your energy, couldn’t you? Do something useful, for once." Neil said, his eyes filled with fury, snorting like an animal.

  Max lowered his head. He walked forward, swung his wand and watched as a few threads of lights joined the fingers back onto Neil’s hand. Then, he walked over to Lucy and used his power until she got an extra 50 HP. Neil followed and got the same 50. Max didn’t have the energy for much more. Alec had to settle for what was left, 20 HP, having 40 for the rest of the night. They agreed that one of the bottles was for James, and another for Lucian, if they could get him back. They clung to hope, to the possibility of doing so, afraid of stumbling in an endless spiral, a hell from which they wouldn’t leave. It took two people to make James swallow the cure, one opening his mouth and holding it for him, while another put the drink down his throat.

  James awakened in less than a minute, spitting saliva to the ground, clutching himself tightly to what was left of Alec's jacket as he looked down at his leg. His HP had gone up and the pain had calmed down, but the leg remained a misery.

  "Can’t you do anything to help him?" Alec asked Max, still not looking into his eyes.

  "No... Only top healers can heal wounds like that. I don’t know if there are any in this town..." he replied timidly.

  "I think there is. I remember seeing a woman with huge healing power in the hospital where they took me. But it was after the injections, I may have seen it wrong," Lucy added.

  "Real or not, it's our only chance," Alec said, still with James on his side. His teeth creaked and he touched Alec's clothing with only two fingers, avoiding showing how much he needed help.

  "We also need a safe place to stay, at least for today," Lucy added, getting up and adjusting her clothes, the dust falling and spreading through the air.

  "We don’t have money, do we? We don’t even know if people will help us!" Neil said, stifling the hope that grew slowly.

  "We have half the money," Max replied, shaking, afraid that Neil would get up and attack him.

  "If we’re lucky it will do,” Alec said, glaring at Neil and nodding at his clenched fists, still squeezing his fingers into his skin.

  They planned what would happen next. Alec would take James on his back, accompanied by Max, and they would stand at the door of that inhospitable house, with walls that could fall at any moment, while Neil and Lucy went to the hospital, to look for that doctor, who they still were not sure existed. After healing James, it was the task of finding a place where they could stay overnight. It was not a perfect plan, but it would have to do. It was all they had.

  "Don’t think this means we're already friends!" James commented with Alec.

  Alec smiled at seeing him trying to be himself, despite the misfortune that had fallen on his body. Alec crouched in front of him and waited for him, with Neil's help, to cling to his neck.

  "Don’t worry," he replied, as he felt his hands wrap around his neck.

  James still mumbled, but eventually, he was silent. They walked through the tunnel with a smelling rotten lake with muddy puddles on the ground. James still screamed as he was hit by a drop of water in the middle of his forehead, and as he tried to clean, he almost made him and Alec fall. Neil went ahead with Lucy, exchanging ideas of how they were going to approach the situation at the hospital, and Max was behind them all, alone, carrying the burden of guilt on his shoulders.

  The trapdoor was down, but a jerk of Neil's strength was enough to open it, leaving the light in the small room, where they had entered, to illuminate part of the tunnel. They went out one by one. Toward the end was Alec who pushed James up by the haunches while Neil grabbed him by the arms and pulled him up. The white-bearded man was still at the table, sitting and twirling with his fingers, pausing to glance at them. There were no guards in the room, and yet he didn’t seem concerned. He put the pen behind his ear and whistled a celestial melody through his teeth. The moment gained a peculiar form; the tranquility of the music calmed the exalted moods that ran through the group. They stood there for a few minutes, breathing in the fresh air, the music flowing through their ears, ignoring how late the night was at its end but for them, it was the beginning of it.

  "We better get going," Alec said, slapping Lucy on the shoulder.

  "Yes, yes, you're right," she said as if he had woken her from prolonged sleep
.

  Neil, once again, helped James up onto Alec's back. James’ frustration grew every time he was confronted with the impossibility of doing something as simple as walking. It irritated him that he needed so much help, that he was becoming the kind of useless person he always abhorred. He avoided looking into their eyes and used only the tips of his fingers to hold on. They walked to the door before the group divided as previously planned. Neil and Lucy went in search of the hospital, and the rest sat on the sandy floor in front of the building.

  Chapter XV

  Max was a few feet away from the other two, hiding his face between his legs, sobbing constantly. Alec stared at him, not knowing what to say. Even he had not seen and dealt with such situations, nor had he faced anything like that, with a betrayal that put them at risk, but which at the same time was right. He didn’t do it for money or to save himself. He did it to save them. It was hard to blame him for something that Alec himself could eventually do as well. Alec knew that not everything is a straight line and that sometimes the situations are a mix of right and wrong, a black spot on white and vice versa. He had a notion that evil exists in all, but that doesn’t make people villains, or mean that Max made a mistake, but there was a reason for it so can he really call it a mistake?

  "What's going on here? Why isn’t anyone talking to you?" James asked. His sharp voice carried drops of blood spattering the floor and his clothes.

  "It was me, cousin. I told them about Lucian. I ruined everything. You were right, okay? I'm a disappointment. I always have been to the family and now I'm also to the few who saw me as a friend." Max said, pounding the ground, crying compulsively. Anger came from within and stayed there, messing up the sanity he had left.

  James, serious as ever, didn’t utter a word. The wind crashed against the roofs, blowing through the escapes, and the moon, in C-shape painted white, rose on the horizon, a sign of the dawn that began hours ago.

  "AT LEAST SAY SOMETHING," Max shouted. His breathing was out of control, snot flowed out of his nose, and his belly moved up and down at an unhealthy pace.

  "If you did it... if you really did it, there had to be a good reason!" James replied, catching them by surprise, "It's over now and what matters is how you're going to redeem yourself." He added, much to Alec's surprise as for the first time, he was acting like a young adult.

  Max stood up, blew the remaining snot onto his t-shirt's sleeve, apologized for everything, and warned them that he was going for a walk. He needed to let his ideas flow, and he couldn’t do it there. He told them that he would be back in less than an hour, and if they weren’t there when he returned, he would know they had gone in search of a place to sleep or the hospital.

  "I will find you somehow. The city is not that big," he said. He began to walk towards the sleeping city when James called him.

  "Beware. Don’t show up here only because you had to run away from someone,” he said, as an older brother would advise a little brother.

  Max gave him a smile and disappeared through the pitch of the city. A haze that separated the house, isolated from the rest, and the rest of the town, which had been lost for hours between festivities and celebrations while they were taken to be tortured. Alec leaned his head against the white, stained, unopened wall, and sighed into the air, followed by a question James was already waiting for.

  "Why did you defend him? I thought you were going to insult him.”

  "I believe what I said. He wouldn’t do it unless there was no other choice." He replied, his eyes on his bumpy leg, touching it with his fingertips, seeing which parts were sensitive and the ones he could touch.

  "You believe him? I thought you didn’t even trust your cousin," Alec replied, wary, but still curious to get to the heart of the matter.

  "I’ve always gotten into trouble since I was young. I've always been like this. If there was someone better I had to defeat him. If there was someone weak I needed to insult him until he opened his eyes. I couldn’t stand to watch them settle for their minimum. I was going to be kicked out of school. And of all the times that something bad happened, the first thing they did was interrogate him and ask if it was me. Not once did he say my name, not even when they threatened him with expulsion." He answered exaltedly, putting a finger in the air and spinning it, "I give him a lot of trouble because I know he has potential, but I wouldn’t let someone else touch him." He added, in a calmer tone.

  "I see, but why do you think it stopped at that moment and not when it was your turn?"

  "I don’t know that. We also heard him scream. He might have been tortured before, he might not have had this option, maybe they wanted to show him they were not kidding. Or, it was the turn of someone he couldn’t see being hurt," James explained.

  "What do you mean by that last part?" Alec questioned him, wondering.

  "For someone who’s smart most of the time, you're still very slow on some things," James replied, while he used his good hand to straighten up, "Forget what I said. What matters is that I realize why he did it. Or do you think Neil wouldn’t do it if he was confronted with this decision? Or Lucy?" James countered, calling into question the remaining members.

  "I don’t know..." Alec answered hesitantly, unable to give an answer in which he believed, "We have to get Lucian back from wherever he is."

  "They must be torturing him again..." James said, looking down, seeing what they did to his leg, and having a notion that the doctor still had more instruments to use.

  "If he does that... Lucian will release the spirit animal and try to survive, wherever that leads. No matter what he has to do." Alec confessed, remembering the story Lucian had told him the first night out of the academy.

  "Are you saying he's going to kill them if necessary?" James asked, rubbing his eyebrows, with his eyes closed, letting the dust in his hair fall to his face.

  "If he has to," Alec admitted, with disgust at the tip of his tongue.

  The night brought with it the silence, a soft breeze, and honesty in every gust. They had put the truth out there, and now all they could do was wait for Lucy and Neil to succeed. It was all in their hands. They wouldn’t be able to save Lucian, much less escape, without James being able to help them.

  Chapter XVI

  Lucy and Neil’s PoV

  Their fate lay with the hospital, and truth be told, they didn’t even know where it was. Lucy had only a vague idea and shared it with Neil.

  "What I can vaguely remember it’s that it was one of the tallest buildings and I think it had a white sign? Or maybe yellow. A light color, no doubt. I'm sorry I'm no longer useful," she told him, remembering his voice, full of anger, spurts of spit jumping out of his mouth at the end of each sentence.

  "It's okay. We will find it, we must to. Maybe we can undo the crap that Max did," he replied. She saw that he was still angry, but deep down he wanted to explode with fury.

  "Why are you being so hard on him? He just tried to do what he thought best. Maybe one of us would do the same given the situation. Watching our own colleagues succumb to the pain," she asked, daring to question him.

  He stopped in the middle of the street, the lights of the houses erased, and only lit by the blue lights of the drones patrolling the streets and got closer to her. His breath warmed her skin between her lips and nose, and her hair flew to the right. They stared into each other's eyes for a moment, as if the world around them didn’t need them until he put his big hands on her arms and confessed.

  "There are things... Lucy, there are things about me that you still don’t know. Maybe one day you'll know. But betrayal... I've felt this pain once. I promised myself never again, that I would put loyalty above all else. He betrayed our confidence. The reasons don’t matter," he said, taking short pauses to breathe, thrilled as he charged every word, his voice shaking, and his eyes blinking. In the end, she wrinkled her nose, pulling tears inward, showing herself to be strong and survivor of some story she had left untold.

  The breeze caressed their face
s. Delicate, sweeping over the edges of each, she embraced the moment, cradling with him in a quiet, transient night. Embarrassed, almost unresponsive to Neil's seriousness, and also to his audacity, she stepped back and apologized for putting himself in such a fragile position. He, who seemed to be 15 years old when he tried to talk to her, stumbled on his own feet as he approached, had now grown into an adult with a past that was not just stories he had read in children books.

  "Ah... No. I'm sorry. No... I didn’t mean to scare you. I got heated up," he replied, as he backed up a few steps, leaving a break between them. He wanted to say something but was afraid of coming out as an idiot.

  "We better get going. Everyone is waiting for us." Lucy said, and started walking, glancing back to see if Neil was with her.

  His once-faced wafer looked much more appealing now. There was something about the way she saw him that had changed. It was the same as always, but this time she saw beyond the physical. She saw the fire that grew inside him with each adventure, each time they were put at risk, and watched him grow as their curiosity was also put to the test.

  They walked through the city, through long streets that gave access to several exits and dark endless alleys. Her legs, which were still atrophied for so long that they were lying down, didn’t help them on the way. They ignored the pain, challenging their head based on a single thought "it's on the next street". They looked at all the houses, small or large, to make sure they didn’t miss anything. After a few minutes, close to giving up, Max drew Lucy's attention to a building overlapping the others. It had a brown color, like the houses around it, but the lights were still on and there were several windows on each floor. They were accustomed to hospitals with a careful, white-walled look, and incandescent tablets. Still, they decided to go for it. A metal door, without a single hazard, separated them from the world that existed inside.