SCRATCHED

Chapter 36

2020, Woodland Mines.

Not even the sight of dead bodies could take Brandon off Alex's mind. If anything, they reminded her of him; the pale and twisted white faces, open eyes, dry blood, and boniness. They put her head in spaces where she imagined him lying somewhere out there, either dying or dead. And this imagination, of course, took off after they had all pressed their comms a million times in vain.

Even Tianna seemed saddened and discouraged, if not for Brandon, then for Amy. As such, Alex's attempt to search for a sign of pleasure on Tianna's face was bound to fail. She saw only a mixture of murky emotions; emotions they all shared. Reasons for Brandon's unresponsiveness were so scanty it was easy for them to silently converge at one, and if that reason was true, all their efforts were in vain.

Jay went from a fit of anger and smashing his comm to a sad silence in the enveloping darkness of the mines. As the calm one, it was an unusual reaction, but Alex realized, as a man, there were few other ways to have gone about it. Camie was crying. And on Tianna's face, Alex had only seen tears once and was most likely never going to see them again.

As for her, who still carried the seven letters of his name in her heartbeat, the reaction she so needed never came. She was paralyzed, not much different from the bodies they had left behind. Her mind still wondered around the choice to believe or disbelieve, her eyes and ears at the ready to see and hear any of them object to this big fat assumption. But when the silence whispered, creeping under her bones and quieting the debating voices in her head, she began to think of her last words, and how he had walked away. She thought of the circle and their big fight just outside it. She heard his voice telling her that she had already ended him. It didn't take time for the reaction to arrive after that.

She found herself in Tianna's embrace, soaking her shoulder, her hand going up and down her back. It was soft, and Alex let the tears flow. Maybe if they kept going on longer, she would be in this warmth longer, and her body and soul wouldn't keep getting cold. Like the bodies. She needed to feel something, anything, to prove she was alive. Something to hang onto. And Tianna, who was just as broken as she was, happened to be there, to be that hook she could grab.

She had been wrong about her never seeing Tianna's tears again. She felt their warmth slowly rolling down her back as she held her with a strength Alex was sure none of them had.

"We need to trust him," Tianna said, and Alex was left to wonder if she was in a book, and whether in books characters ever said that about their brother's killers. "That's the least we can do. We need to trust him," Tianna said as they disentangled. "We need to keep going, OK? I know it's hard to take in but I need you to do that for me. Can you?" she asked, her hands on Alex's shoulders.

Alex nodded, wiping her tears. Tianna turned to Camie and Jay, who were so quiet it seemed they weren't even there.

"We've come so far. We can't just give up because... because of this. Anything could've happened to Brandon's comm. It might've fallen off or gone faulty. Whatever it is, we can't stop now! For Amy's sake, we need to get that lab."

Camie sniffed and nodded. "Yeah."

Jay nodded too. "I agree. We owe it to them."

Just when Alex began contemplating whether her legs could carry her, warm fingers slipped in-between hers. Tianna wore that smile again, that smile that told the world to bring it on, that she couldn't be broken, and Alex could only wish that her lips could assume such a shape.

As they made their way through the mines, Tianna wished she hadn't forgotten the masks, assuming there were any. The floor was getting wet; a greasy green and red wetness that left them to worry about their shoes after every step. There must've been a leak somewhere.

Camie would often lift the torch she shared with Jay skyward. She would see the cobwebs hanging from the corners of the curvy ceiling, and sigh out of a relief caused by the absence of bats.

She would throw the light back down and around the corners, her hands shaking slightly. Eventually, Jay collected the torch, certain that she would drop and break it if a rodent purged out of the dark, like she did her own torch.

In that little struggle, the transfer of light from her hand to his, the particles hit a bend, and just further, they heard a loud thud in the stony waters. They froze, and Tianna signaled for them to stay put. She took to the bend in slow steps, and they all followed stealthily, their shadows dancing on the wall. Until the light struck through the distant darkness...

"Aiden?"