Brave Fear (boyxboy)

Chapter 36

The sound of the lead striking Trip's head shook another memory loose in Zane's brain. It was odd how such a horrifying event could spark such a happy memory deep inside his brain. He found himself chuckling slightly.

He was eight, in his family's basement, and his father was readjusting a pipe in the wall, a steel panel removed so he could reach the plumbing. His left arm was covered in grease up to the elbow and he was pounding against the pipe with the head of a hammer, oddly the same sound the lead pipe had made when it hit Trip's head. His father was grunting with the effort of trying to force the tube back in place.

Zane was standing behind him, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He watched his father with apprehension as he often had. Present Zane saw his younger self curl and uncurl his fingers into fists and breathe heavily, wanting to impress his father but not knowing how.

He watched himself open and close his mouth continuously, searching for words. "Do you need help?" his younger self finally asked, his small body shaking slightly.

His father paused, the hammer raised. He turned around, and the faint stubble on his chin crinkled. His green eyes, the same color as Zane's, flashed. Zane's small body relaxed when he saw the playful look in his father's eyes. His dark hair was disrupted on his head, making him look rebellious.

His father smiled at him.

And Zane was jolted back to reality, to Trip collapsing to the floor, blood trickling down the side of his face, from his ear. The assailant seemed to think Trip was not their target and discarded the pipe down a long hallway piled with rolled-up maps and documents. They obviously didn't know Zane and his friends were in the elevator.

Trip groaned from the floor and the elevator dinged, its doors beginning to close. Needing no permission or assurance from one or the other, they all leapt out of the elevator, narrowly avoiding the metal doors as they seemed to close with a vengeance.

The small man from the car was standing next to Trip's form. His eyes widened when he saw them. He opened his mouth to speak, but Mallory's arm stretched out twice its normal length and clapped a palm over his mouth. "Talk and you're dead," she hissed, and Zane had no doubt she would follow through with her threat. The man nodded meekly, not bothering to try and remove the hand from his mouth.

Joseph moved Trip's figure back so it was leaned against the elevator door, out of harm's way. The young man groaned unconsciously but could not say anything. The small man's eyes were wide and terrified. Mallory appeared grimly violent and on a mission. Zane made a few subtle gestures and they each set off down a separate aisle of maps and files, searching for the yellow-clothed girl they had seen with the man.

Zane's eyes followed titles of the folders and maps as he passed, and many of them were simply marked London along with a year or even a specific date or time period. Others were identified as world maps or statistical maps, and Zane could see why London was one of the greatest cities in the world. They had records of everything, including, Zane saw, reports of militarism and growth in other countries and cities. They could monitor everything from FEPE, which claimed only to be an embassy to protect the environment. Just like with Wawrzynski, not everything was as it seemed.

Zane saw files on New Vancouver's participation in a self-sufficient, enclosed civilization experiment. No documents followed the initial volunteering of New Vancouver, and Zane knew this was because they had cut themselves off, partly for Wawrzynski's genetics experiments, partly to prove they were completely self-sufficient and needed no assistance to preserve their population.

He saw a document titled Forthrite, and raised an eyebrow. It was filed with the New Vancouver documents.

Just then, a screech echoed from several aisles down, distinctly Anastasia.