The Frosted Files:Open Eyes

// Chapter 13 \\

    The non-concrete of my mind was not too comfortable to lay on, but that's where I found myself. My blue imposter stood with his arms crossed, staring down at me. I groaned and sat up - the blue guy conjured a set of chairs, so I got up and sat in oe, rubbing my shoulder to maybe help dull the pain.
    "You've really-"
    "What do I call you?" I cut him off.
    He blinked, and the tightness of his crossed arms lessened. "What?"
    "What do I call you?" I repeated.
    "Whatever you want."
    "I meant a name, dumbass."
    He was quiet for a while, obviously thinking. The non-concrete around his chair began to bubble and boil, as if it were a pot of water on the stove, and little shapes - cubes, spheres, et cetera - started to form and float out of the bubbling concrete.
    "You can just call me ID."
    "Lame, I'll call you Ed."
    He shivered, and I saw a little tendril of dark purple energy float from me over to him, swirling around before dissolving. I don't know what that was, and I didn't really want to know.
    "Okay Ed, why am I here and not waking up after being sleep-misted?"
    "You've gotten yourself in a really sticky situation, bud. I'm here to help you."
    "So that you can help yourself."
    "Bingo," he finger gunned.
    "Okay, cool. How d'you plan on doing that?"
    "I have a plan. How do you plan on getting yourself out after this?"
    "Hell if I know, I'm new to this shit, what do you want me to do?" I crossed my arms.
    He leaned forward, elbows on knees. "You're Fate fucking Frost. You can manage."
    I rolled my eyes. "Oh, what a great help you are."
    "Yeah, yeah, fuck you. I-" A ringtone sounded from his pocket. We stared at each other for a solid few seconds before he took out a very strange looking phone, and held it up to his ear.
    "Hello? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I'm telling him now. Well, it's a tad too late for that, huh? Yeah, I know, the deal's already bound, yada yada. Go back to your fae fuckery." He hung up, pushing the phone back into his pocket.
    "What was that?"
    He shrugged. "The rescue team I set up on your behalf."
    "What the hell does that mean?"
    "It means I acted as a proxy for you and made a deal."
    "Don't sell my fucking soul, I kind of need that."
    "I'd never sell my home."
    "You don't live here?"
    He looked around. "Gods, no, it's so dull here."
    "Do you know what people see when we do that soul looking thing?"
    "Yes, I do; and it's called a Soul Stare."
    "Yada yada, whatever. What do they see?"
    "I can't say."
    I rolled my eyes again. "Whatever, cunt."
    "No, I literally cannot say. Look."
    I looked at him. His mouth was moving, but no words were coming out.
    That was disorientating.
    "Anyway," he began, speaking normally, "I hope you remember what you learned on the streets. You're definitely going to need it soon, buddy."
    "Wait, which things? I learned a lot on the streets."
    "Skills, skills, skills. A few certain skills, sure, but-"
    The light flashed through the room. Ed looked up and around.
    "One more thing before you deal with those weirdos outside- when Scarlett gets there, thank her. Now, wake the fuck up, you sad motherfucker," he said, and slapped me.
    I woke up in darkness, my cheek still stinging.
    If you've never been slapped by yourself, your own soul copy, then you can never really understand how it feels.
    My sensory ability began to return, and I shivered; all I had on, by the feel of it, was my boxers, some rope, and skin against my back, and it was very, very cold in this room, like a basement. This wouldn't be the first time I was in only rope and boxers, to be fair, but the situation made it a lot different.
    "I bet you wished you listened when I tried to teach you that light spell, huh, Frost?" Karma, already awake, asked to the darkness. Or maybe to me. Probably to me.
    "Oh, shut it, demon."
    "Not a demon."
    "Fine, allow me to rephrase; shut it, bitch."
    "Yeah, that one works actually."
    I huffed out a frustrated breath. "Get us out of here."
    "Nah," she said, so nonchalantly. Maybe she enjoyed being tied up in a dark room, who knows.
    "What do you mean, 'nah'?"
    "I mean I'm not doing it, Fate. The best way to learn is through experience, so, get some experience."
    "These guys could kill us, and you want me to have a field lesson?"
    "That's the plan."
    "Oh my fucking god."
    "Gods, actually," she suggested. I glowered at the darkness, since I couldn't see her.
    After a moment, however, the rope started to hurt, and I wanted out of here. The rope wasn't too thick, but it was tied very tightly. I was bound at the wrists and ankles, and tied to Karma, back to back. Why do people keep tying me up?
    In movies, they struggle and move around a lot to build up sweat, so that they can slip a hand out.
    Lucky for me, I didn't need to do that.
    I used my prosthetic hand to cut the rope, pulling it away from my wrists, then ankles. For some reason, the tech didn't move as fluidly as normal, but I'll look into that later. I undid the rope holding us together, then went and got Karma's hands and ankles free, careful not to cut her in the darkness. My eyes had adjusted, if barely, so that made it a little bit easier.
    "Now that I got us out of that, can you do your light magic?" I asked her.
    "Sure, sure. Get ready."
    I went to close my eyes, and right before Karma did the spell, I saw the glint of something else's eyes in the corner of the room. I fully shut my eyes as light flared into existence, so that I wasn't blinded, and looked where I had seen the eyes. There sat, with its tail wrapped around its front paws, a little solid black cat with red eyes.
    I turned to ask Karma about the cat, and realized something I should have realized before, when we were tied back to back - the cultist guy had only left her with her lower underwear, and she did nothing to hide the fact. Not that she needed to, but damn.
    I must have been staring, because Karma tilted her head. "Have you never seen boobs before, Fate?" She looked me over and grinned mischievously. "And, may I say, nice boxers. Heart print over a white background, classic. They look a little bit tight for you, though."
    I felt my ears heat up, felt it spread to my cheeks, and I looked at the cat again. It was staring at Karma.
    Karma stared back, and something clicked for her, because she narrowed her eyes at the cat and crossed her arms. The cat let out a small meow, then got up and walked over to me, sitting next to my feet. It swiped at my leg, claws retracted, then looked at the door.
    "Yeah, I want out too, cat." I said, and went over to the thick metal door. Other than that, and the rope we removed, the room was empty - no windows, just concrete. Each wall was just one solid slab of concrete, as were the floor and ceiling. The door was locked, of course, but it was worth a shot.
    When I let go of the door, I felt a little lever on the handle click, followed by a whirring sound coming from the wall.
    That couldn't be good.
    The stiff sound of concrete grinding on concrete came from the back of the room; I looked back and saw the entire wall shift forward slightly, by maybe half a foot.
    "Uh oh," Karma said, looking at the shifting wall.
    "Uh oh indeed." I looked at the door again, and saw the handle being pulled into the door. There were five locks on the door, of different kinds, but I could probably pick them-
    The wall shifted again, another half foot. The little ten by ten cell we were in was now ten percent smaller. Yikes.
    I turned to Karma. "Do you have a hair pin or anything?"
    She reached up into her hair and pulled a couple out. "They took most of them, but missed these two."
    I took them and went back to the locks.
    The wall shifted again.
    I bent the hairpins into proper lock picking shape, and started working on the first lock. It was a basic deadbolt, but it had been a while since I had done this manually - usually, I used my tech to pick the lock, but for some reason, it wasn't working. Maybe the room was encased in some satellite blocking material, because the tech wouldn't listen too well. It moved, sure, but not fast enough, and not detailed enough - the same went for my hand, except the hand moved as fast as my muscles, it just wouldn't change shape into claws or a key or anything.
    The wall shifted again, and seemed to be doing so every thirty seconds, give or take. I got the first lock done, and went to the second. This one only took a minute, and two more shifts of the wall. It was now roughly seven feet away from the door.
    "Hurry up, Fate, we need out of here."
    "I know, I know. Why don't you do your little teleport blink trick out of here?"
    She looked around. "Leaded concrete - lead blocks magics. The door is steel, too, and steel has its own vendetta against me and my magic." As if to prove her point, she blipped around the room, but couldn't get out.
    "So you couldn't have gotten us out of here, even if you wanted to, earlier?"
    "Nope. That rope has lead and steel in the fibers, mixed in. I tried to blink out of it before, and it didn't work."
    "So you egged me on so that I could rescue us?"
    "Yeah, and it worked."
    "Fair enough."
    The wall shifted again, and I started on the third lock. This lock was a lot harder, and every time the wall shifted, my hands shook more, my concentration wavered.
    The wall was four feet away when I finished the third lock.
    I started on the fourth, and the wall shifted again. Three and a half feet.
    I was breathing heavy, trying to not let panic set in, trying to focus, but my damn hands shook too much and my thoughts were racing too fast and I was going to fucking die.
    A flash of red light from the room pulled my attention away, and, as the wall shifted to three feet away, the cat was gone, and in its place was a pretty, pale girl with red hair, black eyes, cat ears, and simple black clothes - a plain shirt, some second layer of a material I couldn't tell, and a black skirt. In her wild mess of red hair were a few black streaks, as well as what looked like cat ear hair clips-
    The ears moved.
    Okay, then.
    She also had no shoes on, for some reason. I guess shoes didn't translate to cat form for magic users. Maybe the bottoms of her feet had padding, like a cats.
    "Gods, you two really are incompetent," she said with a slight British accent, stalking over to the door. She gave Karma a very obvious look over as she passed, going as far as to pause for a moment before continuing to the door, and grabbed the remaining two locks. Blue-green ice began to form on the locks, and, after a moment and another wall shift, she simply crushed them in her hands, twisting the locks away and pulling the lock guts out of the door and wall. The door swung open, and we all ran out.
    Three feet, we had. Three.
    On the other side of the door were four more spear-wielding cloak people, as well as the one heavy cloaked cultist person we met before the black mist knocked us out.
    "Good thing you escaped, Frost, Korvus. Your special friend must have been of some help." He said, and turned to the four spearmen. "Kill her, but keep Frost and Korvus alive."