Crimson

Chapter 7

I looked at Ozz quizzically, perplexed, but it was a topic for another time.

"So, Lucia, I'm glad to see you on your feet!" Ozz smiled. His expression was the most beautiful thing I had seen all day, light practically glowed around him, and it felt warm to be in his presence.

"I've been practicing all day!" I smiled back at him. Glad that there was finally a positive presence in the room. Ozz was what we needed. The mood was lifted eventually to a much happier one. Soon we were joking and laughing until nightfall. Testing wasn't even that bad today. All they took was five scales!

When Night came, I watched as everyone else went to sleep. When I heard the snores of 5 different people, I stood up and kicked Ozz in the shoulder, hard enough to wake him up but not enough to hurt him. He looked up at me with a flash of annoyance in his eyes, then a look of realization. He got up, and we went to my corner of the room.

"What's up, love?" His voice was calm, and he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

"Don't call me that... What did you mean earlier today?" I sat down next to him, my voice barely a whisper.

"About wha'... The food?"

"No, about the pins!" I pulled my hair up, tying it with some sheet we had ripped.

"Oh... Yeah, they give any info we tell them to Zoro. They're like spies!" Ozz messed with his sleeve, obviously wanting to go back to sleep.

"How do you know?" I shook him by his shoulders, trying to wake him up.

He pulled up the sleeve of his dirtied white turtleneck and revealed a long scar up his forearm. I flinched and sucked air through my teeth.

"I told a guard with a red pin that my blood was acidic and that we could use that to our advantage." Ozz pulled his sleeve back down. "The next morning, they started to harvest my blood. I was so angry that I bit my cheek hard enough to bleed and spat blood in said guard's face. Their skin started to melt off after 5 minutes. It was a glorious plate of revenge."

I didn't know how to feel. I looked at the scar on Ozz's arm. A grotesque reminder of what they think of us. I held his arm and looked up at him. All I knew was that we needed to hide our supplies better since that stupid lady with blue hair knew the hiding spot.

"Ozz, I'm gonna need you to do something." I looked at him fiercely, and he finally seemed utterly awake. "Use your blood to carve a hole in the wall. One we can cover up with the mattress."

Ozz nodded and got to work. He bit into his finger and traced an outline with his blood.

"Give it 2 minutes. It will melt fast since it's just concrete. Flesh is harder to melt."

I nodded and carefully picked Mika up off of the mattress. I grabbed most of the supplies and headed to where Ozz was digging. I knocked on the wall softly, trying to find a hollow-ish spot inside the small gap he had created. I then curled my fist and punched the wall. Hard. It gave way revealing a small cabinet. The wall wasn't very thick. I crawled through, showing a new room with no door to the outside hallway. The room seemed to have been closed off. There were little to no resources inside it, but the furniture was left.

"Ozz, get over here!" I whispered and stuck my head back through the cabinets. Ozz slowly tucked his wings in and crawled through the small space. He stood up on the other side and started to loot the room. I did the same. Opening draws and cupboards. I didn't find much stuff, but I found empty bottles and extra jumpsuits.

"Let's pile everything here for now and cover the hole with the mattress." Ozz looked at me, pulling at some hair that had fallen in front of his face. I agreed and piled the rest of our supplies on a nearby counter. We then crawled back into the hole and covered it, drifting off into sleep to await another day of search and gathering.