Beautiful Wilting Flowers

A New Feeling; Threat

Heyden POV:

The room stills silently, all wondering the same question,

Did the Turners get him too?

"When did they get you?" Greigh asked, cutting straight to the chase.

"They?" Vek tilted his head like a puppy would (aww), "Who's 'they?'"

"The Turners?" Greigh responded with his confused expression, probably wondering who else it could possibly be. "An elder couple who seem like they have nothing better to do rather then getting rich by immortality serums at the age of sixty something?"

Vek shakes his head, meeting Greigh's frown.

"Nope. It was a boy; tall, dark brown hair, bright blue eyes, looked about nineteen or so. He was accompanied by a girl. She had short blonde hair, green eyes with glasses, was shorter than the rest of us, and wore a lot of makeup. It looked like she was somewhere around eighteen." He spoke in a very matter of fact sort of manner, nodding at approval in himself.

"How do you remember every last detail?" I blurted out, and  Vek shook his head in embarrassment.

"Uh- another of my abilities." He grabbed a piece of paper off of the nightstand, and swiped his hand across the surface of the paper, and ink bled from where his hand had just caressed across. An image of the two people he was describing showed up, standing in the middle of a doorway.

"Holy crap." Greigh breathed, impressed beyond a lot of words. "That's... Jason. The Turners' son. He was in cahoots with them this whole time?" He looks like he might faint at the guilt of dragging us towards the villains.

"You know them?" Vek widened his eyes, and pointed his finger down at the paper. "Who's the girl? Is she working with these 'Turners' you speak of too?"

"Why are you talking in old English, man?" I hear Dean mutter as Greigh receives the paper from Vek to take another look. 

Vek ignores Dean's sarcastic and pathetic attempt at lightening the room. He honestly should. Dean's starting to run out of jokes, and I'm starting to run out of patience and rainbows.

"Um... I've never seen her, but she could be Jason's girlfriend he's always talking about. What was she like?" Greigh squints.

"Um- flirty. That's honestly the first word that comes to mind, but if I had to go into details, she was very rude and outspoken. She has this Jason kid wrapped around his finger. And as soon as I started asking questions and being rude back, her flirty persona disappeared. She got right down to business, trapping me in my little apartment with weird intoxicating gas." He cringes at the memory of the disturbing gas. "Not that I was interested in her anyways, I don't really go for that kind of thing."

That kind of thing. My heart beats in my rib cage, daring it to burst through. No, he's just not interested in the girl who filled his apartment with toxic fumes. Get a hold of yourself, Heyden.

"Fits the description." Greigh nods.

Dean gives me an encouraging glance, followed by the most indiscreet thumbs up. It hurts me from the insides, so I pretend as if I don't notice him and decide to continue with the gathering information. It's safer that way.

"So, we can only suspect that we're working against those four, right?" I ask. "It's funny; I feel like blondie should have some relation to this whole situation, because as close as they may be, you still wouldn't tell your girlfriend about this sort of thing. It's too dangerous to get her in the mix and mess their plan up."

"That's true." Ina snaps her fingers. "So, we have to figure out what sort of relation she has to the Turners, locate the lab, and get to it and the serums before it's too late and they sell the experiments for riches?"

"Sounds about right." Liana speaks up, and I realize she's finally woken up from her day dreams about who knows what. Her cheeks are still stained pink from whatever happened before we got here, and I know I'm going to get the details out of her sooner or later. She'll tell me; she's just like that. Glad you've decided to finally join this important discussion, I mock in my head, cringing at how much I sound like my middle grade math teacher when I decided to draw leprechauns on my paper instead of the AP algebra quiz answers.

Instead, I ask her about her view on Jason.

"He was always distant." Liana nodded, the pink in her cheeks gone now, but I know they will be back later. "Now that I think about it, he always asked a suspicious amount of questions."

"Did he?" Greigh groans, slumps back in his position on the bed aside Liana, and drags a hand across his face. His pale freckled cheeks are now pigmented a faint pink in guilt, and his platinum locks fall over his eyes that seem to look anywhere but ours.

"You," Ina admonishes, "Are being far too hard on yourself. It isn't your fault; it's just coincidence that you met the Turners, and its just carelessness that revealed the immortality and abilities to the Turners. And you should be allowed to be careless; none of live like normal teenagers, and I know for a fact that's all any of us ever wanted." 

Ina eyes everyone, daring them to disagree, but we all nod, and so she turns back to Greigh, satisfied.

"Now. Are we going to go and get to the serums before the Turners do?" Ina challenges him, and Greigh looks up looking ashamed. "Because if none of you are, I'm still going, and I'll die trying if I have to. We are not leaving without that victory. I won't allow it." 

"We are." Dean suddenly looks as if a wave of courage comes and hits him in his funny looking face (although others would disagree). It's not surprising that he's the first one on board though.

"And if you die trying, we all will." Liana chimes in, giving a determined look to Ina, who looks satisfied.

"Can we all get matching gravestones?" I ask as a token of my approval.

Everyone groans at the most Heyden like idea, but Dean looks serious, and joins in.

"I was thinking about being cremated, myself, but I suppose we could figure out a way to go out in style. We should get a bench engraved with our names on it!" He exclaims, and I nod back, feigning excitement, because I really don't want to die this young.

"I don't know any of you that well besides Heyden," Vek laughs at our turning negatives of death into positives, "But I'm in. I'm officially joining this weird cult you guys' created. I owe it to- uh, you guys. Uh, just you guys." He scratches his head, and Ina gives him a suspicious look, but instead turns to Greigh.

"So? Can we count on you to come through?" She raises her eyebrows.

"...Yes. I wasn't going to say no anyways, but yes." Greigh pushes his silver locks from his face. "But you guys do realize... we could potentially die. For real. No returns."

We all feel this sink in. Then Vek speaks up.

"No returns for any of you, anyways."