The Tales of Flesh and Blood

The Mighty Expressive Quil

Of all things people tended to write instruction manuals on, the one that I needed the most hadn't been written yet. How To Live Out A Conspiracy. Or, Things To Avoid When Your Dead Mother's Enemies Come After You.

Sounds like a common enough issue, doesn't it? I mean, c'mon. What the hell was I supposed to do when the bad guys wanted me to get to a dead person? Take them to my mother's grave site? Because I was nowhere near involved when they planned her funeral. I wasn't even sure if any family came out to bury her; I had told the authorities that I wanted nothing to do with her, and that was it. For all I knew, there was no other family, and whoever ran the joint for dead people had decided to cremate and toss her ashes somewhere.

But they kept records for that sort of thing, right?

I smashed my face against a pillow to stifle a heartfelt groan. Almost a full twenty-four hours since coming down to a bunker with Jaxon, and the furthest I got to solving this case of giants was making due with the conclusion that whoever these people were, they had access to some serious drugs - but not newspapers, apparently. I raised my chin to glare at the bedpost. Maybe I should warn Jaxon about what I saw when Frenice took me to his . . . friend's. Should anything happen to Jaxon or his buddies, they should know to expect some seriously wonky hallucinations.

But was it really a hallucination?

I grabbed the stupid pillow and chucked it at the wall with a frustrated yell. Staying here wasn't getting me any closer to answers. I wasn't quite comfortable enough to show my face in public just yet, though, but I didn't need to step outside to get out of this room. An entire corridor full of closed doors awaited me, doors that could lead to people stuck here, just like me - people who might know more about this situation and were just as equally terrified.

Jaxon hadn't mentioned anyone else, and from how he made it sound, there were only two people down here that had the ability to help him - me, and that boy with the missing ear. But Jaxon had lied to me about his father knowing, so I wouldn't put it past him to try to hide anyone else that might be lurking behind a door. I wouldn't want him telling every new person that came down here about me.

Then again, I hadn't heard anything outside since the kitchen incident, and if Jaxon was trying to keep everyone secret, he wouldn't do it by assigning everyone rooms in the same hallway, where anyone could just walk out and bump into them.

Which meant that all those doors I saw could very well lead to rooms as empty and vacant as mine had been before coming in last night.

Needless to say, I was clenching my fists at my sides and muttering a stringful of incomprehensible things by the time I found myself in that open lobby area Jaxon's redheaded buddy had been guarding when I first arrived last night. I don't know why I had decided to come here, only that I was anxious to do something other than pace across a damn room for hours on end. Such as pacing down a long, sci-fi looking hallway instead.

I needed to keep that one in mind for the hundred-and-one questions list I had decided to create for Jaxon. He didn't seem keen on answering very many just yet, but I was going to get an answer out of him if I had to punch him in the teeth to get it. Just how in the world does a bunch of kids come up with a way for a design such as this?

I was just about to turn around to face the long hallway when I stopped, turning my head over my shoulder to eye that desk in the middle of the floor. No one was sitting there, leaving the strange room behind the desk momentarily unguarded. Judging from that redhead's reaction when I had tried peering in last night, this was the room only special people could go into. Well, I was about to show them that you were supposed to at least put a door to rooms that you didn't want other people entering.