The Districts

CHAPTER 3

When Craig wakes up, it's dark out. He gets up slow and groggy and needing to use the bathroom. When he reaches the bedroom door, he realizes that he doesn't actually know where the bathroom is exactly, but he shrugs it off and figures he could just ask or find it himself.

As he exits the room, every light is off, except for the one over the stove in the kitchen. He looks around, but doesn't see any sign of Kenny anywhere. He figures he's asleep or something, until he spots a small note in the kitchen and walks over to where it's placed on a counter. The words on it reading as, 'Gone out for nightly duties, will be back later. If you're hungry, help yourself to some food. -Kenny', Craig lightly runs his index finger across the note, his gaze lingers on it for a few more seconds before he goes in search of the bathroom again.

He finds it a short while later, after opening a closet door beside it. The room is also sparse, like the others, with only a toothbrush, soap, shampoo and a couple other small things in it. Being a bit curious about the shampoo, as it's a brand he's never seen before in his district, he walks over to it and picks it up. The bottle has the word 'Tangy' across it and he opens it to take a whiff. The smell is like that of bubbly citrus, which he finds to be an interesting choice, before he closes it and sets it back down.

When he finishes in the bathroom, he heads to the living room and sits on the couch, pulling his knees up to keep himself warm. His gaze wanders to a remote on the table and he flicks the small flat screen T.V on. He goes about flicking through various channels for a while and finds that a few of the stations here were similar to ones in the Omega District, hell they even had a few of the exact same programs, but most were different here and they made him miss home all the more. He ends up finding a news station and keeping it on there after a while. At some point, he lies down onto his side and soon drifts off to sleep again.

This time when he wakes though, the sun is rising. He sits up with a yawn and rubs his eyes. It takes a moment for him to notice that the T.V is now off and there's a blanket on him.

"You're up."

Craig looks to the kitchen, where Kenny now stood in it, a bowl of cereal on the counter next to him as he takes out a juice container.

"What time is it?" Craig asks.

"About 7:15 a.m., I got back about 4 hours ago, before passing out myself," Kenny tells him, "of course I saw the T.V on and you lying there, passed out and looking cold, so I got you a blanket." he adds putting the juice away after pouring a glass. "Would have woken you up, but you seemed peaceful, so I didn't want to disturb you."

"Oh," is all Craig replies with and brings his knees up again, wrapping himself tighter in the blanket.

Kenny watches him for a moment before turning and grabbing another bowl and filling it with cereal as well. In the next minute, Kenny walks over to him and sets the bowel down on a small table in front of the couch for him. Craig looks at it, then up at him.

"You haven't eaten yet," Kenny says before he heads back to the kitchen to get his own bowl and juice. "You should keep your energy up, you never know when we'll have to move again."

Craig looks back down at the bowel. He doesn't touch it right away, at least not until his stomach growls and Kenny chuckles because of it, prompting him to eat and subdue its noises.

About an hour passes before Kenny says he needs to head out for some hours or so for work, and that he'll be back later. He warns Craig not to head outside yet, until he can manage to get a hold on some suppressants. Which is a hard thing to do in the Beta District, as they weren't sold at convenience stores like in the Omega one and usually required legal papers to be filled, which meant having to get a hold of them through other means somehow.