𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐅𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐈𝐄𝐑 || ℝ𝔼𝕎ℝ𝕀𝕋𝕋𝔼ℕ

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟓

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕤 𝕆𝕗 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕒𝕞𝕖 ℂ𝕠𝕚𝕟

✃✃✃✃✃✃✃✃✃

Noon had gone away amidst the endless digging and burying of the Cranks. Two mass graves lay one next to the other, barely keeping all the corpses within them, as another, by far smaller, stood on the opposite side. Under an oak tree planted in the middle of a small potted area, a large stone engraved into the ground marked the tiny yet personal grave made especially for Anna.

William ached all around from shovelling by himself the little girl's grave, a job he had to talk Mae into letting him do. She sat with the rest of the group at the intersection, where the soldiers sat on a fallen pillar, their legs serving as makeshift resting places for the bags of ammunition and flares. Upon saying goodbye to Anna, William joined them, giving Mae a curt nod to let the real and—honestly, uncomfortable—serious conversation begin.

"Did anything interesting happen while we were out?" Mae asked, her eyes darting from one soldier to another. "Like, say, knowing something you shouldn't?"

George was the first to deny, shaking his head before looking over to the group's leader. "What's this about?"

"Mae," called Bea, her hand subtly slipping past the bag she was guarding to grab onto Leen's. "Is there something we should know?"

"I called the birdie by his name," said Mae without missing a beat, her hands locked together over her lap.

Henry frowned at that. "When did he remember? And when did he even tell you?"

"That's the thing." Mae leaned back with a sigh. "He never told me."

"How...?" Flor hesitated, hugging her bag close to her chest. "How could that even happen?".

As the conversation about the name situation unfolded, William attentively scanned their surroundings. He didn't imagine a world where a bunch of teenage soldiers were left unsupervised in a run-down city to kill off people. Especially because of the actual city that was supposedly nearby. The Sanctuary, or rather, WICKED, had to know better than giving a bunch of kids, who were desperate to live, a free card to run off to the city. So why had they been left there all alone? What made WICKED think they wouldn't escape?

"What do you all know about WICKED?" William asked, but let no time for anybody to reply, as their lips parted to articulate, "That information doesn't concern us... Funny, isn't it?"

The soldiers looked gloomy, every emotion their expressions had held before gone from their faces and replaced by indifference. Bea withdrew her hand, leaving Leen's lying all alone yet unbothered. Much the same, Henry took off his hand from George's shoulder, who straightened up beside him, no longer trying to meet William's eye.

A stinging pain appeared at the side of his head, aching and burning the longer he thought about the soldiers' odd attitudes. He knew he wasn't supposed to pay it any mind. The right thing would be to forget it and carry on with the mission—walking, trapping, killing, burying, and everything all over again as many times as it took. Never caring or looking back. But why?

"I'm the birdie, and you've got all the right not to trust me, but there's something you ought to know." William forced his hand to reach George's shoulder to squeeze it, which his friend shivered at as if a bucket of ice cold water had landed on him. "The little kid I buried told me the Sanctuary is WICKED. Maybe part of it. Point is, they lied to us. It's not a coincidence that all of us forgot everything about ourselves but our names. That's what they wanted—I don't know why, really—but I think there's something else."