AstroHarmony: The Height of Rebellion

An Act Upon Trust

Rokuro turned on Leeh immediately, eyes wide and frantic. "You didn't get rid of it?" His voice was panicked, quick.

She doesn't respond immediately, staring at Rokuro with a look of confusion before she must have realized what he was talking about. When she finally does, Leeh turns and glances outside the door before stepping back into the room and locking the door behind her with a satisfying click. "There's nobody out there, we need to leave now," Leeh states, completely ignoring Rokuro's question. He gives her a glare, figuring out the answer through her evasion.

"Then get it out while I get all my stuff together." Rokuro gathers his bag in his arms and rushed over to his desk, haphazardly stuffing the bag with his papers while Leeh glances to me, biting her lip anxiously before looking back to Rokuro. He's moved on to the drawers, pulling them out and dumping the entirety of their contents into his bag before replacing them. In moments, his bag is full and he retreats to the floor, crouching down and reaching helplessly beneath the bed frame until he pulls out a backpack, sage green and made of a heavy material. All the while, my mind is racing, thoughts flying through my head at speeds faster than I can process. Get what out? I exercised every possible scenario in my thoughts.

"Uh, I can't Ru. I forgot it."

I gaze from Rokuro to Leeh, then back again. "Can't, uh...can't what?"

They both turn their heads to stare at me, breaking off their glares at each other and painting their faces with surprise, almost as if they'd forgotten I was even there. Silence pressed down heavy on the room before Rokuro spoke up.

"There's a tracking chip implanted just above your collarbone." His words were blunt, but it sounded as if he'd spoken another language all together. It took me a moment to digest what he had said and figure out what had been implied, even then only coming to full realization as Rokuro fumbled with something in the waistband of his pants.

Panic flared up in me as I saw the menacing glint of a blade, no longer than my palm but threatening all the same. Rokuro took a meaningful step towards me and I hold my hands up in—not surrender—but in resistance to the knife in his steady hands.

"Uh, wait. Can we just—wait a minute, Rokuro?" I turn my gaze rapidly to Leeh as I take another step back, knocking the back of my knees against the bed frame and falling back onto the blankets I had sat on just minutes before. "Leeh!" Rokuro takes another step, standing at the edge of the bed now, almost brushing against my knees.

"Ashten," she starts, keeping my attention from the shine of the blade. "Rokuro's done this plenty before. He knows what he's doing." This does nothing to ease my thoughts, still feeling restless as they both looked down on me.

A deep feeling of déjà vu engulfs me—being under the scope in a situation such as this—though the vision I know should follow never comes, my reality keeping me paralyzed in front of Rokuro and his blade. I let the feeling pass, focusing on Leeh's comment. She speaks to me as if we've been friends forever, as if I can trust her.

An aspect of the situation I'm still attempting to figure out.

I scoot back on the bed in further attempt to widen the gap between Rokuro and myself. Tucking my knees to my chest, I brace myself to kick him if he nears closer. For some reason, I was occupied with the thought that if he couldn't get to me, he wouldn't try.

I was wrong.

Without giving Leeh another chance to ease my thoughts, Rokuro reaches out and snatches my ankle, hands cool on my bare skin, quickly tugging me towards him with such force that I almost fell off the bed. I am suddenly obnoxiously aware of the fact that my shirt was tugged up and exposes my torso. I yelp at his strength, the surprise of him pulling me with such ease and subsequently loosing my one chance to lash out before Rokuro has me pinned down, chin held tightly in his sturdy grasp and forced to face the ceiling as he exposes the right side of my neck. I struggle against him, wanting desperately both to escape and to pull my shirt back down over my thighs. He keeps his grasp, but just barely, climbing onto the bed to straddle my waist.