Defect

[chapter 14]

Hey everyone! I am SO SO SORRY that it took so long for me to update, but this chapter was giving me some issues and I was also caught in a bit of a whirlwind of school stuff. I think (crossing fingers) it's about to slow down just a bit, so hopefully I'll have enough time to finish that chapter of TNA-U!

Anyways, enjoy :) Don't forget to comment, vote, and follow!

"And you're completely sure that you have this right?" Jax asked, the wind ruffling her hair.

I stayed quiet, half because I wanted to annoy her and half because we had been downwind of the lavender farm for a few minutes now and the smell was really starting to make me tired. The quiet, rhythmic thrumming of the beat-up car's engine was so soothing...

"Violet?" Jax prodded, and my eyes snapped open. I stifled a groan of frustration, fighting the exhaustion threatening to drag me under sleep's heavy influence.

"Yes, Jax, I am really freaking sure that what we all read on the papers, then cross checked five times, is true."

"Well, jeez," she said huffily, reclining into the driver's seat. "You don't have to take that tone with me."

I opened my mouth to apologize, but then I remembered that we were fighting and that doing that would break the invisible wall between us, and right now, that wall was the only thing we had. Maybe it'd break and we'd be friends again and the sun would come out and everything would be fine, maybe we could go back to ice skating and laughing in the snow and sneaking apple cider out of the kitchen while Sofia isn't looking.

But maybe this little glass wall would break and she'd be a thousand miles away, and she'd take any chance at happiness with her.

I kept my mouth shut, faced the window, and pretended that I couldn't feel the frost between us, that I wasn't trying to stop time with my mind and go back to somewhere where Jax was the person who helped me up and went after my attacker instead of cutting me to shards with her glass tongue and attacking with her army of ex-friends.

This master plan, however, only worked when she was doing the same. Which, of course, she wasn't.

"Violet, I just don't get it," she said letting out a loud, dramatic sigh. I tried to hate it, I really did, but I all could think of was the time she let that exact sigh out while we were joking about what teenagers in the Old World probably did and the way her eyes looked, staring at me in shock the first time we spoke in a limo.

She waited a moment, but I was too busy reprimanding my mind for thinking about our friendship to respond.

"I mean, you keep saying things like 'Maddie told me not to' and 'I just wanted to protect you guys' but you haven't given me any real reason."

"Those are real--" I began, speaking on autopilot.

"No," she said, cutting me short with one look. "We've been friends for months, so don't even try to pull that bullshit on me. I know you aren't telling us the truth--or at least not the whole truth."

I hated that she was right.

Nothing but the truck's rumble filled the air for what seemed like nothing short of infinity, each moment drowning in more silence than the last. I bit my lip, determined to not say one word to her unless it involved the mission.

We came to a stop, and I hopped out, slinging a bag with basic supplies over my shoulder. I pretended that I wasn't watching Jax through the mirror, that I didn't see the pain and regret, the disappointment flickering in her eyes.

Then I pretended I wasn't aching with the same emotions.

She let me lead the way, so I began creeping through the same grove of trees that had started all this, headed for the secret entrance in plain sight (I still wasn't sure who in their right mind had designed it that way). The house was huge, and getting bigger the closer we got, but it felt too silent, like a slumbering giant.

"Violet," Jax hissed, sounding truly frightened for the first time, "What are you doing?"

I clamped my jaws shut, putting my finger to my lips in an attempt to tell her to be quiet, and then paused, muscles tensing, before I darted across the snowy field in front of me, pressing myself against the side of the house. I motioned for her to follow me, and she gave me a dubious look, but ran across. A moment later, the wall was sliding open seamlessly, and she was standing in the cold with her mouth hanging open. I grabbed her wrist, pulling her inside, and waited for the door to close completely before turning away, trying to remember how to get around from within the walls.

"Okay, you have got to explain how you learned about that," Jax said excitedly.

"Shh!" I murmured, pressing an ear to the wall. No footsteps, that's good.

"Sorry," she whispered.

I opened my mouth to explain the passage, but instead what came out was, "I'm sorry too."

It was pitch black, but I could tell she was raising an eyebrow, because that's what best friends were--people who could read each other's expressions without even seeing their face.

The thought physically hurt.

"You were right," I said, staring down, trying to make out my scuffed boots in the darkness. "I wasn't just trying to protect you guys or follow orders and stuff. I was being selfish... I didn't want any of you involved because I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?" she asked, her voice more gentle than I had heard it in weeks.

"I don't even know... Maybe that you'd get hurt, or that I'd get hurt, or that something would happen and I'd be alone again. Maybe that it wouldn't be special anymore. Maybe a little bit of all of them... I just don't know. All I know is that every time I think about the 'what-if's, I get petrified."

"Violet..."

"We need to focus on finding that file," I said, turning away hastily. For the first time, I thanked the darkness--it hid the tears dripping uncontrollably down my cheek.

We spent the next fifteen minutes in a continuous pattern: me looking down corridors and in doors, searching for something, anything; her trying and failing to continue the conversation.

"Okay, really, Violet, we need to sit down and talk about this--" she began yet again.

"Oh my god," I breathed, stepping into a small, plain room, a forgotten file cabinet in one corner.

"What's so--oh. Oh. This is it, isn't it?"

I nodded mutely, approaching cabinet the way one might walk up to a sleeping bear.

No, I thought, fear and anticipation pumping through me as my fingers closed around the cool metal handle, more like a sleeping rabid bear.

The drawer slid open, and I found myself staring down at a manila folder with The Moineau Initiative scrawled across the top.

"So that's it?"

"Yeah," I said, nearly shivering from awe and relief, "this is it."

I backed away, retreating back into the nearly unnoticeable hidden door that linked the small room to the rest of the labyrinth of secret passages. My fingers kept subconsciously tracing the indented words, and I was hesitant to put in in my bag because what if it disappeared?

"Violet?" Jax said a few moments later, her voice small.

"Yeah?"

"I'm really--" she began, only to be cut off by a sudden blast of light directly in our eyes.

"Who's there? You--you're not allowed to be in here," a shaking voice said. Something behind the blinding lights glinted--a reflection. And the last time I had heard a voice so shaken, so terrified...

My eyes adjusted a moment later, confirming my theory. "Xander?"