TRAIN [FIRST DRAFT]

Chapter 27: Immorality

 Stefan and Aimee had their fully-automatics at hand, and The Arena breathed with them. There were innumerable bodies of men closing in on them, AIM and AIM America soldiers, and it seemed as though there were only more to come. That was, until The Arena's sequence was interrupted. Rifles turned to dust between their fingers and soldiers evaporated, before that bright and blinding florescent light bloomed.

"Someone's entering The Arena," noted Stefan, the metal walls sprouting from the ground.

Aimee scoped her surroundings meticulously; they did not know who it was, but they were prepared for anything. It could have been anyone, even Abba herself. Once their eyes had adjusted to the light, they spotted him, Gavin, and lowered their guard. He called them as the alder doors closed behind him. The sound echoed in The Arena, a new Arena. A tropical forest replaced the marsh, and the tree plantation became a thriven cotton field, the cotton plump for harvesting. The desert sand and beachfront remained, but out of those stepping stones grew a path of rose petals. The weird thing was that they began at Gavin's feet and ended at Aimee's, as if leading him to her. She tried to overlook it, while Stefan neared her protectively, stood on her immediate right.

"Gavin, what are you doing here?" she questioned, her voice slightly raised due to the distance between them.

Gavin followed the path up to them, "Molly and Clifford asked me to find you; they wanted to know that you were okay."

"I'm fine," she tested. "Where are they?"

"Don't worry; they're safe with the RDAs. They just wanted me to tell you to go home and get some rest," he paused. "Buckley told us about the chip thing. If you need a break, you should take one."

She sighed faintly, "Thank you. I'm okay; just get back to them, please. I don't want anything to happen to my parents."

"Nothing's gonna happen to them, they're in a highly guarded facility with trained agents," he breathed, until he realised that the gap between them had greatly diminished, and then the thought of breathing was overwhelming.

Aimee stepped closer to him, which he did not think was possible, looked him in the eyes, "Gavin, I don't trust just anyone to protect them. It should be you or Stefan because I know that you care. I trust you. I trust you to keep us safe."

He nodded in comprehension, but then a strange sensation overcame him – one he could not comprehend. He did not feel like himself when he stared into Aimee's eyes, when his brain did some attack on his body and consumed it. It evoked the image of the crying girl in the mirror. "You are so beautiful," he had said to her. And in that evocation, in that moment, he kissed her. Kissed her in front of the deep mix of incredulity and birse, betrayal and hurt that engorged within Stefan.

Aimee pulled away, and in one motion, her elbow introduced itself to Gavin's Adam's apple. When he gulped, she felt it.

"What was that?" she demanded, sternly.

"I don't know."

The strange thing was that he seemed to be telling the truth.

"What the heck is that supposed to mean?" blurted Stefan, storming closer with that mix in his eyes. "You kissed her! Get over your damn crush and deal with the fact that she's my girlfriend!"

Aimee yelled at Stefan then, and suddenly she was holding him back instead of Gavin.

"Freaking hell, Stefan, I've had it with your trust issues! I am your friend. Yeah, I like Aimee," – he glanced at her – "and a part of me really wanted to kiss her right then, but a bigger part of me has moved on. You know that I wouldn't hurt either of you," he looked between them both. "I don't know what happened."