My legs felt weak, and nothing but indescribable sorrow grasps me, so I allow myself to fall to my knees and slowly crawl over to Jasper's crumpled body. The wound was soaking his shirt in blood, and I already knew that there would be no saving my friend.
"Deryn?" he croaks, his green eyes filled with pain. I pull his head and shoulders onto my lap, but the color had drained from his face, he isn't breathing anymore.
The sob that I was fighting broke free and tears rolled down my cheeks. I want to stay, but someone is pulling me back, away from Jasper. Suddenly filled with rage, I turn on the man who was pulling at my shirt and jabbed him straight in the nose with my fist. He fell back with a cry in pain, grasping his nose with two hands. Blood gushes already from his nose, and overall is just a gorey scene. I was just about to turn on the closest man to me, but instead a gun is held to my forehead and I stared at a man with short black hair and the beginnings of a beard straight in the face. He quickly turned the gun in his hand and knocked me out by hitting me with the back of it.
***
Carl's POV
I woke up suddenly to a dim room, with boxes piled up to nearly the ceiling against a wall in front of me, and a few candles to the right of me, giving off a small glow. Trying to rise from the wooden chair I'm in is a failure, and I realize that I'm tied to the chair.
Everything that happened before I was knocked out came flooding back to me. Getting driven out of the house, Jasper getting shot in the chest and Deryn breaking some poor guy's nose with one punch for it. I suddenly wonder if Deryn is payed the ultimate price for fighting back, like Jasper did, and is dead somewhere. But a tiny voice in my head tells me otherwise, that she's probably in another room.
A bright light floods in, and another man comes in with a grim look on his face and a knife held in his hand. I straightened up, glaring at him defiantly. The man pulls over another chair and sits in front of me, and clears his throat.
"Well... Ya must be Carl. The girl was talking about how you'd eventually come and get you guys out of here..." the man shrugged and grinned. "I'm Steve and -"
"Where is she?" I interrupted, gritting my teeth and scooting my chair a closer. The man yanks up his knife and examines it closely, as if trying to intimidate me with it. With a closer look, I realize it's Deryn's Swiss army knife.
"I'm surprised ya didn't wake up earlier, you know, with all the ruckus the girl makes. What'd ya call her? Deryn?" he chuckles, and grips the knife strongly in one hand; pointing it at me. "Now, I want you to tell me where you're group is."
"What?" I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.
"Tell me where your group is," Steve growled. "You and that girl are just kids. You can't be able to survive on your own at your age without some more adults, and I want what they've got."
"No."
Steve's smug grin vanishes, and suddenly his hand raises and the knife lodges into the chair only a centimeter from my hand. I flinch so bad I thought I was going to fall sideways off the chair, but I managed to save myself from doing so. His face only a few inches from mine, he asks again in a gruff voice.
"Where. Is. Your. Group?"
"I don't know!" I snapped.
He stands up, and cuts the rope with the knife to free my hands. Then, he grabs the back of my t-shirt and forcefully pushes me across the room, through a door, and then into another room that was being guarded closely by a tough-looking man.
