Emma

Chapter Fourteen

A/N: There's yet another small infodump in the beginning. But I wrote these chapters when I had no knowledge of what infodumping actually was. I thought it was perfectly all right to have characters explain stuff they perhaps didn't even know in an entire uninterrupted paragraph of speech. >.> The rest of the chapter is all right though. Again, this chapter's one of my favourites as it delves into James'... situation more. :P You can get to see the other side of things. Please leave a comment and/or a vote if you enjoyed it! :)

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Everything began to come together in Emma’s mind. “So… you’re going to be using me to help you find a way out?” she asked.

“Well, yes,” Lorja started, “but I’m sure you want to get out just as much as we do, so we can both escape.” He went back inside the room that contained the trapdoor whilst Emma stood and waited and brought out the key and the map soon after. Giving them to her, he warned, “Remember though, you must make sure they don’t see either of those things in your possession, otherwise there’s no doubt we’ll get in trouble. If you want to see the map at any time, you need to either come back here or make sure there are absolutely no cameras facing your direction, though there likely will be.”

“Is there anything else I need to know?"

“I don’t think so, apart from – well, I don’t know for certain, but I think there may be some sort of system near the gate – it seems that when I started out here, and when I was in a certain area, I would get attacked more than when I was in a more remote section of the desert. So that might help us. But other than that, I don’t have anything else I need to tell you. Now, before you go back outside, you need to firstly put those things back in your bag.” He exited and entered the room once more with Emma’s satchel in his hands before the woman took it and did what he said. “Also remember that you’re meant to be replacing Aaron, so you can’t look suspicious, and you have to look like you’re helping us.” The man gestured to the guards who were waiting in the room Aaron’s body once lay, saying, “You can take your armour off now.”

As each guard revealed their face, Emma vaguely recognised Elsah, the man who had helped her at the village, and a few other faces who she had seemed to memorise when sitting at the campfire. She was still astounded at how a man who was truly so caring and kind could have a completely different personality when given a few commands. She hoped he wasn’t one of the men who had slapped her.

“Come on, Emma. We need to find this exit as soon as possible. Let’s go to the village first though. I think we all need some rest,” Lorja commanded as he beckoned for the girl to follow him. She took one quick look in her bag before rushing off, up the ladder and into the cool yet startling air, her frame illuminated by the pale moonlight.

When looking into her bag, she was pleasantly surprised at the fact that all the items she had before the kidnapping had remained intact. There were some scorpion leftovers and a few half-empty flasks, but what she was grateful for was that her bag was still mostly full with the dates she had collected. As she struggled to catch up to Lorja, who was busily walking towards the village nearby, she took a generous bite out of the sweet, delicious fruit. As juice ran down her lips and onto her stained shirt, she broke out into a gentle jog, soon going at the same pace as the man in front of her. The moon was the only source of light she had until Lorja began to tend to the centre fire, and as Emma looked back she could faintly make out the silhouettes of Elsah and the rest of the guards strolling along the plains.

Lorja opened the door of one of the huts and flung himself down on a small bed, burying his face in a pillow. Before Emma could ask, he mumbled, “Go and find the room you had the other day and sleep there. If you want to ask me anything else you can talk to me in the morning. I’m exhausted.”