Leuthold Preparatory | ✓

Chapter Eighteen: Part II

"I do not like this plan!" Liam whispered for the umpteenth time.

Noah looked back at him yet again, a small hope remained that Liam would sense his frustration and general exhaustion with Liam's complaints about their plan.

They had moved quietly out of the Cage and gathered their shoes before they tip-toed onto the stage, around the curtains, down a set of steps and waited at a door that Hannil was hell-bent on picking the lock of. The three of them were crammed into a small section of the theater that was clearly meant to be hidden. A single sign hung on it and Noah vaguely understood the German to be telling him it was not an exit. Noah trusted that Hannil knew what he was talking about and where he was going—Liam was not in agreement.

"What if we get trapped in the basement? Lost? Injured?!" Liam complained.

"You're starting to sound like him," Hannil gestured his head toward Noah, who frowned at the gesture but knew his anxiety wasn't far-off from Liam's mindset.

"How are we to simply leave all of our things? How can we trek into the wilderness with nothing?!" Liam continued. 

Hannil stopped his picking then, he had found a few wire coat hangers that he broke into smaller pieces in the Cage. Now a piece of one stuck out from the knob when he dropped his hands and stared at Liam for a long moment.

"He has a point," Hannil whispered to Noah, his attention turned to him.

"What?!" Noah squeaked, "Now you decide that we can't just up and leave?!"

"Look at us!" Hannil whispered, "We literally only have the clothes on our backs! No phones! No money!"

"Why--Why are you telling me?!" Noah felt a sob choke his other words from leaving his throat.

Hannil groaned before he turned back to the door.

"See?" Liam said, "We have no real way out!"

"We do!" Hannil whispered, "We get out of here, we get some of our stuff from the dorm, we slip out of the dorm and make our way to the forest. We get out."

More than anything, Hannil's words felt directed at Noah to reassure him more than Liam. Noah hesitated in his response; none of them knew a way out of the forest even if they got into it. Whatever dark shape he had seen still loomed somewhere in the darkness; he wished that he had asked Hanna if she had seen it.

"How do we stop the girl from leaving without us?" Liam asked.

Hannil heisted again but returned to his work. "One of us will have to break from the group to stop her," he said.

"I feel as though I have complicated our plan," Liam sighed.

"You have!" Noah whispered, hearing the panic in his own voice. He leaned his back against the wall, feeling his sweat drip down his cheek. "Who is going to break from the group to go into the forest alone? That's dangerous!"

There was a long pause, one that lasted until there was a small pop and the maintenance door creaked open.

"I will," Hannil said. "Neither of you go out into the forest. I do. I spend most of my days out there. It only makes sense," he looked at Liam in his last sentence before he stood upright.

"Which means the two of you will have to go back to the dorms alone," Hannil said as he quietly entered the narrow tunnel, Noah followed and pulled Liam along.

"That is an idiotic plan," Liam whispered.

"Why is this one more idiotic than the last?" Hannil replied.