X-Marks: Rising Shadows

Lure

I woke up to the peck of a wet rag against my dry lips. My swollen eyes parted, but it was still too dark to see. I could see a pale blue light in the corner, and another one above the cobble of stones of the ceiling.

"She woke up again," I heard a voice say.

"We don't have much time," another replied, "We need to wake her."

"Does it even matter?" a third voice said.

The raspy anger in the last voice was all too familiar.

"Evee, we've been down here for weeks. We still can't locate him on any of the databases or any private feeds," a man said, "She's the only chance we have."

"How do we know we can trust her?" Evee said.

"We have no choice if we want Mat back."

"Mat," I mumbled in a cold sweat and shuddered awake.

In the corners of the gloomy tunnel, there were several people. Dimitri, Nate, Evee and even her sister Macie but as I looked around, I found that it was true. Mat was nowhere in sight.

"Valen" Dimitri's soft voice said, "Can you understand me?"

I nodded my head and curled my fingers in a fist. Where was he?

"Good," Dimitri' said, and smiled, "I need to discuss something extremely vital with you. You're brother Mat he is in a lot of danger."

Brother. I had never heard of him referred to in such a way. It warmed my chest to listen to it, just for it to turn cold again.

"When we recovered you from the confinement tower," Dimitri continued, "Mat was nowhere to be found."

"What happened to him?" I said and lifted my head from the ground in panic.

"We think Gen is holding him," Nate replied, "Using him like a lure to get us back up to the surface."

"Up from where?" I said looking around the dark room.

"We had no choice," Dimitri said and sat forward, "After the failure of our first evacuation we moved so far below the undercity, the upper city could never locate us. We've been making our plans for the next evacuation ever since."

"How long have we been down here for?" I asked.

"Only a few weeks," Dimitri said, "But we won't have much time left. We thought we could locate Mat from the database like we did with you but we've had no luck. Luckily, we've been able to access the database without letting Gen know our location.

"But this private network to the database and our food supply won't last much longer," Dimitri continued, "That's why we need you."

"Why?" I said, the patter in my chest rising at the thought of where Mat could be.

"I bet there's never been a day that has gone by where you didn't ask yourself," Dimitri said and looked over my forehead, "There's a very good reason why you arrived here, and it all starts with that mark of yours.

"But first we need to get you to the tower. You'll need to go under the machine one last time.

"Are you ready to go Valen?" Dimitri said.

I nodded my head low to the ground, feeling stone beneath the thin covers hit the back of my sore head.

I had learned just how far I could run, but I would never run from someone who needed to know just how much I loved them.

Not again.