Separated

Chapter XII

ELLE

Music: Under Pressure from Pac-Man World

Luke, Sean, and I sneak into the building through a side entrance. The first room we walk into is filled with... tanks. As in, tanks that are typically used in warfare.

"What the hell...?" Luke mutters, scratching his head in confusion.

"Why are there just a bunch of tanks here?" Sean asks.

I shake my head. "Maybe it's some sort of weapons base?"

"Yeah, but why is there a weapons base in Argentina?" Luke asks as we start walking through the room. There's probably a good dozen tanks in this room in varying levels of quality. I'd say about half of them are already rusted. No one's currently manning any of them.

We leave through a door that leads into a small corridor. Doors line both sides of the hallway. Eventually, we come across a room labeled, "Acceso autorizado solamente". While nobody here is particularly fluent in Spanish, it resembles, "Authorized Access Only". Going against the sign's wishes, we walk inside anyways.

In this room, there's another long corridor, and a glass window separates us from another weapon storage room down below us. This weapons room contains several missile-looking objects and two helicopters. Luke, Sean, and I all exchange confused glances but make no comment.

While walking, I let the ordeal from earlier slip into my mind. Mia, a girl I thought I knew and could trust as a friend, had come after me with a knife and was perfectly fine with using it to kill me. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

:Luke takes notice of my unsettled mood, nudges me in the arm, and asks, "Hey, Elle. You doin' alright?"

I take a look at him. He seems genuinely concerned. I let out an exasperated sigh and reply with, "I don't know... it's just that, everybody was telling me that Mia was just messing with me, and that she wasn't going to do anything. Clearly, they were wrong. I just don't get it."

Luke gives a helpless shrug. "I mean, sometimes people just snap."

"I'm not so sure about that," Sean says. Both Luke and I turn to face him.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

Sean starts acting hesitant. "Mia told me not to say anything to anybody else, but... let's just say she doesn't really like you a whole lot."

I don't have a reaction to this. I saw this news coming. Luke, on the other hand, gapes. "How? Elle's, like, one of the most likeable people in our group?" I feel a little awkward about him defending me like this, but I've been in stranger situations before.

"Not to Mia, she isn't."

I let out another sigh. "Maybe what I said pushed her buttons a little too hard..."

"Elle, stop. You are not at fault for this. There's no way you could've predicted that behavior from Mia. Don't start putting blame on yourself," Luke tells me, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I let my lips curve into a small smile before Luke quickly pulls his hand away (he's very self-conscious about how he acts around his friends' girlfriends).

At that moment, we've found ourselves on a mezzanine-like structure. Until now, we've just been walking around mindlessly. Below us, I can make out a man yelling. The three of us walk forward to get a better idea of what's going on.

SEAN

Music: Mecha-Bowser from Super Mario Galaxy

The room we're in right now resembles our school's large gymnasium, just without a stage. On the ground below is a square formation of what's likely a hundred or more men. Each man carries some sort of weapon over their shoulder, and they're currently practicing some sort of march. In front of them, a man sits at a podium in front of some large monitor. I assume that this man is the General of this army.