AFIRE: fight for the Earth begins✓

4.3 AIJA

The story so far: 

---- Aija is a Volunteer at the Pristine School at Innermost. She works along with Zuri and Ze, who are her friends. Aija has run into the possible kidnapper. Zuri visits her family at Apper town. Zuri meets a girl – Nala – at her father's shop. Nala talks to her despite being rude at first. Zuri likes Nala. Ze visits his family on the weekend. Ze practices his powers in his room. His mother, Diya, catches him doing it. She isn't happy with it – she scolds him and asks him not to do it anymore. They fight, Ze is upset.

---- Ze meets up with Zuri and Aija for dinner. He has fun and gets drunk.

---- Zuri requests for flavored water, Ze offers to bring some from the dispenser in the basement of the building. He is hazy, drunk. When he doesn't find flavored water in their building he goes to a different building.

---- He feels a sharp pain at the back of his head and falls unconscious.

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****4.3 - Aija****

**Warning: blood, death, violence**

Ze was gone for quite some time. 

Aija looked at her AIVIO Scroll, now shrunken in size, on her wrist. He had been gone for nearly twenty minutes. It shouldn't take that long to get the water from downstairs.

She looked at Zuri, who was half asleep on the couch.

"Call Ze," she whispered into the Scroll.

It rang for a minute, but Ze didn't answer the call. She called once more, but again, there was no response from him.

Aija stood up and stretched. Zuri had had two bottles of the blue drink and also finished off whatever Aija had left from hers. Now she was asleep on her couch. Aija covered Zuri with a blanket and stepped out. She went to the basement of Zuri's Apartment building and found no sign of Ze. She looked around, but he didn't seem to be there.

Where could he have gone to? She thought.

"Ze!" she called out. It echoed through the empty basement.

Maybe he went out for air?

Aija went out of the building and looked around. It was a clear night; all seemed calm. She called out for him again. No response.

Could he have gone home? She thought. But why would he?

Aija started to worry. What if he was kidnapped? The old man had gone missing and surely that spy/kidnapper whom she had seen from her class knew where she lived. Maybe he knew where Ze and Zuri lived too. Should she have given a complaint to the Secures about that man? She wondered if she had made a mistake by not telling anyone about him. What if Ze went missing now? She would be partly responsible for it for not informing the Secures or at least the School's Principal.

She looked around, considering what to do. To her left was Block B and to her right was Block D. She wondered if he had gone into one of them. She decided to try Block B, so she walked over to the building and went into the basement. The lights were out, and it was cool. As she walked towards the dispenser, she heard footsteps somewhere close by.

"Ze?" she asked aloud.

No one answered.

"Ze, please.... I don't like such jokes." She said, hoping it would draw some response.

It was silent except for a murmur of footsteps. Aija panicked. What if he was indeed in trouble?

She walked towards the dispenser, slowly making her way through the dark. She gasped and nearly screamed as she spotted a young boy sitting in the dark beside the dispenser. The lights inside the machine were off too. She went closer to him. He seemed about twelve or thirteen years old, and tears were streaming down his cheeks. He looked terrified; he was shivering too.