The Paragon

Chapter Twelve

"Immy! Immy, Immy, Immy!" I turned, seeing my brother jogging up towards me down the hall, looking more excitable than I'd seen him in a while. He grinned wildly when he saw me stop to wait. "You are not going to believe what I found," he said as he reached me, slowing down.

"You sound like it's our birthday," I commented, resuming my walk now that Eli was with me. I had been heading back to my room after training for the day.

"It basically is," Eli insisted. He threw his arm around my shoulders, taking advantage of the inches he had over me to put me in a slightly uncomfortable neck hug. "How bored are you of being inside?"

"Pretty bored," I admitted, trying to maneuver myself out of his exuberant hug while chuckling to myself. This behavior reminded me too much of how it was at home; it almost felt wrong here, to be so happy and carefree. "It's not like we can go anywhere, though, can we?"

"Well, that's not entirely true," Eli said, thankfully releasing the near-chokehold he was putting me in. "You've got to come see what I found." He grabbed my upper arm instead, urging me to switch directions and follow him back the way he'd come from.

I obliged, intrigued by how excited my brother was. "Is this what you do all day?" I asked, teasing a bit. "Find cool things?"

Eli shrugged. "It's not like I have a real job here. I've been in the intelligence office a few times to share what we know about the Imperial movements from the Owls, but that's about it. I've been pretty epically bored."

That made me feel a little guilty. After all, if it wasn't for me, Eli would still be at home in Foster, living his normal life. "Well, let's go see this exciting thing you found then," I replied, trying to forget the fact that I'd been planning to continue reading up on that book Casp had given me the other day. My first responsibility needed to be to my brother.

***

"Eli, you're out of your mind," I said, eyes wide as I stared at what he proudly presented to me. We were in a garage—apparently in addition to the airships, the Redcloaks also had a selection of ground vehicles. Including what had caught my brother's eye—several four-wheeled bikes.

"Are they not the coolest thing you've ever seen?" he said, running his hand along one of them. This place was shockingly unguarded—there was no one else here to tell us to stop touching things. "Come on, we've got to give them a go."

"I say again—you're out of your mind." This definitely wasn't the first time I'd had to be the mature twin. Eli always said that I was the spontaneous, flighty one, but he never thought more than one step ahead. He just saw what he wanted to do and did it, with little thought given to the consequences.

"Come on, Paragon," Eli teased, putting his hands on the handlebars. "Live a little. We haven't broken near enough rules since everything's happened. That's our trademark."

"You're the one who said I should listen to them," I pointed out, but I came closer to one of the other bikes as I spoke. Placing my own hands on the cool metal, I did have to admit, it was a pretty tempting prospect. We'd ridden similar sorts of bikes a few times, though they'd been more themed towards city streets—these looked meant for off road travel, which made sense, considering we were literally inside of a mountain.

"But you can't do the right thing all the time," Eli replied, grabbing a helmet from a shelf along the wall. He tossed it over to me and I instinctually caught it, falling back a step in absorbing the shock. Still with that mischievous grin, he grabbed another for himself and put it on, leaving the visor up.

I shook my head. "Bad influence," I accused, pointing at him, but put the helmet on anyway. "Where are we even supposed to go?"

Eli swung his leg over his chosen vehicle and gestured towards the clear wall along the side. "That opens up," he said. "Use your communicator on the panel."