The Girl In Apartment 13 | Apply Fic

Chapter Twelve: The Underworld

Carter Lovelock to Pierre Duvall, Oscar Finley, and Yumi Tse: Guys, come here now. Don't say anything to Jay or Hensley if you see them. We need to talk. We have a serious problem on our hands. The door's unlocked.

Carter sends the text then sits down on her couch, head in her hands. She doesn't know what to say or what to do but she knows something needs to be said. She already looked at the wound on her head and already knows that she doesn't need any sort of stitches or anything. Her head is pounding and nothing she took is helping it.

"This is going to be okay," she mutters. "We're going to be okay."

The door opens and someone comes in.

"Hello?" Yumi calls out.

"Living room."

She comes around the corner, instantly panicking when she sees Carter.

"Holy shit. What happened?" she demands.

She approaches her, taking her face in her hands. Carter immediately bats her off.

"Don't touch me."

"Well are you okay? What happened?"

"Peaches, I don't even know if I'm going to be able to say this once so can we please wait for the boys?"

Yumi nods and sits next to Carter, putting an arm around her. Carter leans into her shoulder, wrapping her arms around Yumi's middle. Yumi rubs Carter's arm, trying to comfort the other girl. She can already tell that something is going on with Carter beyond what she's planning to talk about.

The door opens again, Pierre and Oscar talking as they come in.

"Living room," Carter calls out.

The boys come into the living room, neither seeming too panicked until they see Carter's face.

"What happened to your face?" Pierre asked.

"What happened to yours?" Carter snaps back.

Oscar starts laughing before he can stop himself. Carter nods towards the other couch and the boys sit down. She sits up, getting Yumi off of her.

"I'm only going to say this once because I don't know if I can say it again. I don't know what the fuck is happening but I know for a fact that now three of us have had nightmares with real world consequences. Pierre called you, Oscar. Yumi had those marks on her neck. Now I have this ugly fucking mark on my head from my nightmare. Oscar, it's either you or Jade next. Shit, and consequences are getting worse by the night. I don't want to know what's going to happen to number five but I'm content with my placement right now. We need to do something. Oscar, you know the Apartment's history. You know that if Apartment Thirteen is pulling its strings on Hensley, she's going to hurt us."

Oscar sighs, shaking his head. He puts his thumb into his mouth, numbly chewing on the nail. After a minute he sighs, pressing his hands together.

"You're not wrong, I just worry that we're too late. We're fairly deep in with her. I don't know if there's saving her and us. I don't know if there even is a her anymore."

"And that's another concern of mine. Jade is even deeper in then all of us. Maybe I'm just reading into things but Jade and Hensley were up fairly late in Apartment Thirteen last night. If we try to burnout Hensley, what's that going to do to Jade? What is Jade going to say or do about this?"

"That's why we can't go into this blindly. We need a really solid plan and proof that Hensley is a threat to our safety when we're near her to show Jade so she can't fight us. I just, I don't know how we get proof of that."