nine.

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smoke & mirrors

◤nine◥

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     Staring at the papers on the table, Evanna felt ridiculous for not realising sooner. She didn't take her eyes off it; afraid it would disappear as soon as she'd look away. She felt her breathing grow heavy, her heart beating faster. Everything suddenly felt close.

     A door in the distance opened and fell closed with a thud. Feet slapped against the floor as they made their way over to her. Evan already knew who it was. No one else ever visited the library it seemed. In all their time spent in the dusty room, they had been the only two there.

     Garek came to a stop behind her, clearing her throat. He thought she hadn't heard him come in yet. She hadn't moved since he had.

     "Evan?" she only hummed in response. "What did you want to show me?"

     Without looking away, Evanna gestured for him to stand beside her. "Come here," she said and pointed at the frustrating blueprints. "Tell me I'm not imagining this."

     Garek's eyebrows pulled into a frown but did as she said, nonetheless. "Imagining what?"

     She shook her head, ran a hand through her hair. "I've...I've been trying to come up with all different ways to find that tunnel, anything that goes to the outside. Nothing worked," she paused and pointed to a gap between two lines and followed it with her finger. "When I wanted to collect all the blueprints and hide them, I just stacked them," the gap seemed to continue endlessly. "It was the only thing I hadn't tried yet. I held them all up against the light, and – and it was just there."

     As he followed Evan's finger from the top of the blueprint all the way to the bottom, his eyes widened. Overlapping and held up against the light, he saw it. Adjacent from two tunnels was a very small gap that seemed to go on and on until the bottom of the page. Nothing ever blocked it, obscured it. It was open from top to bottom. A clear path.

     Evan heard him inhale sharply. Finally, she dared to look away from the blueprints and up at him. His eyes were glued to the papers as he slowly moved closer, as if it would disappear if he moved faster.

     He pointed at one of the tunnels next to the small passage and almost hesitantly, he said, "This looks familiar."

     Evanna felt a smile stretch her mouth as she nodded. Garek glanced at her. "It's the same tunnel where we picked up that official that time you got to pick out your own team."

     "So, then we know where it is."

     She nodded again. "We do."

     "We found it," Garek said, more to himself than to her. He smiled, looking up from the blueprints. "We found it."

smoke & mirrors ◦ death cure || thomasWhere stories live. Discover now