A Reunion of Lips

VII

Mitch opens his eyes slowly.

Jesus Christ, he has a headache. The room is dim, at least. He reached out beside him for Scott, but was met with only cool sheets. Wait, where...

It looked like an imitation of a hotel room. He's laying on one bed with the comforter pulled over him, but still tucked fairly tight. There's another bed to his right that looks used, but there's no one in it. A TV is sitting across the room on a wide wooden cabinet playing—The Lion King?—quietly. There's a desk in the corner of the room next to a large window blocked by a white curtain. To his left, there's a shelf with a coffee maker, a microwave, and a mini fridge and a short hallway leading to two doors. The first door looks normal and is closed—he assumes it's a bathroom.

The other door is the only thing that makes the room scream not hotel. There's no handle. There's a flap in the door about where there should be a handle, but it only looks tall enough for a book, and is maybe as wide as a hanger.

The door to the bathroom swung open while Mitch was still staring around in shock.

"Oh, good. I was getting worried that you weren't going to wake up."

The girl that walked towards him looked a couple years younger than Mitch, just in her early twenties. She looked a lot more put together than Mitch felt, wearing light jeans, a scarlet headscarf, and a yellow t-shirt over a long sleeved, dark green shirt. She grabbed a plastic water bottle and a handful of something off of the shelf next to the coffee maker and offered it to Mitch.

"It's not ideal, but they gave me a bottle of Advil a few weeks ago. I figured it might help with the headache. I didn't get any when I woke up in here, and that was awful."

Mitch reached out hesitantly and took the pills and the bottle of water. "Thanks." He drained the water, quickly realizing how dry his throat was. The girl took the cup from him and set it back on the shelf before offering her hand.

"I'm Cleo."

"Mitch." He glanced around again. "Um, where am I?"

Cleo perched on the edge of his bed. "Well, I'm not sure exactly where, but I'm gonna guess first level, somewhere in Alluvia."

Mitch nodded. Alluvia was one of the outer cities they had to stop at on the way back to the Capital—oh shit.

"Hey, hey—Mitch? You're okay, there's no one else here. It's just the two of us—you're fine."

Mitch squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head into his hands. He tried to focus only on the sound of Can You Feel the Love Tonight playing quietly on the TV and the taught pressure of the sheets over him until he could breathe again.

"There's no one else here?" Okay, that came out way more panicked than it needed to. Where was Scott? Kirstie? Avi, Kevin, Matt, Leigh, Esther—

Cleo looked a little concerned. "No. Well, in here. I couldn't tell you about the rest of the Manor, but I'm pretty sure we're the only captives."

Well that wasn't exactly reassuring. "Manor?"

"Yeah. I heard one of the guys at the door call it that the first week I was here while they were delivering stuff through the flap." She nodded towards the door. "I've been here almost a month now. You've been out cold on the bed for about a day. I don't know what they knocked you out with, but they definitely didn't need to use that much."

The horrified look on Mitch's face probably looked as unsettling as it felt. "Who's 'they'?"

Cloe raised an eyebrow. "The rebels? Who else did you think?"