A Reunion of Lips

X

Several lifetimes, aka a few days, had passed with Mitch slowly losing his mind over the absolute absence of any idea. But then, Mitch had gotten a Thought. Yes, capital T, Thought.

He had been sitting at the window, poking at the scratches on the thick glass while Cleo was taking a turn at the door. He was really trying to not think about Scott and how creative and quick-thinking he was after a lifetime of navigating the Senate, and how he probably would have figured out a way to escape already when he had paused.

What if, instead of not thinking about Scott, he did. What if he thought about what Scott would do?

Well, that opened the floodgates real fast.

"So I have an idea. A really, really bad idea."

They were standing in the bathroom with the shower running and the overhead fan blasting, while the TV in the main room screeched out We're All in This Together.

Cleo narrowed her eyes. "...I'm listening."

"You pretend to break, but demand that I come with you to talk. You give them fake information and I'll look around and see if I can figure out where the exit is and grab anything useful without them noticing."

Cleo bit her lip. "Theoretically, it could get us a step closer to freedom, but if they saw you, or they knew the info was bull..."

"Then give them something kind of real. Like change names, or places, or something."

"I want to tell you this is the stupidest idea yet, but—"

"But we've got nothing else." Mitch pleaded silently with his eyes. Scott would have given in immediately, but Cleo was more stubborn than Mitch himself.

"Fine. When?"

"No time like the present."

She dropped her head into her hands. "Give me like, an hour to come up with something to say, then let's go."

"Okay. We got this."

An hour and a half later, Mitch regretted not knocking on wood.

He couldn't decide if the rebels were idiots or geniuses, because they didn't take the two to a different room to interrogate them like he had planned for. They came into their room. Meaning, they couldn't try to figure out the layout of the Manor, let alone get Mitch close to anything he could swipe. Two guys came in and stood threateningly in the little hallway, trapping Mitch and Cleo by the beds so they couldn't run for the door.

Cleo sat up stiffly when they walked in, and grabbed Mitch's hand. He squeezed it once and was partially relieved when she squeezed back. He didn't really listen to what Cleo said to them, he was more focused on eyeing up the key ring on the brunet dude's belt and doing his best to look innocent under the eyes of the ginger dude.

Oh, would you look at that. Another bad idea.

Mitch leaned over to Cleo and cupped his mouth away from the rebels. "Distract them when I get up." When he leaned back, he made sure to glare at them a bunch. With a little luck, they would think he was just shit-talking them.

He waited as long as he could make himself sit still with his anxiety about to blow his head off before he muttered, "Bathroom", and slid past the brown-haired guy. He thought they might be able to hear his heart pounding in his chest from how tense he was. They didn't do anything but glare at him as he slid past though, maybe because that was the exact moment Cleo burst into sobs.

Oh, nice job, Cleo. Mitch clicked the door shut behind him and moved so he was pressed against the far wall. He and Cleo had tested how soundproof the door was before they started having whispered conversations in there, so he wasn't concerned about replicating actual bathroom noises. Instead, he focused on his next task: figuring out which key to slide off the key ring he now held in his hands.

Okay, focus. He held the ring carefully so the keys didn't try to jingle in his grip. He looked down at the keys and almost groaned. Would it have been too much for Brunet Dude to label his keys? He shuffled through them quickly, but none of them looked any more useful than the others.

His fingers paused on one key with a particularly sharp point. Oh, now that's a bad idea. He slid it off the ring and stuck it under his tongue. (The jeans he had been provided with most recently had fake pockets. There was a reason he never designed anything with fake pockets, and yet they were still coming back to terrorize him.)

Now, to get the key ring back on Brunet Dude's belt. Reverse pickpocketing was—shockingly—not a skill that he had developed quite as much as normal pickpocketing, but thank God literally one thing went right for him.

Neither of the rebel men showed any indication of noticing the disappearance or the reappearance of the key ring as Mitch slid past them to sit down next to Cleo again.

Mitch realized his mistake pretty fast. Cleo's wide eyes turned to him and Mitch realized the question Ginger Dude just asked was aimed at him. Shit shit shit shit shit—