Unwanteds High (AU)

A New Life

The room was the coldest room he had ever been in his whole life. He could see his breath forming into frost as he huddled to keep warm, pulling his knees up to try and get rid of the numbness in his pale, thin fingers.

He knew that people never came out of this place. There was only going in. Never out. The only way out was by going into the unknown. The dark unknown that caused the body in this world to be buried with the others in the ground.

That's where he knew he was going. This place struck fear into the hearts of everyone besides the pit of black, hot oil that 13 year olds faced. Well, not anymore that is. The whole time the lake said to burn the children alive was actually a new land unknown to Quill before.

This was the only place to be feared.

And he had taken himself to it. He obeyed. He had obeyed without question. He had carried himself here. His very own two feet with no fight had walked here to face the one place the old, the dying, and the betrayers went.

And maybe he had betrayed the others. Maybe he had betrayed his duty of being a Restorer to the new High Priest. Maybe he deserved to be where humans became corpses soon enough.

It had been who knows how long since he had arrived to this cold, unforgiving place. They had taken him to this room. The only things being a sleek metal surface to lay on and a bucket. The bucket wasn't for water. It was for what came out of the body from the terror of facing the inevitable.

He was going to be facing that inevitable. That scary, scary person he had nightmares about. The one thing he dreamed of ever. The bright light, the mask on the one person who scared him the most, and the unknown liquid dripping out of the injection needle. In those dreams, he never could escape as he could only watch the lethal injection. He would always wake up in a cold sweat whenever he had those horrible nightmares.

But this wasn't a nightmare. This was going to be real soon enough. He was going to be put to sleep... To be put asleep forever and to never wake up to hear anything again. He'd never hear the sound of the Quilitary vehicles chugging along, or the sound of the hot wind ever again. He would never look up at the sky again with the wired ceiling making criss cross shadows over his face. He would never see anyone he knew again.

He quickly learned there was no way to get warm. Quill on the outside was so hot that the thirst for water never left. A person gets used to living life in Quill always on the verge of dehydration, always having dry lips and tongue. The freezing air around him seemed like he was on a completely different land. It seemed like the Sector felt like Artime: a whole new world. But unlike Artime's lush green lawns, the Sector was the opposite. Cold, gray, and barley having much to it at all.

The room he was in was small. Perhaps that's why the temperature was so below normal levels. He felt like even if someone infiltrated this place to save him, they wouldn't find him because of how separated he was. The only thing that was suppose to save him was the forever sleep. But that only made him feel like the walls were closing in on him.

He laid down, looking at the cracking ceiling of his cell. The sleek metal surface was cold on his back to make his whole body form goosebumps even more so than before. He couldn't get the cold off of his mind. Maybe this was his death. Perhaps they froze the people to death instead of the sleep method. Perhaps he was going to close his eyes and never open them again all because of this freezing air.

He closed his eyes, lost in his own thoughts. He had no idea exactly what was going on with him. That same feeling of waking up in a sweat was still there, but there was something else too. That rush of wanting to escape he knew would never go away. He could feel his heart beating fast in his chest and ears, and he couldn't stop his quick breaths.