Monster || among us

f o u r ;

f o u r ;

"Back off. She's with me." He informed them in a dark tone, keeping her out of their view. She immediately felt protected with him.

One of the three white boys laughed in his face. He was about the same height as them, and Raven was lean but muscular. Roseanne knew he could easily take them on if he had to. "Who does this guy think he is? He's just some dirty coal miner from Province of Mines." Taking a step forward and bumping chests with him, trying to intimidate him and make him back down. He looked Raven dead in the eyes and said in a more menacing tone. "We don't like people from other provinces coming here and telling us what we can and can't do, especially not some dumb ass from the mines. If we want this girl, you have to step aside and let us take her--"

He had been in the middle of his sentence when Raven used the tips of his fingers to jab him in the throat hard. He lost his breath for a moment and fell to the ground, clutching his throat. The other two boys lunged at him next, while Roseanne could only watch him in shock. They both had years of training in the garden. But somehow, she knew those were techniques he had to have learned somewhere else. Those were from street fighting. For the other two boys he pinched a sensitive nerve in their necks, knocking them out cold.

When he saw the sheer terror on Roseanne's face, he immediately informed her. "They'll be alright. Its just a little trick I learned from my older brother back in Province of Mines. A little pinch will knock them out just long enough for us to get away. Hold it for ten seconds though, and they'll actually die." Somehow that didn't seem to comfort her. Another thing she caught onto was the fact that he mentioned his brother from back in his home province. 

Most people in the garden didn't talk about their families, since each of them felt like they had been abandoned. How a parent could send their children off to be essentially owned by their government was beyond them. But Raven didn't seem to hold any resentment towards them. Not towards his brother at least. That got Roseanne thinking about her own siblings--two sisters who had been left behind in Province of Flowers along with her parents. Her older sister Blossom was already seven and old enough to have received a name. She wasn't picked at age four after taking her intelligence exams and was deemed average. Her parents still loved her, but it was evident that they had been disappointed.

She had a younger sister too, born a year after she was. Her sister was about to turn three when Roseanne was chosen and she never saw them again. But since her sister was never brought to the garden, she knew she hadn't been chosen either. She had probably received a name from her parents and was likely living a normal life. 

They walked past the two unconscious boys and the third who was trying to regain his breathing. They went back towards the train station, but when Raven was about to step into the train going back towards the garden, she stopped him. She informed him that they didn't have to go back until Sunday night. They could do anything they wanted. So he followed her into a train that led further into the Province, into the capitol of Blanche. She suggested that they could book a hotel room together and stay there overnight. Then they could see the town in the morning before heading back to the garden.

As they boarded the train, it was going to be a twenty minute ride into the city. They found seats easily as the train was mostly empty and they got comfortable.

"Tell me about your family. What do you remember about them?" She asked. She had been curious after he mentioned his older brother.

He heaved a sigh, knowing in his mind that he actually still thought about them often. He had been very attached to his family. "It was just me, my older brother Jet and my mother Ebony. My dad died in a mine collapse six months after I was born." She made a saddened face and muttered an I'm sorry for your loss at him before he nodded with a sad smile and kept talking. "My brother Jet is five years older than me. My parents took him for testing a year before I was born. But he wasn't chosen. The scientists said he was average. A year and a half after his testing I was born and dad died. Mom started working at a spice factory to maintain the house. I remember when she took me in for testing, I didn't want to go. But then I was chosen and she couldn't refuse. They told her if she surrendered me peacefully, they'd give her some money. She had to. I don't blame her for letting me go."