𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑 ᶜʰᵃˢᵉ ˢᵗᵉᶦⁿ!

𝐙𝐄𝐑𝐎!

೫ೃೀ༺

𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐒 𝐀𝐆𝐎 | 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐀 𝐈𝐒 𝐓𝐄𝐍 

"𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 this, Vi? I don't w-wanna get in trouble," ten-year-old Thalia blubbered as seventeen-year-old Violet rolled her eyes, shushing the petrified younger girl as Violet dragged her little sister behind her. "V-i! I have a really bad feeling about this," Thalia whined as Violet glared at her, slipping on the black leather gloves she owned as she tapped the keypad beside her father's bookcase that she'd managed to activate.

"Dude, if I'd known you were gonna be such a wuss, I would never even have told you about this! I would've just lied to you and said you were seeing things, adults do that all the time! Come on, don't be such a little chicken, Thals," Violet teased playfully as Thalia frowned, watching Violet key in the long passcode she'd written on her left forearm. "Just chill okay? We're gonna get those answers we deserve. Don't you wonder why Mom and Dad hide their research somewhere and barely ever told us what they worked on? Now there's this mysterious keypad Dad kept hidden away in the wall leading to heaven knows what and you don't wanna see what's behind it?" 

" 'Cause curiosity kills the cat, Vi...you know that! Don't you remember that saying? It's worrying! What will Daddy do to us if we get caught? He's s-so scary these days," Thalia muttered under her breath as Violet sighed, turning to ruffle Thalia's long brown hair gently as Thalia frowned. "It's scary, I'm scared! Vi...I don't want us to get in trouble!" Thalia blubbered as Violet knelt down, the bookshelf being lifted upwards by some mechanism as Thalia watched a doorway reveal itself.

"You don't always have to be such a little coward, Thals! Come on, we're going to get the answers we need! Don't you wanna know why Mom's suddenly dead and Dad's all wacked in the head?" Violet fired back, staring at the younger girl intently as Thalia shuddered at the thought of her mother's passing, still haunted by the day she'd found her mother's dead body in the closet, seeing it sway from the railing that somehow managed to stand the weight, Thalia burdened by the knowledge that she'd been seconds too late to stop it ever since that day. 

"I mean...I do! B-but it's scary going where w-we aren't supposed to!" 

"Dude...if you were gonna chicken out at the last minute, I wouldn't even have brought this up! Don't be such a coward, Thals," Violet sighed in exasperation, rolling her eyes at the younger girl's cowardice. "Come on...just live life on the edge a little okay? Don't be so cowardly all the time, what's life without a little risk?" Violet probed, egging Thalia on as the younger girl huffed in frustration, Violet nodding towards the daunting hallway as Thalia sighed. 

"I never said I was chickening out okay! Stars...I'm not a coward!" Thalia protested indignantly, hating it when Violet looked down on her. Just because she was nowhere as outspoken or had a spirit as fiery as Violet didn't mean she was a coward either. Plagued by the ghost of not only her birth parents but now her adoptive mother as well, Thalia was determined to get justice for her mother since she'd been too young to do anything at the time of her birth parents' death. She couldn't let anything else happen while she just stood idly by. "I'm just...concerned, that's all. I think that we should think this through, a-are you sure we know what we're doing?"

"Look, Thals...there's no good reason for people to keep secrets like that! Don't you think it's fishy that Dad has this secret lab thing hidden away in his office? I know what I saw...I saw him and those creepy parents of your friends going inside there! We have to know what's in there! Whatever they did that made Mom...k-kill herself and make Dad go absolutely crazy is something that I'm going to get to the bottom of," Violet stated firmly, determined to get revenge on PRIDE after what she'd seen.