Ｔｗｅｌｖｅ ｙｅａｒｓ ａｇｏ， ｔｈｉｎｇｓ ｃｈａｎｇｅｄ．．．
The world is broken. The idea of school has become obsolete since the war started twenty years ago, and chaos is possibly the only order that exists anymore. The Catago, the group that attacked those twenty year...
Dulcie laid flat on her back on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Her neck was stiff, muscles strained. Her mouth was dry. She cleared her throat and sat up. She fidgeted, rubbing the thumb and forefinger of her right hand together as she bounced her leg up and down. She had her bottom lip gripped between her teeth, shifting her jaw forward and back as she contemplated her conversation with Aiden.
She'd known Aiden for only three weeks, and while he'd become rather close with both her and Pollux, they were nevertheless in the somewhat early stages of their friendship, still occasionally awkward. Despite that, though, she could already tell that Aiden--to put it kindly--was an idiot.
Her stomach churned as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. Something told her Aiden wouldn't be waiting until morning, and something told her that she wasn't going to wait 'til morning to see if she was right.
She grabbed a jacket from near the bed of one of her dormmates who never picked up their stuff. She drew the pale green suit jacket closer around her pyjama-clad form and silently thanked that particular dormmate (Soren or something) for being a clutter bug.
Dulcie crept across her room as quietly as possible and opened the door, stepping outside and making her way down to Aiden's dorm, opening the door and peering inside.
At the back of the room, there was an empty bed.
She closed the door and hugged the slightly too short jacket even closer to her body.
There was a weight pressing down on her shoulders as she made her way to fetch Rico and her brother, and it certainly wasn't the feather-light coat.
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"So, kid," hissed the Catago man. "What's your greatest fear?"
Aiden grimaced, trying to keep his eyes away from the nearby lake. If he let his eyes stray over, the Catago could very well figure out what scared him. He failed. It was just a side-glance, hardly a second long, but the Catago man still noticed as Aiden's eyes drifted over to the lake. "Ah. Drowning. Makes sense. It's not a fun way to go out. I'm sure a few of your friends could attest to that."
The trio started shoving Aiden towards the lake, his feet stumbling over the dewy grass as his jaw bobbed up and down and his stomach churned. He was dizzy, stumbling from side to side as black spots dotted his vision. He was gasping for air, his chin and lips wobbling as his lungs constricted and his throat tightened as though his own body were trying to asphyxiate him in a fucked-up attempt to spare him from drowning. A primal scream tore its way from his throat as he lashed out, the cuffs clanking against his arms. The metal bruised his wrists with all its bouncing, and the edges scraped his skin, causing thin rivulets of blood to spill over his knuckles. His skin was clammy, and sweat was running down his face and trickling down his neck. He was snapped out of his single-minded drive to escape by one word. "Goodbye."
Aiden made the mistake of screaming as he was shoved into the water, back hitting the surface first. He inhaled far too much water, far too fast. He coughed and pulled in more as he sunk to the bottom of the lake. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. He struggled helplessly in the water, his blood roaring in his ears. Please no, please no, no.
