Ultramarine | The Darkest Minds Fanfic

Chapter 11, Sheena

When the meeting disassembled, Cole disappeared with Ruby almost immediately. The rest of us kids all huddled in the same corner of the room, with the agents hovering over us like ghosts.

　　Out of the twenty-five kids in the HQ, only fifteen escaped the bombing. Now, plus Liam and Chubs, we had a number of seventeen.

　　"You haven't eaten anything all day." Liam came up to me and shove me an apple his brother brought back earlier, but I pushed it away.

　　"I'm not hungry. Give it to someone else."

　　"C'mon. You need to at least keep yourself healthy." He insisted.

　　"I am healthy." I said.

　　"Fine. Suite yourself." He tossed the apple towards a Green girl in team one, who accepted it with gratitude shining out of her eyes. "Cole wouldn't like you starving yourself."

　　"I doubt he cares." I said, with much more venom in my voice than I expected. "He is otherwise engaged at the moment."

　　Liam looked like he wanted to protest, but bit his words back down.

　　"You don't like it, either, huh?" He asked eventually.

　　I shook. "Not in the least."

　　"I wish..." He let out a long sighed, and sat down beside me, didn't finish his thought. Chubs had fallen asleep in the corner, and Vida was sitting beside him, staring blankly into the air.

　　"Why do you like my brother so much?" He finally asked, and it sounded...judgmental.

　　I narrowed my eyes at him. "He saved my life. Do you need any more explanation than that?"

　　"He also saved Nico's life; you don't see him running laps around him all the time."

　　"He also trained me himself, keep me close to protected me from potential harm."

　　"Well, I guess he doesn't do that for everyone; that's true." He cocked his head to the side, which was a gesture so much like Cole that made my chest hurt, and sighed again. "My experience with my brother is very different from yours, though."

　　"Are you saying this to pop the bubbly dreams I have of him?" I said. "Because if you are, save it. What I feel for your brother is strictly obligatory. He saved my life, I will repay him with it." I wondered if this would convince him, when I knew from the core of me that it was a damn lie.

　　Liam seemed taken aback for a moment. "If that's so, why do you not like Ruby being alone with him?" He asked slowly in the end.

　　Now it was me who was speechless. I let out a long breath. "I don't know. I thought he'd trust me more than he trusts her."

　　"So it's jealousy." He said.

　　"No. It's not." I shook. Gosh, why couldn't he just get off my back?

　　"If you say so." He snorted.

　　I wanted to retort, but Cole and Ruby came back, and I swallowed my words down with the bile lodging in my throat. The two of them walked towards us, but I stood up immediately and left for the other side of the warehouse. I don't want to listen to his words of caring, the same ones that he offered to every other kid here, the same cheeky but open attitude that won him the love of them.

　　I felt so childish, I hated myself.

　　I walked up to the wall that had maps plastered to it. On those maps, marked the info gathered from scouts, the fruits of Ruby's, Vida's, and Cole's hard labor. Vida came back today with a nasty cut over her cheek, and it had taken me so much strength to stop myself from healing her. I made it a point to do that when she sleeps.