Becca Reed lives in a society where they must always wear masks. White masks are the good and black masks are the impure, the criminals, the evil. She is stripped of her white mask and thrown into the world of the Dark Clan, where she is forced to b...
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"I⃟'m not leaving the city," Becca says to Eduard as they stand between two buildings.
He wears a white mask with orange and red flames that cover half of the face.
"He knows who you are," Eduard says, his patience starting to give way.
"Correction: he knows I'm not who I say I am. We need to figure out how we can get to him without blowing our cover. I was really lucky that he didn't kill me right there."
"I don't think he would have done that, Becca."
"You never know. He is the leader of both clans... Who knows what he would do to me if he felt like it?" Becca gets an idea. "Actually, that's where we can start."
"What?" Eduard asks, lost.
"The library downtown. I'll do some research on him, just like we would do in school over the past." Becca starts to leave, but Eduard grabs her arm, sending shivers through her body. "What?"
"You shouldn't go alone."
"No one will know."
"Someone will," he says, his fingers still gripping her forearm. "No one knows nobody in this city, and someone's gonna ask questions."
"Hey," Becca says, more sternly than she meant to. "You're the one that came up with the Hiders and mask-jumping. Remember that next time you worry about someone recognizing a mask, okay?"
Eduard hesitates and makes a sound like he wants to say something. Instead, he sighs and drops his hand, looking at the white brick wall standing behind Becca. He nods eventually and tells her to go get a new mask.
"Why?" Becca asks, ready to leave and figure out whom the worm called Quill is.
"You're a political leader right now. You need to go back and get a different mask before heading down there."
"It's going to be obvious that I'm not who I say again, Eduard. I'm just going to go like this. And I have her ID, just in case Meanwhile, you should send people out to expand. We can't defeat a government with the numbers we have."
"Becca-"
"Eduard. Do it. Double the number of Maskless by the end of the day if you can, and I don't care how you do it. I'm the Face, and it's time I start acting like it and taking charge."
"Yeah, but Becca-"
"Look. Just do it, okay? There are over a hundred lives at stake here, so start acting like it. I'm heading down now. If I find anything, I'll write it down somewhere. Go."
With that, Becca turns and walks away, leaving Eduard in between the two buildings, one black and one white.
The library is a small building, old and worn, yet rarely used. Everything everyone needs is either in their home or at school. The only people that ever use the library are the ones that want to embark on an adventure full of knowledge and questions, or they want to do a more in-depth analysis of something for a school project.
