Storm

Chapter Seventy

As the sunlight seeping through Noah's windows waned, Emma and I cleaned the apartment.

I struggled to believe that Noah had caused all of this after I'd left. Pillows askew on the couch. Books flipped open to random pages on the floor. Even a food stain, something dark brown and sticky, covered a couple of feet on the kitchen floor.

Emma had taken the fall and cleaned that one up.

Noah's place hadn't been the cleanest before my arrival, but this was definitely something noticeable. As we cleaned, Emma explained that she'd witnessed one of his spirals before. Where he disappeared, leaving behind him a messy house in his wake. It was never too bad. Nothing was ever broken. But he wouldn't come back for days.

Perhaps that would be for the best.

I vacuumed a large pile of crumbs from the floor, and once again became brutally aware of my body. The way my hand gripped the vacuum handle. How nimbly I moved backward and forward on the carpeted floor. I was taller and desperately malnourished. They hadn't taken care of this one.

That likely explained why they'd taken my...my...my...

I couldn't think it. I had already nearly gone down another spiral, my thoughts drifting out of control. Panicked about what they were doing to her, no, to me. Who had me? Where was I? Who was I if I was not in myself?

Did I even exist?

My throat began to close and I focused again on vacuuming. Back and forth. Back and forth. Just get all the crumbs and everything would be fine.

And then I could do the stupid and desperate thing that I'd requested Emma help me with.

In comparison to all the other stupid, reckless stuff I'd done this past week, it really wasn't that bad. You know? I had to give myself some credit.

Did that mean it was a totally well-thought out, super-smart, mind-bogglingly effective plan? Heck no.

But it would get the job done. And I needed answers.

In order to comprehend my situation, I'd broken up everything into basic steps. Very digestible steps.

Okay, first step: find out what had happened to Asten and Ava.

Fact number one: Asten and Ava had not been at the trial.

I'd thought of some potential explanations after what Noah had said. He'd explained that they weren't the most "just" with their trials. What if Asten and Ava had intentionally not been brought out for the trial? What if they had been afraid one of them would have spoken up? So, they got two random actors to sit in their place.

Regardless, I'd seen the guards take the two people who were pretending to be Asten and Ava out the back left door of the trial room. I could only assume that the two of them were still in the justice building. Most justice buildings had some sort of holding area, right?

That was the biggest assumption I was making; that the two of them were being kept in that building. If that was false, then the rest of my plan would fall apart and I would need to come up with something else.

But if it were true, the two of them could help me figure out where Asten and Ava were.

Of course, I hadn't told Emma all of this. I'd simplified it down to, "I want to go back to the justice building because I saw something weird there."

Completely perplexed, she'd initially not given it a thought. She'd shut me down immediately, gotten annoyed with me for asking her to do something so odd.

But Emma was also surprisingly easy to bribe.

"Sooo, what if I bought you dinner? Or something?" I had offered.