Immortals (NEW CHAPTERS EVERY SUNDAY)

Chapter Five // Mia

I had to go back there.

Was it a stupid idea, as it was likely still under a measure of surveillance? Probably.

But there was a pull, something telling me to go back to the spot in the woods where Shane was stolen from us. It felt like something laid unresolved in those grasses, like with the best of luck, I could find something to give me closure with the events of the previous day.

It was dangerous, it was such an unbelievably risky idea, but it needed to be explored or my mind would not rest.

And so I went. I disappeared on my lunch break, leaving Ashe alone to handle business for God knows how long. Maybe forever, should the worst be waiting for me in the clearing.

I couldn't help but shudder at the thought. Should anything go wrong, I would be losing myself forever. My friends would be losing me forever in the same way we had just lost Shane.

It was chilling to think this was the world we lived in, one where people could be stripped away in the blink of an eye for the smallest things, but that reminder is the one my mind decided to push at me in that moment.. With every step I took through the forest, this thought became more and more intense, pressure building in my head as the threats that could await me became more and more real in my mind.

It made me want to scream, but letting it all out would've made this even more dangerous if it was already so, and would create danger should there be none already present.

With that, I had no choice but to force myself along the path, expecting the worst and praying for the best.

After all, I would do anything to get Shane back. I already hated life without him. It was something I had hoped I would never know, even as a child, but here I was now.

Shane and I met before I could even remember. We had grown up two houses down from each other in a small suburban town, our mothers were friends with each other and our paths crossed frequently in our youth.

My first real memories of our friendship, however, came from the early days of preschool. We were in the same year in school and almost always in the same classes. That, really, was how the scrawny little kid down the street stopped being a stranger and became Shane.

And from there, Shane became my best friend through thick and thin. Nearly every major memory of mine from the ages of four to twelve involved Shane in some way, shape, or form. He was a constant in my life, someone who I could never imagine not having by my side.

When we were twelve, things changed. Not us, not our friendship, but the world we knew. It was the end of seventh grade, a time that was already regarded to be difficult enough by the whole of society. On top of that came the end of the society as we had known it, the rise of the divide between Favorables and Unfavorables.

Even at the beginning, I knew in my heart of hearts where both Shane and I would fall. I heard the whispers about me in the hallways, the ones that sounded like "slut" and "whore," all because I was part of a group that found their way into a high school party and found myself in a closet with one of the males in said group.

In other words, those whispers were a red flag, and red flags would turn into a target on my back.

And even before the end of July, when Shane would officially come out to me as aromantic and asexual, I could already sense he was some variety of queer. Maybe because that was my second, significantly more secret red flag, the one I still was unsure if anyone knew about. The girl I had loved was dead anyway, also taken by the guards.

It was funny, in a not so funny way, that even then we would be sticking together. And it was also funny and significantly not that both people I loved were fed to the same fate.