one by one.

-thirteen-

Maya continues to beg Lucas to let her go while he takes her to who knows where. Upon arriving at their destination, he shoves her into a dark room and hisses, "shut up and do everything I tell you to do."

"Please, I'll do whatever you want, but please don't hurt me," Maya pleads, her voice trembling in fear.

Lucas turns on the lights to reveal that he had taken Maya to what appears to be an electrical closet, as hundreds of cords run up the wall. What Lucas is surprised to see when the lights come on is how truly scared Maya is of him. She had backed herself into a corner of the small room and was noticeably shaking. Her fear is definitely warranted after everything she has seen him do, but seeing Maya like that reminds him of the monster he so quickly turned into.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Maya. I need you to trust me if this is ever going to work," Lucas says in a soft tone trying to not intimidate the girl any further.

"How can I trust you after what you just did to Farkle?"

Lucas sighs, shaking his head. "I don't know, but if we want any chance at getting out of this place I'm going to need your help."

"I won't leave without everyone else," Maya retorts. "Ri- I mean Farkle, Zay and Smackle."

"I don't plan on leaving without them either, but first we need to find Riley. Now look away and cover your eyes," Lucas orders.

"What?" Maya gapes, at Lucas' mention of Riley.

"Look away and cover your eyes," he repeats as he raises up his gun, points it at the electrical box that all of the cords lead back to. He covers his eyes with one hand and turns his head to the side before letting several rounds fire at the box, sending sparks flying into the air.

Maya squeezes her eyes shut and uses Lucas as a shield from the incoming sparks. "Woah," Maya smiles once the sparks stop. "Can you do that again?"

Lucas smirks. "Do you trust me now?"

"Not really," she answers. "But more than I did ten seconds ago."

"I'll take it. Now come on we don't have much time," Lucas insists, already running out the door.

Maya follows shortly behind Lucas, as he leads them to their next destination, which happens to be a laboratory.

Lucas props up a chair against the door to jam the handle and prevent anyone from entering if they happen to try. "Maya, look for a scalpel, tape and something we can use as bandages."

"Why?" Maya cautiously asks, unsure as to why they would need those things.

"Just trust me," Lucas orders, frantically rummaging through drawers in search of something himself.

Maya complies and begins looking for what Lucas told her to find. It takes her a couple minutes to find everything and once she looks back at Lucas she notices that he is taking the vent off the air duct. "Please tell me that your plan doesn't consist of us crawling through the air duct," the blonde judgmentally remarks.

"Technically this isn't my plan, and no we aren't going to, one of the rats is. Speaking off, can you pick out a rat? Try to find a fast one in the big cage over there," Lucas says, diligently continuing to work in opening the vent.