Darkness {4}

Chapter 9

"... And Commander Tano will be in charge of the group infiltrating the system."

Leena jolted in her chair, blinking. Her eyes flickered around the room, and she found most people looking at her. She smiled and nodded, accepting her part in the mission, and relievedly sat back down as Dender continued. The only unfortunate thing was that she had no idea what she was doing except for 'infiltrating the system'.

Luckily for her the doors slid open, and a boy ran into the room breathing heavily. Leena raised her brows; the boy looked like he'd ran all the way across the planet based on his flushed cheeks and panting.

Dender eyed the boy disdainfully but continued anyways, and the boy slowly shimmied to where he was least visible by most except for her. Leena could tell he was mortified and would've been able to even if she couldn't sense it; his eyes were wide and staring straight ahead and he was tucking his lips into his mouth so that all she could see of his mouth was a thin frowning line.

Leena couldn't help but smile slightly at the expression, and felt herself reach out to him mentally. She'd been in the same position many times before, and although she felt bad for him she was surprised Dender hadn't given him a stricter beating for being so late. On the bright side, at least the boy had distracted everyone from her little mishap.

Over time the boy began to relax a bit, slowly releasing his lips and crossing his arms while leaning against the wall. His eyes lowered so that they looked normal as opposed to wide, and Leena felt a little, unusual prick in her chest.

She frowned. What was that? That had never happened before, and she was perplexed and a bit worried. Was it something inside her that had broken or something? But if that was the case then she would've felt pain afterwards...

Leena was growing increasingly concerned because now her stomach felt like it did a flip flop whenever she looked at the boy, so she made a point not to look at him, instead looking down at her folded hands.

Externally she looked calm and attentive but internally she was a mess. She was borderline panicking about what was going on with her, because it had never happened before. Maybe she was poisoned? Maybe she'd just eaten something bad and that's why she felt like she was going to either be sick or pass out.

Except her head didn't spin at all, so that ruled out fainting. And the normal symptoms of poison weren't present, she should know. She'd been poisoned one too many times, and if Luke wasn't there then she probably wouldn't be sitting where she was now.

Leena sighed to clear her thoughts, then risked a small sideways glance at the boy. Her insides immediately froze as his brown eyes locked with her green and blue ones, and if she listened closely she was absolutely certain that any minute she'd hear her stomach hitting the inner core of the planet. But she didn't move her eyes away even though her heart was beating so fast she thought it might explode or everyone could hear it, including him.

He gave her a small, sheepish smile which somehow made matters even worse for Leena because now she felt like her face was on fire on top of having an exploding heart and a stomach a thousand feet beneath her. Somehow she managed a small respectable smile back and immediately looked down at her hands and fiddled with her thumbs so fast she was surprised they didn't break off.

On top of the flurry of emotions currently fighting for dominance inside Leena the growingly prominent one was confusion. Why in blazes did she feel this way? She felt like she would rather face the Empress, Kiracel, and Khana altogether than look at the boy standing a few feet down and away from her, and when she thought about that statement it made her want to laugh out loud at its stupidity.