Pinfeathers

Chapter 8 - Negotiations

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Chapter 8 - Negotiations

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Raph's eyes gave Athira one final, lingering glance as the men led him into the back seat of the car and shut the door. 

That almost broke her resolve. 

Athira's fingers dug into the cement roof of the building so hard that her nails felt like they would push back into her fingers. She ground her teeth together and forced herself to stay there, perched out of sight from where she could safely follow the car until it stopped. 

Athira just hoped she hadn't accidentally lied to Raph. 

Alone, she was confident in her abilities. Alone, it didn't matter what the stakes were. If she died, what some of the books she'd read called the 'ultimate price', it'd mean she wasn't a danger to the people around her anymore. That they'd be safe from her inability to control her own colour. 

But with Zoe, with Raph? Athira found her confidence slipping away as the engine of the car started up. She didn't work well with others. What if, in her attempt to rescue them, something went wrong? What if they got stuck halfway through a wall, or her colour attacked them like it had the lamp? 

Stop it, Athira. She drew a deep breath in through her nose. Inhale. Exhale. Feel the air move through you, use its flow to calm your own. 

Athira's eyes snapped open at the sound of the car pulling into the street. She tugged her cowl over her head as she stood up and turned, touching the solid roof of the building one last time with her boot-covered toe and stepping off into the air.

She kept high, away from the windows and close to signs and other obstacles that would serve to hide her shape. Though she doubted the men who'd taken Raph would look up, she didn't want a random passerby noticing her and drawing attention to her. Logic told her the men would have friends, and those friends would be paid to pay attention to the streets.

Why take Zoe and Raph, though? 

The question ran through Athira's head as the car rounded yet another corner. She followed it via rooftop, hiding behind a derelict sign advertising OmNom bars as she watched it roll down the street. The only explanation she could come up with was that it had something to do with why the men had followed Zoe and Raph into the alley that night they'd met, which didn't make sense.

Are they after recruits, maybe? Athira frowned. I read a book that was like that once. Kids being taken and trained as soliders for some war they shouldn't have been involved in. 

She'd been ghosting the car for a good twenty minutes when it finally stopped in a part of town Athira vaguely recognised. It looked different in the late afternoon sun, but a few of the neon signs she'd seen after leaving the den the people had taken her to had lit up, and she swore she'd seen that hairdressers before--

Realisation struck.

They're after me.

A gut feeling told her she was right. The car's engine silenced at the edge of the road, and Athira perched, waiting for them to get out. To see Raph, make sure he'd made it this far unscathed, as words from the unnamed woman in the room that night, the one that'd asked if she was scared echoed though her memories. 

'If this is what her colour can do now, imagine when she's older and it's matured even more!'

Athira's fingers balled by her sides. Flecks of black colour peeled from her skin and crystallised in the outside environment, falling to sit by her feet.