I groan in pain as I try to stand up, as my leg is stinging. The gauze and medical tape are still wrapped tight around my leg, but it doesn't stop the discomfort whatsoever.
"Woah woah, relax." Colton stands up beside me to help me but I'm already stable on my feet. I can't put any weight on my bad leg, so I lean against the wall.
My breathing increases in speed and I whip my body around, scanning the entirety of the elevator. There's nobody. Just Colton and I. No matter how much I look, I still feel like I can't be positive, however.
"Is he outside?" Beyond the doors is just darkness and I can't see what I'm looking at, but I leave anyway.
I hop into the darkness, my foot landing on a hard surface, most likely rock. It smells odd, and I feel like I'm not getting enough oxygen. Below me looks like fog.
I lift my head up and see trees and the remains of old buildings. A black gate surrounds the ruins and everything is familiar again. We're in the museum again.
"Nick?" I whisper, looking around. I turn my head to look behind me and Colton is right next to me, but the elevator is nowhere to be seen.
I hop around the ruins, searching for any signs of him. Why did he run off?
"Nick?" I call out again, this time again.
"Juliet." Colton addresses me calmly.
I check behind the gate, glance into the woods, but there is no sign of him.
"Juliet." Colton says sternly and I turn around, tears welling up in my eyes.
"What?" I ask weakly, breathing heavily. He has to be out here somewhere, he couldn't have just disappeared.
Colton holds up something in between his fingers and it glows slightly. It's an emerald. "I found this on the floor of the elevator."
I shake my head in disbelief. "What does it mean?"
I have never seen Colton look so serious. "It means that he didn't insert it into the hole in time, which means that the demon could touch him. Once you place your emerald in the rock, nothing from the Underworld can touch you." He shakes his head. "Neither of us could leave the elevator but I don't know why he didn't put his emerald into the rock. He's gone."
I fall to my knees, my entire body grows weak. "How is that possible, we were so close?" A few silent tears stream down my face. This can't be happening, I couldn't have wasted an entire journey just for him to be stuck.
"I don't know, I don't know why he didn't insert the emerald, I handed it to him." Colton begins pacing around the museum, rubbing his face with his hands.
"We have to go back and get him, Colton. We need to go back." I stand up and walk towards the gate, but Colton stops me by putting his hands on both of my shoulders. "C'mon we need to go get him."
"Juliet. We don't have enough emeralds to do it. We have four left, if I were to go down and get him then we wouldn't have enough to get back into the Afterworld. I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do."
I stare at his expression to see any sign of fraud, any sign that he's lying to me. His eyebrows are narrowed, his eyes looking straight into mine, his lips frowning. He's telling me the truth.
It's over.
Nick is going to be stuck in the Underworld forever.
"Then I'll go down and get him and send him up. I'll stay down there." My mouth trembles.
Colton's eyes are wide, worried, falling all over me. "I'm not allowed to do that. I cannot sacrifice anyone, it comes with being a voyager. My job is to complete the mission without my companion getting harmed. Those are the rules."
"But that's the thing, I'm not going to be harmed, I can handle it." I ramble, stumbling over my words.
"Juliet." His words are soft like his lips.
As my eyes well up with tears, I turn away from Colton and walk away from the museum. I climb over the gate and walk sluggishly away. I don't know where I'm going but I just want to be away from there, I want to be by myself.
Everything starts to go into slow motion as my body grows too weak once again and I collapse onto the grass. No physical pain that I endured throughout this trip could compare to the pain I feel in my heart right now as my body lies lifeless on the grass.
I feel like something is happening to my body, I feel like my organs are shutting down. It hurts, everything hurts.
Colton rushes beside me but I don't do anything but let the tears run down my cheeks towards my jaw, then making their way through my skin and down my neck and seeping into my clothing or dripping onto the ground.
You learn in the movies that everybody gets a happy ending, most of the time anyway. Those are the best and most satisfying storylines because everything goes the way you want it to.
The reality is that most people don't get a happy ending. I saw Nick for only a few minutes before I lost him forever. I thought out of everybody I knew, Nick would at least get a happy ending.
He had the purest soul, the most positive attitude and treated everybody with kindness. He deserves a happy ending more than I do, more than my friends do. It's so unfair.
It's unfair. It's unfair. Everything is so unfair.
It should have been me.
But the purest ones are the ones that end up with the worst ending to their story. The ones who are too innocent for this world end up dead or in my case, stuck in a prison forever. You see this in movies and books. The best ones are the hardest to lose.
Nick isn't like the people you watch or the people you read about, he was better. He deserved better. This wasn't like any Shakespeare tragedy, this wasn't supposed to happen. We were supposed to get out okay, Nick was supposed to be up here with me but he's not.
We almost got him out of there, we almost made it. But sometimes almost is not enough.
This is all my fault. My death indirectly led to his, and if I fought hard enough to stay alive, then my family and I would be happy together. I wish things had turned out different, even if it meant not meeting Colton or Tanner or Jack, or even getting separated from Brooke.
Anything is better than letting Nick suffer down there by himself, being tortured everyday.
I don't know what made him end up down there, but I'll bet any amount of money that I'll beat their ass when I figure out who it is, even if it's the devil himself.
"Are you okay?" Colton asks.
I stare at the sky above me, watching the clouds drift over the blue abyss. "No."
"I really am sorry. I wish I could do something about it." He sighs, laying down next to me.
"Me too."
Poor Juliet did all that work for nothing.
A waste of a trip right?
Or not?