Word Count: 1 953
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
After our session was over I had quite a few bruises, but Ian made sure to bring some Orange Venom with him which solved that issue. Now all I want to do is eat, shower and maybe take a nap. I wait for the elevator doors to open and grant me access to my floor and am grateful when my feet make contact with the soft cushioned carpeting in the passageway.
Before long I'm at my door and I press my thumb into the scanner, following up with my time-marked wrist and am given access to my new home. As far as I know, only Ian, the leaders and myself can enter this pod on their own.
When I walk into my apartment, shoulders sagging as my legs scream at every move I make, I don't expect to find anything different than when I left. However, I don't distinctly remember having a girl on my sofa.
"What are you doing?" I yelp and the girl's brown eyes quickly turn to meet my own, her blonde her whipping around as she goes.
"Oh yay! You're back," she squeals.
I simply stare at her, noticing that at some point I seem to have grabbed a large pole which I'm pretty sure is supposed to be my coat rack. The girl sits lazily on the couch, clad in the same uniform as I am, her feet up as she holds some kind of device in her hands.
"Are you going to keep aiming that at me?" she queries.
"Well actually I'm not too sure when I'm going to beat you with it," I quip, holding the surprisingly heavy object up with my exhausted arm things.
'You're not being very nice. Is this how you make friends?' Aspen questions with genuine curiosity laced into her tone.
"She broke into my apartment. I may not have many friends, but this is not how I like to start my friendships," I retort.
'Many?'
"Okay ... any."
"Did you say something?" the girl asks, referring to my weak attempt at not looking like I'm talking to myself.
"I asked how you got into my place," I urge.
Her eyes crinkle a little as she considers my statement, as if trying to search for a way to explain without making me extremely weirded out.
"I knocked," she offers, but it comes out as more of a question.
"Okay, and I wasn't around, so you just what ... climbed in through a window?" I bluster.
"No, I added my fingerprint and ID to your door. Technology is kind of my thing," she lilts lifting up a thin, rectangular device which I can barely recognise as the practically prehistoric cellphone.
"Are you trying to get me to hit you with this thing? Who are you?" I emphasize and she slowly lifts up her hands.
"N-no calm down okay ... I'm Neave Blue," she begins and the way she breathes in after that hints at the possibility that she's about to say a lot more.
"I was born in Fire Kru, I don't really have many friends although I think it's more because I don't really care for friends, you know what I mean?" she continues and her lips spread again. "I like old technology, I live with my dad — well ... I used to," she babbles and I'm surprised by how quickly all of that left her lips.
She prepares to relay the next section of her autobiography to me when out of nowhere I feel everything around me slow down. It's like there's a deep wave of cold sitting in my chest and it's cooling me from the inside out. The same feeling in my chest is reciprocated in the side of my face. A cold so deep and thick it burns. I feel myself lose my grip on the pole and I hit the ground, but it's like an out of body experience. It doesn't feel like I'm really here. All that's there for me is the cold now surging through my nervous system.
'Suki breathe. There's something wrong in here. That thing you're fighting, it's getting stronger. It's taking over some of your cells,' Aspen explains and I do my best to take deep breaths like she says.
In a second Neave is out of her seat and her hands are pressing onto my chest.
"Are you okay?" she asks me, her palms sat right over my heart and I feel the cold sensation slowly begin to ease up.
I look up at her concerned profile and my heart warms at the thought that she's worrying like that just for me. A complete stranger. No-one in my old Division would even consider that. I conduct a short survey of her features from my position on the floor, taking inventory of her dark brows, pink lips, warm eyes and straight nose.
She's pretty.
My eyes widen a fraction when something strange happens.
A small trail of black leaks from her nose, slowly down the space between her upper lip and left nostril.
"I'm fine, just a little dizzy," I stutter, struggling to lift my frame so I can open my lungs up and really calm myself down, "But you're not."
She quickly pulls away from me, lifting her hand to her face and wiping at the blackness.
"Sorry, it happens sometimes," she explains.
"You had a nosebleed?" I query, my mind in complete shock.
Nobody has nosebleeds ... ever — at least that's what I was taught in Biology. The only time you can expect to have a nosebleed is when you run out of time. It's a symptom of the poison in our chips.
"May I?" she asks, pointing a finger at my bathroom and I nod absentmindedly.
When she returns she's got a tissue in her hand and her head tilted back.
"Believe me, I don't get it too. I was completely fine just a few days ago, but since that explosion it's been happening all the time. It's starting to scare me."
I breathe a sigh as she eradicates the only other explanation for her bleeding I could think up. After all, how do you even explain a dead girl in your living quarters?
"Do you think it's true then? What the journalists are saying? We're dying," I ask and my heart beats at my ribcage at an erratic rate, fighting to escape the rest of my body's fate.
"I can't guarantee it, but something's definitely amiss. My dad's a doctor and he hasn't seen anything like what's going on inside me. He says there's a coating of some kind on most if not all my black blood cells. My body is trying to fight it off and failing at that, but there's no way for it to kill whatever is covering them without completely destroying the cell altogether. On top of that, I'm not the only one. Hundreds of people are reaching out to him and his colleagues, asking for a cure that doesn't exist."
Her words send shock throughout my system.
"That sounds like death to me," I whisper, my gaze drifting off.
"Yeah," she drawls. "But that's not why I came here. I didn't risk getting kicked out of Air Kru to just come and scare you," she explains and I quirk an eyebrow.
"I was hoping we could maybe be friends, what with you being my across the passage neighbor and all," she says with a warm smile.
It takes me a while to fully understand and accept what she's just said.
"Why?" I ask a little too coldly, not believing that she's making finding a friend seem so easy.
I've always been a little hesitant. I'm not one to just jump into things. I have to think, evaluate, and observe. Why is she even here? She doesn't know me and has absolutely no reason to want to be my friend.
"I've seen you around school in the past. You were always alone. You barely speak to anyone. You only say enough so that your solitude doesn't attract attention, but you never let anyone get near you. In a way I guess we're one and the same. Alone by choice, but this is a chance for a new life and I don't really want that to be my choice anymore ... if you'll have me," she drawls and I simply stand by her, staring, mulling over her words.
She's been watching me ... weirdo.
'If what I say makes any of this better, I haven't been able to detect dishonesty in her statement.'
"Why haven't you said anything to me before?"
"Okay ... so you clearly don't know this, but have you seen yourself? You're intimidating!" she deadpans and a small smile snakes onto her profile.
"Me!?" I gasp, shock resonating on every feature on my face when I realise that Ian said the same thing to me only a few days ago.
I imagine I've been called a lot of things in the past, most of which haven't been said to me face, but I didn't think anyone found me intimidating with my generally babyish face and lack of the ability to be remotely normal — to the point where it's genetic.
"Pshyaah!" Neave urges and I can't help smacking her on the shoulder.
She cries out in protest, causing the both of us to smile. The carelessness in her expression brings back memories of my older sister. We'd always be laughing when we were together and part of me feels like that's a good enough reason to want Neave to stick around. It'd be nice to smile even a fraction of the amount I used to only a few years ago.
"So, friends?" she offers, reaching out an arm and beckoning for me to take it and I do the same as we latch onto each other's elbows.
"I'd give you a hug if I wasn't scared I'd bleed all over you," she jokes and I roll my eyes at her, giving her a hug anyway, with just a tad of awkwardness.
I figured why not, it couldn't possibly kill me right? That seems like a blessing on its own.
"Well, I should get going. I think most of the initiates are meeting for training. My Watcher should get here any second, are you going too?" she queries.
"Oh no, I already did my training for the day, which should explain the whole me smelling like death thing," I explain not wanting her to think this is my natural musk.
She nods her head with a sneakily-relieved expression on her face before grabbing onto my numbered wrist and saving my ID to the database on her wrist chip.
"Word of advice ... I may not be extremely popular or anything, but breaking into people's pod isn't a normal thing."
"Yeah, you're right. It's a me thing. Bye Keeks," she concludes and I can't help thinking about how I didn't approve that nickname and yet I can't bring myself to tell her.
I watch her walk away and soon after she closes the door I get a voice message. I touch my fingers to my temple to open it when nothing but pure Neave fills my eardrums.
"I'm thinking me, you, sleepover sometime soon?"
"Okay, but then it has to be at your place and I'm not cooking," I respond, not used to hearing a voice that doesn't belong to either Aspen or my mother.
"Who said anything about cooking? We have pre-made food for a reason!" she gasps, sounding a little offended and I wonder what it is this new friendship could threaten to turn into.
I can call it that right?
X X X
A/N
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