Brave Fear (boyxboy)

Chapter 17

Zane woke to an argument between Mallory and Daisy.

"I can walk!" Daisy yelled defiantly. "We're leaving this morning!" It was one of the only moments Zane had witnessed Daisy truly angry. In the week or so he had known her, she had been hunky-dory and playful and witty. But this morning, her voice carried intonations of fear and defiance.

Mallory wasn't backing down. "Like shit! You can hardly fucking stand!"

Zane blinked furiously, dispelling the grogginess that clouded his vision. He sat up slowly, his back aching from the stiff metal. Sometime during the night, he had slipped down and his body had come to rest at the bottom of the tunnel. His legs were elevated on one side and his head and shoulders on the other. His legs were numb, so he swung them from the wall and began to rub feeling back into them as the argument between the two girls went on.

"If I can move, I'm getting out of here," Daisy said. "I can't stay in this dump anymore."

Zane lifted his gaze to watch Mallory, who was furiously jabbing her finger at Daisy. "You are not fit to walk. We can't afford you getting hurt again!" Her hair had calmed since the night before, and half of it was plastered to her neck with a mix of sweat and water vapor.

"You know that wasn't my fault," Daisy spat, an accusatory tone entering her usually cheerful tone. "You can't blame me for something that's out of my control."

"I can, and I will," the other girl shot back, placing her hands on her hips. Daisy glared, and her mouth opened to spit our a return comment, perhaps a return insult.

Marcus, who had been standing nearby watching, stepped forward, placing himself between them. "Okay, I understand that the last few days have been difficult and trying," he began, and Zane's head snapped up from where it had returned to his legs moments before. Few days? He had been unconscious with a gun wound for a few days? It was a wonder he didn't bleed out. "But we can't go assigning blame. We all agreed to this and therefore we're all equally responsible." Mallory and Daisy both opened their mouths to retort, but he brushed them off. "If we fight amongst ourselves, Wawrzynski has us beat us again." That statement quieted them. "We need to keep it together and figure out a plan. Wawrzynski will be waiting for us at the tunnel. We go in with no plan, we're as good as dead."

Everyone accepted Marcus's statement. He knew Wawrzynski best, having been a failed experiment multiple times before. Nobody wished to bring that topic up, so they gave up on conversation as a whole to prevent anything slipping out.

A thought rushed to the front of Zane's brain. "What about going back?"

Mallory wasted no breath. "What a stupid idea," she said, turning away from him. Daisy showed no expression, just looked on thoughtfully. She gave him a look that clearly meant go on.

"Hear me out," he said softly, still rubbing his legs.

Mallory didn't turn around.

Zane forged on. "Wawrzynski will be expecting us to try and make a stand at the end of this hallway. He thinks we'll do anything to get away from his facility."

"We will, mate," Marcus said, his eyebrows drawing together. He leaned back against the curved wall and crossed his feet, one cowboy boot slipping over the other. His outfit did not seem so funny now that Zane knew his reason for wearing it. He recalled the blank look that had overtaken the boy's face and shivered.

"What if we don't?" He let the sentence hang for several seconds, letting the others absorb it. "What if we went back? It's something he won't be expecting, maybe even something he overlooked."

Marcus's bright green eyes darkened quickly. "He overlooks nothing."

"Fair enough," Zane conceded. "But he obviously sees it as our secondary choice, seeing as he sent soldiers to nudge us toward the end, and not back where we came." He reached for a nearby box of Froot Loops, but it was snatched immediately away by Daisy. He harrumphed. She may be willing to hear out his crazy plans, but she wouldn't share her beloved fruit-flavoured cereal.