Chapter twenty three

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-The time we were, then were not-

-The time we were, then were not-

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All five inside the glass box could not find it in themselves to speak, but it wasn't quiet. Her screams, if anything, were the loudest thing in the world.

Marcus felt like scratching his skin off. His hands begged him to do something, but the box, as they concluded after hours of trying, would not budge.

Despite passionate memories being the last ones he had of her, Marcus did not wish it to be so. Even if all he got was gruesome images of Jun, the boy needed the confirmation that she still resembled who she was that morning.

At least she was alive, they told themselves. The unstopping wails of agony were tortuous, but, then again, unstopping. Jun was there. Somewhere hidden behind thin walls, just beyond their reach, suffering for all of them.

Saya knew the procedure. She knew where Jun was and what she was enduring. Because Saya, though against her will, had been witness to the process too many times. Her hands had held drills and industrial pliers, so she knew, precisely, what they did to the flesh and mind.

Though, Saya did not tell them that, in an attempt to spare what was left of their stability.

So, she was slowly going insane, in silence and alone.

A crack followed by another scream crept inside the box, ricocheting from one transparent wall to the other, refusing to die down.

Petra hugged her legs tighter at that.

Lex, who had been watching his friends since they'd woken up, caught that. It bothered him like crazy that they, trapped in a box together, had resorted to block themselves off in a little box of their own. He saw how each of them dealt with it: differently, but aching all the same.

"I adopted a stray cat at Kings." He confessed, suddenly.

Four heads lifted at the sound.

"It comes to the roof every night at nine-thirty, and I give it something I saved from dinner." Lex recalled the creature. The black and white fur clothing a body underfed and mistreated. "I called it Topper, like Topper Headon. I don't know if he still goes there, but I worry that no one is feeding him and-"

"Lex, shut up." Petra hissed at him, before burying her head in between her knees.

She wasn't angry, he noted. Petra's body could process very few things at the moment. But her ferocity at him was, perhaps, the only way she found to rid her mind of one urge, at least. Lex did not fault her in any way. He was well acquainted with her reactionary incline, and imagined how tough it must have been for her not to lash out when in mental distress.

If he was a better communicator, he would've been able to explain to them that, whilst outlandish, distracting was his way of blocking out the noise of helplessness. He was not, however, and seemed merely inconvenient for inconvenience's sake.

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