Two is Company (House of Anubis)

Chapter 106: More is a Crowd

They had a few hours before they deemed it safe to make their move on the Gatehouse; someone suggested they find something to eat before then— even though he wasn't paying much attention, Eddie was pretty sure it was Harriet, because he couldn't really imagine anyone else having much of an appetite. Still, they all reluctantly agreed, mostly on Eddie's behalf.

"You haven't had a meal in, like, two days," KT pointed out.

"Haven't been particularly hungry," Eddie replied, head pressed against the cool glass of the van window.

Kira laughed a little at that, brown eyes crinkling up at the corners. "Eddie's not hungry? It's a miracle," she joked, and he gave her a soft kick across the backseat.

"You're so funny," he deadpanned.

Somewhere along the line, they decided to drive into town, away from the school, as they waited for the cover of darkness. Harriet parked the van down a side street, and instructed the boys to get them a pizza or something, but to be cautious of everyone and everything.

"The locals should be fine," she said, drumming her fingers anxiously on the steering wheel. "Ammut's power likely hasn't reached here yet, but if children from the school are out roaming..."

"We'll be careful," Eddie promised, answering for Fabian who still seemed incredibly rattled by his phone call with Joy. He'd been silent on the ride over, staring at his freshly cracked phone like it was a live grenade.

"Do you even have money?" asked KT, peering out the van door at them uncertainly.

"I keep a few pounds on me at all times," Fabian answered distractedly, patting his pants pocket. "Y'know, in case of emergency."

"Well, I dunno about you," quipped KT, "but I think this constitutes an emergency."

"Yeah," Eddie snorted humorlessly, "just a bit."

So he and Fabian trudged off into the small Liverpool town, leaving behind Harriet and the girls to go scavenging for food with their hands dug into their pockets and chins down. It was freezing cold in mid-December, but Eddie was too numb already to care. It wasn't exactly a crazy night out there, probably due to the concentration of insanity happening back at Amun Academy, but Eddie couldn't shake the paranoia.

"This sucks," he muttered, more to himself than to Fabian.

"Pfft," scoffed his roommate, kicking a pebble while they walked. "You think?"

A few more beats of silence passed. "Did you, uh, hear anything more from Joy?" Eddie asked.

Fabian pressed his lips into a fine line, then he wet them with the tip of his tongue. "Not from Joy," he said, pulling out his phone and passing it to Eddie.

It was already open to the message app where Joy's contact lit up the screen. Below the warning from before the assembly and her subsequent confirmation that she'd be on the lookout, there was a new thread of messages. None of them were good.

"Oh... Jesus..." he said, scrolling through the absolutely most gutting texts he'd ever read. If there'd been any question before, there wasn't a shadow of a doubt what happened to those quarantined at Anubis House. "She destroyed you. Jackalgate was just a warmup, because I don't even know what some of these words mean. What the hell is a 'dotard'?"

Fabian snatched his phone back shoved it back into his blazer pocket. "Never mind that," he muttered. "But yeah... Joy always did have a way with words. Ask Nina."

"Shit, man," Eddie sighed, clapping his friend in the shoulder sympathetically, "I'm really sorry. I know despite everything, you guys were close."

Fabian shrugged, eyes on the pavement. "It's... Well, it's not okay, but it's fine, I guess. I just... I keep letting her down, and this feels like biggest one. We could have saved her, Jerome, and Trudy, but I told her to 'lay low'." He heaved a regretful sigh. "I'm a jerk."