The Soul Painter [completed]

-Chapter Fourteen-

Location: Central

It's early when I'm rudely awakened by banging on the front door. 

Femi's head jumps up from where it rests against my bare chest, and she stares at me with eyes full of an emotion balancing somewhere between surprise and panic.

She practically scrambles off of me, and I jump up, joints popping as I stride to the door.

"Let me in! Hurry!" It's a boy's voice, and I know it from somewhere. 

"What do you want?" I bark, trying to ignore the shivers that overtake me in my shirtless state. It's cold. I'm cold.

"Mechanic, mechanic, the Red Ties are coming to kill you!"

I open the door and he darts inside. I recognize him immediately. The boy from the tailor's shop. The one who refused to work for Femi and ended up measuring me instead.

I frown at him as goosebumps spring up along my arms. Mechanic, mechanic. "Tell me."

"They came into the shop earlier, said they needed some more scraps of red. And I heard them talking. They said they was going to catch the pain-in-the-arse mechanic and kill him. You're the only mechanic I know, so I figured they meant you!" His eyes are wide, his mouth gaping breathlessly for air, since he probably ran the whole way and has just spilled that entire story out.

In ten seconds, I have gone from "mechanic, mechanic" to "pain-in-the-arse mechanic." I prefer the first one. 

"That's not all. One of the goons said that he knew that you had your brother. But they're stopping by the café for some soup first. They weren't in any hurry."

I blink, realizing how dead we'll all be if we don't get out of here. Stone dead.

I look around to ask the kid something else, but he's gone. 

Matt's voice rings out from his pallet on the floor. "Oh, no. You guys have to get me out of here. I'll get you all killed."

"What do you expect us to do? We can't just let you loose! They'll kill you! And then they'll figure that someone took care of you and come after us anyway!"

Femi is suddenly at my side, her eyes burning into mine so intensely that more goosebumps rise on my back.

"What? What are you thinking?"

She drops her eyes, and they dart around the room as she thinks. Then she looks back to me.

The train. 

The train. The only train in Central runs straight through the slums, the tracks surrounded by chain link fences ten feet tall and topped with barbed wire. There's only one place where it isn't surrounded so well, and that place is the loading docks, almost five miles away. An hour's walk, if we're walking fast. If we're walking slow, then I don't even want to think about it.

I run past Femi and Matt into the shop, and yank my motorcycle from its perch on a wooden storage crate.

The only bike I can't figure out is my own.

Now though, I have no other choice. It doesn't work when I need it to, but it has to today. Otherwise, we'll never smuggle my brother onto the train in time. He'll get killed along with the rest of us.

I have to admit that I care about him even though he is an idiot. Even if he did hurt Femi.

She's forgiven him, so why shouldn't I? He hurt her, he hasn't ever hurt me. I should forgive. With a pained sigh, I turn my thoughts back to the motorcycle before me.