Vivid (BoyxBoy) {Pipe Dream: Book I}

Chapter Forty-Two: Treehouses in Switzerland

Chapter Forty-Two: Treehouses in Switzerland

"We'll be touching down in ten minutes...It's going to be rough down there."

Oz's voice rouses me awake and I look out of the window and saw a still night around us, stars and the moon painted on the dead black air but below was a blanket of tinted white dust and cloud. I knew I was going to freeze my ass off out there.

X stood from his spot and stops in front of me. I figured he wanted me to follow him. I get out of the chair and silently followed him, with Lady one step behind me, to a random location in this giant-ass ship that I would presume where they held the equipment. Sure enough, it looked like a locker room and X rummages through one of the steel contraptions lining the walls and holds out thick winter clothing towards me. I take them from him without a word.

I slip into the all black gear, realising that it was similar to the stuff that I see everyone wore when they were outside of that hideout of theirs. Namely X...now that I think about it, I've never seen him in normal clothes. Lady sniffs at the gear as I fumble with it. She felt it strange for me to wear something unfamiliar, I explained that I don't have fur like her, so I had to wear pretend fur.

It hit me kinda hard as I slip on the jacket, zipping it up to my chin, that I had basically sold my soul to this group...and we are literally hovering over the top of my extracted price. I look up at X who in turn met my eyes. I am so scared that on the outside, I was calm, like I had mentally detached from reality.

I haven't been here for two...maybe three years and this time...I'm letting strangers into my mother's home. No one really knew this place existed. And now I'm leading the 'enemy' as Cody would call them, to one of our doorsteps. He'll kill me when he finds out.

Let him kill me. Whatever it takes.

X leads me to the closed ramp where I was first on this thing where both Seth and Fenir were waiting.

"Really look like one of us now, eh Kae?" Seth grins as we near him.

He was right, we were all matching in the black ops gear that looked like I belonged in a shoddy first-person shooter video game.

But I wasn't given a gun.

I felt the airship land on the snow and Oz's voice comes over some sort of PA system, "Okie dokie kids...plus grizzly old man, I'm gonna open up the hatch. Good news is that the radars aren't picking up any movement outside and we are at the tail end of that storm, so we won't get the visibility issues. But there are pretty strong winds and you'll run the risk of hypothermia if you don't find cover within...let's say an hour or two, with our current gear. I'm gonna remain in here and scout the area. I'll relay any information from either Siem or any findings I make. I'll join you guys at whatever location you're in, in about an hour. It's all up to you, Kae." Lucky bastard is all snug up there.

The thick metal door folds out with mechanical noises, making Lady feel on edge as the cool air from outside suddenly hits us.

'Cold...and silent.'

I look at her for a second before moving out onto the ramp into the outside. Even though it's so fucking cold, my hair was standing on end, the air felt of 'home'. It wasn't oppressing or dead. It wasn't torturing or festered. It was clean, crisp and smelt of snow and forest. Outside, the moon illuminated the snow underfoot that crunched under my boots. We landed on a ridge of a valley that was just south of Laax. Looking down towards the dead silent buildings contrasting black in shadow to the snow, I knew it was long abandoned.

I felt like I was transported back in time to the two or three years ago. Nothing had changed. I felt my feet carrying me away for the ridge towards a forest. I was almost in a trance, remembering that time from before. The house was in the edge of a farm closer to Sagogn and I knew it would have been smarter to land on the property, but I wanted to find the old treehouse that mum and our grandparents secretly built on the edge on this side of the forest. I explored this forest every year we came here. Cody and I used to play hide and seek or pretending to be monsters in the woods...I look down at the claw...how close to that I've become...