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After we left the girls, Lincoln and I walked all night without stopping. With the sunlight, Lincoln stopped to perfect his disguise: to fully look like a Reaper he had to be covered in blood, so he haunted a deer and covered the lower part of his face with its blood, splashing it onto his clothes too. My mind kept going back to Sam, unconsciously moving my head in the direction we had come from, half of me expecting to see her running after us, relieved that didn't happen.
- "Okay." –I started, shaking my head to focus on our task- "We make it to the intake door without any of the real Reapers seeing us. What happens then?"
- "I kill everyone and you slip inside." –Lincoln's answer was short and to the point, almost like he was avoiding having a long conversation because he needed to keep his mind focused- "Limestone." -I handed him the Limestone and he painted a couple of lines on his face with it; once that was done, he stood up- "Let's go. We have a lot of ground to cover before dark."
I sighed, following him through the woods but, after walking for a while, I needed to get more information. I had to make sure it would all work out.
- "I need to know what happened after the intake door."
- "They remove your clothes, blast you with boiling water, then douse you with something that burns even more." –he kept his eyes in front of us- "We were also sorted. The others were tagged 'Harvest'. I was tagged 'Cerberus' and turned into a Reaper."
- "Cerberus." –I nodded- "Three-headed dog that guards the underworld." -Lincoln stared at me with a confused look on his face- "My mom read mythology to us all the time. Octavia loved it." –I explained as Lincoln nodded- "You're good for her. You make her strong."
- "She was already strong."
- "Hey, I need to ask you something." –I stopped him- "You protected my sister before you even knew her. Why?"
- "When I was a boy I saw a ship fall from the sky; the man inside was hurt, his body broken. I couldn't get him out."
- "Suicide by Earth. I heard the stories in the guard, I just didn't know they were true."
- "I brought him food, water... I didn't speak the enemy's language yet so I couldn't understand him but I wanted to. So, on the third day, I told my father; he made me kill him. The world's been trying to turn me into a monster for as long as I can remember." –he ended without giving me a second to open my mouth- "Let's keep moving."
He started jogging away so I followed him, choosing not to bring that story up again. It had been easy to tell it wasn't something he shared lightly. It also was easy to tell it wasn't a fond memory. Instead, I questioned why we were going South when the garage in where we found him was North.
