Chains Made of Stars- ON HOLD

Chapter 4: I'm afraid we'll have to do this the fun way, part 4

Mith's jaw dropped open.

"I beg your pardon, but I just heard something incredibly stupid come out of your mouth, and I'm still struggling to make sense of it," she said darkly.

"Is there a problem?" The boy asked, his voice still not devoid of its dangerous edge.

"I don't know mate, you tell me. Does being held to knifepoint and forced to participate in a bloody suicide mission count as a problem?" Mith demanded, her arms still crossed over her chest.

The boy shrugged callously. "I'm still perfectly okay with killing you, if that's what you prefer," he said blithely. "You're not getting out of this airport that easy."

Mith balked.

"You're out of your goddamned mind," she whispered, half awed and half disturbed.

"That's irrelevant. Are you in, or do I need to arrange for a body bag?" The boy grinned his manic grin again. Mith noticed with a sudden flash of white-hot rage that he seemed to take some perverse pleasure in nettling her.

Sweet merciful Gods, what the hell have I done?

Mith scowled. "You want to break monsters out of the Ark? The Ark? No one can sneak in there. It's impenetrable. It makes Alcatraz Island look like a freaking bouncy house!"

"That's where you come in," the boy said. "An insider from the Society would be invaluable. That is, of course, assuming that you're still willing help?" He smiled innocently at her.

"Would you really kill me?" Mith asked, deadly quiet. "Would you really kill someone who hasn't hurt you in any way?"

"Sticks and stones, love. You're a liability, nothing more. You were in the wrong place in the wrong time, and while I'm truly sorry that the universe dealt you a bad hand, I will not allow anything to get in my way. Are we clear?"

He gazed into her eyes with an intensity that made her deeply uneasy.

Mith knew that the boy was being absolutely honest. There was some mania that was driving him, and he could not be reasoned with. It was unnervingly similar to trying to argue with a very small child.

The boy continued, his tone almost sorrowful. "If you help, I can let you live. If you don't help, you go back to being a liability, and there's simply nothing I can do about that. It's just business."

Like she needed further reminders of the fact that he could and would kill her without batting an eyelid.

The boy let his threat hang delicately in the air and Mith cringed. She couldn't believe that in a span of only 25 minutes, her life had managed to get so wholly derailed. She was now taking orders from some psychotic teenage criminal, and she hated it. She hated that he could control her.

Mith bit her lip. The right thing to do would be to bravely fight off the boy or die trying. She was agreeing to supply information that could potentially cause the deaths of many innocent Society  members, and she would definitely regret this when the angel at the entrance to heaven told her to go the fuck to hell.

But Mith desperately didn't want to martyr herself. She wanted to live, but on the other hand, she wanted a clear conscience. She didn't want to be responsible for any Society members' deaths. 

In the end, it would come down to making a choice between the two.

As Mith stared into the boy's crazed eyes, her basest, most animal instinct took over.

The need to survive.

"I'm in," she said quietly.

The boy didn't say anything, but cocked his head to a side and looked at her as if she was a maddeningly unsolvable puzzle; like he was trying to figure her out her inner workings.

This made Mith nauseous, so she broke the strange silence.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Will," he replied. "And yours?"

"Mithali."

Mith's unease heightened. Five minutes ago, he'd calmly explained why he wanted to kill her, and now he was looking at her as if he genuinely wanted to get to know her.

Clearly, the guy had issues.

"Okay. So uh, what's your master plan? What do I need to find out?" The words tasted acrid on Mith's tongue. Here she was; an awful, traitorous girl, asking how best she could infiltrate and wreck the Carcerem Society. She hated herself in that moment, but she still could not bring herself to try and attack the boy or make a run for it. Fear had made her weak. Nearly dying had made her more aware of how much she wanted to live.

Will's eyebrows were knitted together; something was bothering him. He saw her looking and his features immediately rearranged themselves into his default expression of mild amusement.

"Well, Mithali, I'll break it down for you. There are three major obstacles we face."

Mith tasted bile at the word 'we'.

"The first one is the quadrants. The second one is the binding spells that tie the inmates' bodies to their stars. The third one is the Ark's Infirmi force field. Are you with me so far?"

Mith swallowed and nodded. This was basic Carcerem Society knowledge she had picked up from her grandparents.

Her nausea returned as she thought of grandparents. What if Will found a way to hurt them? They were retired members of the Society and didn't actively take part in patrols, so she felt a bit better. Regardless, the urge to projectile vomit was getting hard to ignore.

She recapped the information in her head.

The Ark was divided into five quadrants, based off the seasons in which the different constellations appeared in the sky. The Earth's revolutions had naturally ended up causing some problems: Society members couldn't travel into deep space and back; they could only guard and feed the monsters only as long as they were in the Earth's sky.

 In the summer, they patrolled the Aestas Quadrant, which was home to monsters like Cygnus and Scorpius. By the time fall rolled around, the Earth would have moved away from Aestas, and the monsters of the Autumnus Quadrant would have appeared in the skies. So on and so forth. The only constant constellations were in the Circumpolaris Quadrant, truly horrifying creatures which remained in the sky year-round.

The problems here were obvious. If Will was planning on breaking out Every Single monster out, he would have to spread his jailbreak out over a year because he would have to wait for a whole season to pass before he had access to the next quadrant.

It was ridiculous. There was no way he could run a jailbreak for a whole year without getting caught.

The thought of having to work with Will for an entire year was making Mith dizzy. She didn't think her blood pressure could take it.

And then there were the binding spells. Monsters wore chains made of stars. They were inescapable and unyielding, and the fact that Will thought even for a second that he could break them was laughable.

Not to mention the Infirmi, a force field that continually sapped the strength of the Ark's inmates. In the unlikely event that a monster broke free of its shackles, the Infirmi would kill it.

Will was delusional. Completely out of his mind. The Ark was impenetrable. There were no loopholes. There was no way a crime so atrociously audacious was possible.

And yet, Mith wasn't so sure. Not anymore.