CHAPTER 127: 127-ONE OF US IS CAUGHT

Clementine:

We were all watching Haiden, whose face now held no emotion. Then, in a determined and confident tone, he said, "I will choose Clementine."

I was shocked. Even Troy and Yorick exchanged a glance before looking back at him. Ian only nodded while keeping his eyes down, sneaking me a quick side glance before turning his full attention back to Haiden.

I hadn’t expected that. There was no way Haiden was pretending or playing with me. At that moment, he was too emotional. He wouldn’t play such a cruel game.

"Haiden?" she said from the other side, almost disappointed.

"That is because you are asking me to do something wrong. She is innocent. My mate has nothing to do with what happened to you. I wish I could have been there. I would have taken all the blows meant to kill you. But I wasn’t. That doesn’t mean I love you any less. Choosing her only means she is equally important, and I refuse to believe she should be blamed for her father’s actions," Haiden explained.

"We cannot hurt Clementine’s sister. That would be wrong," Haiden added, still clinging to the thought that she was his sister.

I don’t know. I could tell he was partly aware she wasn’t real, yet he kept talking. It seemed like he just wanted to believe he was speaking to his sister, to have the few last words he could never share with his real one.

"But her father didn’t care when he was punishing me," she claimed from the other side.

"Well, I’m not her father, and Clementine isn’t him either. You want to know how I managed to take revenge? Because of her. Because Clementine, unlike everyone else, only cares about others. And I cannot hurt her. She’s the only good thing in my life right now."

He let out a cry, pointing to his chest. His muscles suddenly tensed, and then there was only silence.

It was the oddest thing. He reached for the door again.

"Maya?" he called out in a broken voice.

None of us questioned him anymore. None of us tried to stop him, because we already knew he wouldn’t open the door. I guess I knew it because he would never let his sister hurt me. An open door meant putting my life in danger.

"She’s gone." He turned to us, tears rolling down his cheeks as he began to cry.

We all reached for him. He ran into a hug. "That’s okay. That’s fine. She wasn’t real." Troy said.

We all exhaled as Yorick hugged Haiden, and then Troy did the same, wrapping him up. Ian only patted his back, while I stood awkwardly in front of him.

My father had caused so many people to lose their loved ones. I took a deep breath and started walking away, toward the edge of the rooftop. But that was when I felt someone grab my hand and stop me.

It was Troy. He gave me a shake of his head, reminding me that she could still be out there. If Medusa saw me, she would realize she had managed to weaken us by pretending to be our loved ones.

After a while, everything calmed down. We sat under the cloudy skies, staring into the distance in silence.

"We cannot keep sitting here," Ian said, starting to rise. But then he froze, his eyes fixed ahead.

I stood to follow his stare, and when I saw what he was looking at, fear swept through me. My skin was covered in goosebumps.

The brown house people. They were all on the rooftop. They had broken the lock to the other brown house as well, and now they stood there smiling. All of them wore old brown clothes, mostly a Tunic dress.

They all had little hair except for the one I had seen on the road. The women’s hair barely reached the end of their necks. But they were all smiling, with the biggest dark circles under their eyes.

"What the fuck?" I heard Troy from behind me. He must have followed us too. Now we were just standing there, watching them.

"Come on, you all can come here. We are cooking food." One of the young women, probably in her late twenties, called out, smiling at us. She had short black hair, but her smile was the creepy part. They all just stared, and there were so many of them. Every rooftop of the brown houses was filled with these people.

"Well, we certainly cannot stay here for too long," Yorick said.

And then he noticed something else. He gently patted my shoulder, pointing toward one of the houses before the brown house across the road. On that rooftop, other people were standing, members of the blue, green, and red squads. But not all of them. The white squad was missing.

"Hey!" I screamed, jumping up and down to get their attention.

"Yeah, we’re looking at you too!" Oriana yelled back as loud as she could.

The problem was, we couldn’t reach each other. For all of us to meet, we’d have to pass through these houses. It felt like a danger zone we couldn’t cross. And why weren’t these people stepping onto the other houses?

"What should we do?" Oriana yelled again. The brown house people stared at her, then at us, like they were waiting for us to reveal our plan.

"Is your friend a little dumb?" Ian muttered, annoyed at Oriana basically shouting to ask for our strategy out loud.

"There has to be some other way for them to move forward," Yorick added, pointing at the rooftop where Oriana and the others stood.

"And why exactly are we not leaving this house?" Ian asked. He was probably right. We had been sitting here for no reason. This wasn’t how we were going to find Medusa. At this point, we weren’t even fighting her, we were just hiding. Her fear was so heavy in us that we dreaded facing her.

"We should move forward, he’s right," Troy said. He was in the middle of talking when I saw Haiden’s eyes suddenly widen.

We all turned to follow his gaze. This time, the creepy people had brought someone onto the rooftop. It was one of the white squad girls—Xenia, the crier. She was covered in blood. Her uniform was torn in multiple places, a sight I didn’t want to see. The brown house people surrounded her as she cried hysterically.