CHAPTER 376: 376-SECTOR 13

Clementine:

The door had shut. I held the key tightly, making sure it was not seen.

I pressed my palm against my thigh so the cameras would not catch the shape of it.

The realization settled heavily in my chest. All this time I had believed that the train forced us to follow the rules, but now I understood the truth.

It was never the train. It had always been the academy, the headmaster, and the ringleaders watching us, deciding who followed the rules and who needed to be punished.

As I lowered myself onto the corner seats, I realized the carriage felt colder than usual.

I had never been alone in this carriage or in the entire train. When I looked outside, memories hit me.

The magical train, all of the crusaders meeting each other for the first time in the hall, Haiden, Yorick, and Troy finally getting along with me, and meeting Ian in the prison.

My thoughts then shifted to the first mission in the woods and the faun.

We had been so innocent when we first arrived, but now we knew so much.

I remembered the way the train had left people behind. It was all decided by the ringleaders. How did I never think about it, I wondered.

"They are called the ringleaders for a reason," I mumbled, almost laughing at my own stupidity.

"Remember how they left that pregnant girl behind, the whole tape of it," my wolf remarked. "That was one of the titles I read on one of the tapes, the birth of her child."

As the train continued to move, I kept having these flashbacks.

The fear of never being able to return lingered, especially now that monsters were not the only thing I was going to face.

What Miss Rue told me about the ringleaders and the headmaster had also stayed with me.

Then I noticed that the train had been moving for far more than twenty minutes, probably an hour. That had never happened before.

The outside was foggy to the point I could not see anything, until a sudden jolt told me that the train had begun to stop.

I stood up carefully, steadying myself, and when I looked through the window as the train finally stopped, my eyes widened.

This was nothing like the regular side of the north.

As soon as the door opened and I stepped out, the cold hit my face.

It was a storm, but not the dusty one that would blind me, even when the area around me seemed like it should have been covered in dust.

The air was heavy with moisture, and I could see my breath leaving my mouth. Fog hung low across the ground.

Tall buildings stretched upward like dark pillars, nothing like the other side of the north.

This place was covered in black and grey hues. The tracks ran through the middle of the deserted streets.

The train had not stopped at a station at all. Half of the train was still inside a narrow street, and the back end disappeared behind me into another street.

There were no platforms, no lights, no signs.

I wrapped my arms around myself as I felt the cold reaching my body.

This was the dark side of the north. The side Haiden, Yorick, and Troy had told me about when they left Oriana here.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the map. Then I realized everything.

The ringleaders had known it. If I had known the path, I would have reached the castle quickly. If I did not, I would be lost.

I folded the map after noticing the first place I needed to pass was G-Sector 13.

I had no clue about this place. The other north, after visiting it so many times, felt like the other part of home, like a place I frequently visited.

But now I was completely alone without a weapon and in a place where it seemed like the sun had not shone in years, even when it was supposed to be daytime.

I took a deep breath and prepared myself to keep moving. The ringleaders had lied to me.

They said there would be no monster stopping me from reaching the castle.

I did not believe that anymore. There was not one particular monster I was certain about.

This part looked completely different from the other side of the north.

I kept walking. The wind was the only thing I could hear, with some small chittering here and there, and every time it happened, I was ready to fight whatever was going to come out.

I followed the map until the street widened, and then I saw it.

A large metal sign hung crooked between two broken poles.

There were words engraved on it.

The original words were The Fallen Estate, but they had been scratched with rough marks, and underneath the original name there was a new one: G-Sector 13.

The name itself did not sit well with me. I stared at it for a moment, noticing how huge the buildings were.

They towered over in long rows, one after another, with only thin alleys separating them.

A single road cut through the middle like a spine. Everything was so quiet.

I looked up at the sky. There was light through the clouds, but no sign of a sun.

It was a storm, but even so, the place looked as if someone had turned on light blue lights from the sky.

It was so eerie, and I began to wonder how dark it would be at night.

A sudden grunt echoed from somewhere inside the nearest building, followed by a loud thud against something like glass.

I froze in my steps, stretching my neck back to look at the big, tall apartment.

A feeling of dread and alertness ran through my body.

I felt I was not supposed to go there, that I should let it be and keep walking, but it seemed like someone was wailing.

I swallowed and stepped through the entrance of the estate, moving briskly.

I entered one of the biggest buildings where the noise was coming from and noticed the lobby smelled old, like dust, as if mud and dirt had been trapped in the carpet for years.

There were broken mailboxes scattered around.

I rushed upstairs because the elevator was half open, frozen in place.

I could hear my footsteps echo as I climbed. I took each turn fast, holding the railing and listening for the noise again.

On the fourth floor, I heard it louder, coming from the far end.

As I hurried down the corridor, I realized most of the apartment doors had been sealed shut from the outside.

When I reached the far corner, I noticed a balcony line.

The glass window stretched across part of the wall, and beside it was a smaller glass door that led to the same apartment where the noise was coming from.

As I approached it slowly, my heart skipped when I saw someone trapped behind the glass door.