Silver blinked at him, anger starting to rise above her fear. She met his gaze, her eyes turning cold. "How do I do?" she repeated. "I'm terrified. I have no earthly idea who any of you are, probably thanks to something you did, corrupting my memories. All I know is that we've been hunted like beasts for the last eight months. Hunted by you. So yeah, I'm not doing to well, to be honest." she snapped.
Miki stood in the yard, still a stone's throw from the porch. She raised en eyebrow at Ben. "Yeah? Well, I sorta figured that. The real question is whether or not we're gonna both be civilized and work together to get her back."
The man creases his brow, looking genuinely sorry.
"Silver, I'd like you to know that I didn't harm you even once. I'm not a founder of this project. Please, follow me." He motions for her to follow and continues down the hallway, looking back every now and then to make sure she's behind him.
Ben shakes his head, looking away from Miki. "Or, I mean, you could leave since you're not any help anyways. Remind me how you've helped already?" He snaps. He rolls his eyes. "Ты тратишь мое время на лекции и раздражаешь меня. Просто уйди уже. В любом случае мне нужно сходить за Кейджем." He waves her off with his hand and walks towards the car, checking out the font of it and making sure it's still safe to drive despite the damage.
“ I don’t think so, sorry”
The man squints yet again at Leo and shakes his head. "Alright. Okay. Well, you have a nice day. Maybe stay home since we've got some criminals running around loose. Tell me if you see anything." He turns around talking to another police man, and then walks away.
Silver clenched her fists at her sides and followed him, if only so she could keep yelling at him. "And how am I to know you're telling the truth? How am I to know anything about anything here?"
Miki crossed her arms. "I haven't helped because you haven't let me, you idiot. Every time I offer advice or a suggestion, you and Violet tune me out. I know when I'm not wanted and I won't make you accept my help." She swung her backpack onto her back. "I'm going to go look for Silver. If you find out anything, or heaven forbid you need my help, here's my number." she rattled off her phone number to him.
Ben growls and turns to go inside, but the door bursts open and Violet comes out, jogging down the porch steps towards Miki.
“Miki! Miki, Love, wait.” She takes Miki’s hand gently. “Please don’t leave. You know Silver better than Ben- please stay.” She looks back to Ben then to Miki. “I’m sorry- we’re all a little tired an on edge, okay? And I apologize. But right now Silver is in trouble and we need to help her. We could really use your resources and smarts.” She purses her lips. “Because we just lost most, if not all of our reliable safe places and food resources. She turns back to face Ben and glares. “And if Silver is missing, we need all of the help we can get.”
He looks to the ground and clenches his teeth, obviously not liking the idea, but not willing to argue with Vi.
Airow leads Silver into a room, closing the door behind them. “Sil- Silver. Wait.” He steps back a few times, pulls up his sleeves and puts his hands out, palms up. Small blades of grass start to sprout from the palms of his hands, slowly growing up, but no longer than an inch or two.
“You see that? I’m an elemental. I’m trying to help you.”
Name: Airow Zander
Age: 24
Gender: male
Appearance (clothing, face and body): he wears a long, white lab coat and a coral pin-striped shirt. His jeans have small holes in the knees and he wears green sneakers. He has a square jaw with a bit of a scruff and normal, pink lips. His nose is long and pointed and he has floppy, red hair with noticeable blonde highlights. His green eyes hide behind large, brown glasses. He’s about 6.2ft tall and skinny for his height, not looking very fit at all.
Element: earth
Leo walked back to cage and shadow and muttered “I will explain later we need to leave”
Cage takes his hand again, shaking a bit with anxiety. “Where’s Ben?? Where do we go??” He whispers.
(whoa that's not how I imagined Airow looked XDDD)
Miki stopped, glancing back and forth between them both. "Thank you. I do have resources, and I'm more than a little street smart. I want to help y'all and I can help, but you guys gotta get over not liking me for whatever reasons you don't like me." she turned toward the house and waved her arm for them to follow her. "Come on. You two need some sleep and I need more information if I'm gonna keep y'all safe and help you find your friends."
Silver swallowed, watching him but hardly trusting him any more than before. "Okay. What does help look like then?" she crossed her arms. "What are you gonna do?" She wanted to ask about Gabe but didn't want to put him in any more danger.
Violet heads into the house behind Miki, taking Ben’s hand on the way and dragging him inside too.
“Alright. We have food and as of now a safe place. This house will probably be somewhere on their list of places to look, though not in the top few. Do you know where they might’ve taken Sil?”
Miki tossed her backpack on an empty couch and plopped down beside it, ripping the zippers open and pulling out two cell phones and an old laptop. "I have an idea. I zeroed in one like three places about two years ago, but there was obviously no way I could get in or scope the place. Then my sources and info revealed that Silver was most likely outside of a facility–either released or escaped. So I turned my attention toward tracking her. To be honest I hadn't made hardly any progress since then. It was completely luck that I ran into her and the Gabriel-guy the other night." She booted up her laptop and turned the phones on, plugging random cords into them. "Y'all don't have Wi-Fi here do you?"
Airow dusts his hands off on his sides. “We can’t discuss matters as of now. This is the most I can do.” He opens a door revealing a larger room. Gabriel sets on the cot in the corner, his back turned to them, shirtless. His wings are sprawled out behind him, drooping on the floor. He has his legs against his chest and his face on his knees. Airow gives Silver a small smile.
Violet shakes her head. “No, but if it helps my phone has data?” She sits beside Miki. “Just tell me what to do, I’ll help.” She lays her phone down and starts to pull her hair up into a bun.
Ben glances to them on the ground and sighs. He rubs his face and heads off towards a bedroom, mumbling a few Russian words.
Silver's heart nearly dropped out of her chest. She didn't care if this was a trap or if Airow was lying or tricking her. Gabe.
She bolted into the room, using her wings to give her more speed, but slowed as she approached him, not wanting to scare him. Her pulse pounded in her ears and she gasped for breath, trying to calm herself.
"Hey," she panted, stopping beside his bed and squatting down beside it. "Gabe? It's me. I'm here."
Miki nodded, her fingers clicking away on the keyboard. "That'll work. I just need to access my network." She grabbed Violet's phone and started flicking through the settings. "What do y'all know about the place you were from? I know your boy has a gob of tech and keeps track of everyone." she nodded her head toward where Ben had disappeared.
Airow closes the door, but doesn’t lock it.
Gabriel peeks over his arm at Silver. His face is splotchy and red from a few silver tears, and his hair is messy and fluffy. He stares for a moment before putting his legs down and rubbing his eyes. His chest has a number of thick, white scars on it, along with his wrists.
He looks to her and sighs.
“Y-you… shouldn’t be here…” He states quietly.
Violet nods. “Yes. Umhn, the place we came from was an abandoned subway, though if they have the resources to disguise as police and not be caught they must be more developed than that. Ben pinpointed five different places that were most likely branches of their company. I can get his bag.” She stands, tiptoeing into his room and returning with the bag. She takes out a laptop along with a few notebooks and maps.
Silver climbed up on the cot in front of him and pulled him into her arms. "I don't care," she whispered. "I had to find you. There was a girl who attacked us and she wanted Ben, but I told her to take me and leave them alone. They brought me here and there was a guy who showed me in here." She took a deep breath but her lungs shuddered when she let it out. "I was so worried about you…" Tears welled in her eyes. "You left and Ben realized you might have been spying on us and I knew it might have been true but… I was so worried about you. I hated myself for not realizing you could have betrayed us." She squeezed her eyes shut and held him tighter, more for her own comfort than for his now. "I wanted to help you but you ran away before I could."
Miki grinned. "Bless you all. I knew Ben was a smart kid. I'll need to know the locations he found so I can cross reference them with my info. How long have you guys been out?" She plugged Violet's phone into her laptop and fiddled with the settings on the PC. "I actually don't know very much techy stuff but I have a friend who taught me how to use all this. I just remember the steps he told me to make stuff work." she gave a mirthless laugh. "I'd have probably found Silver a year or so ago if I really knew how to make this stuff work for me."
Gabriel doesn’t bother listening to her words, and instead listens to her heartbeat. He closes his eyes, catching the phrase “there was a girl who attacked us”. He opens his eyes.
Kissa.
He lets Silver continue to hug him and sighs.
“….hi.”
She sighed, somehow him speaking assuring her that he was some level of okay. She paused in her tirade and stroked his hair, slowly beginning to rock side to side. In her fear and terror when Kissa had brought her in, she'd tuned out of her energy readings, subconsciously not wanting to be overwhelmed and lose control. Now that she had Gabriel, she grasped for that sixth sense again, eager to know whether he was okay or not. "Are you okay?" she whispered. "Did they hurt you?"
Violet opens one of the notebooks, flipping through the pages till she stops. She starts to skim the words. “Umhn, it’s been like a few years maybe? I don’t really know. Ben will have that written down.” She pulls out the map and finds a spot, pointing at a red circle with Russian words around it. “This is one.”
