Present Day

The distant chatter of birds greets the tall boy as he jolts awake, his tired face by no means refreshed by the night's rest. He groans and painfully sits up. A small whimper escapes from his mouth as the night's terrifying hallucinations come flooding back into his unoccupied mind. His eyes wander to the reinforced metal door of his room. An array of noises can be ever-so-slightly heard from the other side, but he doesn't care to identify them.

He finally decides to remove himself from the bed and lets out a sigh as his feet make contact with the ice cold floor. He mutters to himself, using his limited vocabulary to express his frustration at the uncomfortable bed which had littered his body with aches and pains. The usual silence of his room comes to an abrupt halt with a loud scream. He turns his attention once more to the door and jumps in surprise when it flings open. In the doorway stands his best friend, a goofy smile present on the boy's face. He can tell that his friend desires his company, but he is in no mood to make that desire a reality.

He craves silence. The beautiful, fragile state of nature in which his mind is free to roam wherever it pleases. He needs the sweet satisfaction of isolation. Where no one is with him, no one can judge him. He feels free.

Unfortunately, his friend does not share this mindset; It is what the excitable older boy would describe as "ing weird". Rather than argue with the figure in the doorway, he turns around. A louder the necessary sigh is heard from the doorway.

"Why are you so angsty? Next thing we know you'll be wearing all black and dunking your face in eyeliner," the boy says.

"Go," the room's occupant replies quietly.

"Loosen up, 061. You're no fun!"

"I know," comes 061's only response.

"If you're aware that you're a loner, why not change that?"

"I'm not a loner," 061 says. "I have you. I only need you. But, please, just leave me alone."

His friend sighs once more, before finally granting the boy his longed-for isolation. He door clicks softly as it shuts, but he can hear his friend deliberately forget the procedure of locking the door. A rare smile appears on his face. His friend always looked out for him, even if it was a subconscious concern.

Humming to himself, he slowly makes his way towards the door, repressing a bitter laugh at the weakness of it. The lunatic who has designed these doors clearly hadn't taken into account the reason these people were here. The short, constantly-glaring boy a few doors down had removed it with ease a few years previous, though his daring escape had been foiled ever so easily by the old hags who patrolled the grounds. Disgusting, overweight women whose faces were insults to the entire female gender. The bitter laugh finally revealed itself as those ugly, hateful beings came to his mind. The Black Death, he called them. How he wants to kill them, to hear their screams as their hateful existences came to an end at the hands of the angsty fire boy. He would burn them. Melt them. Ensure their deaths were as painful as his existence.

But, alas, he could never do such a thing. The consequences to killing those old hags would be far more severe and torturous than anything he could do to them. They would probably hurt his friend, too, under the assumption that they had been in kahoots. The thought of his only companion within these walls being tortured and killed are enough to deter him from a mere glare sent in the direction of th workers.

As he is about to carefully open the door, it is flung open once again. In the doorway stands the same culprit as before. This time, though, he is accompanied by a short, curly haired girl, clad in a hospital gown and a pair of white socks that perfectly match her complexion. She is wide eyed and visibly shaking, dried blood pouring down her face in a pattern similar to that of tears. "What happened to you?" 061 asks.

"They went a bit too far in their experiments, bro," his friend explains, slinging a protective arm around the girl's shoulder. She flinches at the contact but doesn't protest, in fact, she leans into his embrace.

"Is she new?" 061 wonders aloud.

The shorter boy gives a small laugh. "Of course not, bro. Where the could she have come from?"

"Yeah, yeah, ok," 061 shrugs. "But if she's not new, why did she react like this?"

"They must have done some psychopath level to her, bro. She isn't normally like this. No, she's never like this."

With a slight shake of his head, the taller boy sighs and motions for the two to come in. His friend nods and walks in, gently pulling the girl alongside him. "This is 023," he introduces.

"Hi, 023," he says quietly. "I'm 061."

His brief introduction seems to strike a chord in the girl, who throws her head up and dashes towards him. Her big green eyes are somehow ever wider than before, resembling a gateway to a whole other universe. It is only now, with her face centimetres away from his, that he is able to comprehend her natural beauty. Even in this trance-like state, he can detect the mischievous glint in her eyes.

His admiration for the girl in front of him is interrupted as the shorter boy drags 023 away from him, pinning her struggling form down to the bed with a sympathetic glint in his eye. She begins to cry, breathless wails pouring from as she voices incoherent thoughts.

"004, what's going on?" 061 asks fearfully.

004 sighs as he struggles to keep the girl pinned to the bed, running his hands through her hair as he talks gently with her. "I don't know. You must have freaked her out, somehow."

"With what, my name?" 061 scoffs, drawing a further cry from the still struggling girl.

"Key!" She screams. "You, key!"

Furrowing his eyebrows in confusion, 061 approaches the bed, lowering himself down to the girl's level and staring into those green eyes of hers. As they make painful eye contact, her struggling suddenly ceases, and 004 is able to release her from his iron grip. "A key?" 061 asks. "I have a key?"

"Key," 023 mutters in response, not breaking eye contact with the taller boy.

"Key, what is key? What do you mean by key?"

A slight gasp escapes the girl's throat as she darts upright, her eyes turning in the direction of a confused 004. "Just let me go," she pleads. "Let me out. I can't breathe."

"023, what are you talking about?" 004 sounds genuinely terrified as he speaks.

"I'm trapped. It's getting smaller. Please, let me out."

"Let you out of where?" 061 asks in confusion. "Of here?"

"There's nothing in here, I swear!" She screams, ignoring the boys' questions. "Please, let me out. I don't know where it is, I can't find it!"

"023, what are you talking about? What's wrong?" 004 yells, seizing the shaking girl by the shoulders and forcing her attention in his direction.

"There's nothing here. Nothing. Let me go."

"004, what the ?"

A slight shake of 004's head indicates his ignorance on the matter, and the two boys continue to desperately try and calm the girl down, their terror growing with each nonsensical wail.

Eventually, the girl's screams slowly die down into terrified sobs, her small frame clinging to that of her friend's. 061 watches the two in silence, a feeling of helplessness rising within him as he watches the two together. 023 is soon fast asleep in 004's arms and he breathes a sigh of relief, letting her limp body fall onto the bed.

He stands up and walks towards 061, slinging his arm around the silent boy's shoulder. "I don't know what happened to her, but she's normally not as crazy as that," he explains. "We can ask her what happened when she wakes up."

Feeling a wave of sickness wash over him, the younger boy only nods. The girl is now the epitome of peacefulness as she sleeps in his bed. He doesn't mind that she's there, but the overcrowding in his room does not impress him.

As mysterious as the boy likes to believe he is, none of his thoughts can escape his best friend, who stands next to him with an exasperated look present on his face. "You want us out?" He asks.

061 shakes his head. "No, I don't."

"That's what you thought."

"You don't have telepathy."

"I don't need to, I've known you my whole life, I know how you think." The elder's tone drips with smugness as he speaks.

"Shut up. I don't care that you're here, but if the Black Death came in and saw that girl unconscious on my bed, how do you think they'd react?"

A frown approaches 004's face. He knows of the Black Death, but he has never invoked their wrath as his friend has done. Nonetheless, the stories that circulate around the Home are enough to deter him from ever misbehaving whilst in their presence. "They have their rounds soon..."

"Right, so you should probably take 023 back to her cell," 061 advises.

Responding only with a nod, 004 picks up the sleeping girl and carries her out of the room. The door closes with a soft thud. The sound of it locking takes him by no surprise.

The room is once again plunged into silence as 061 say down on his bed, subconsciously rubbing his lips as he had done since infancy. He draws a strange sense of comfort from the action, despite the confused looks shot his way by others. Not that he minds though; he couldn't care less what the others think. He has 004, and that's all that matters.

Groaning slightly, he stands up from the bed. Wincing as his feet make contact with the ice cold floor, he lazily drags them towards the door. It's locked, he knows this, but, sometimes, when he silently places his head against the door, he can hear the distant noises of the Home.

Nothing identifiable, of course. Just nonsensical noises from nonsensical people. As usual.

Today though, there's nothing. Nothing except silence. Exactly as he wished.

He should be content with the inactivity; it's the one thing he loves most in the world. But, today, it seems different. Wrong. Sinister.

Something's happening.

♡♡♡♡♡♡

This is sooper dooper short and I'm sooper dooper sorry. I usually write longer chapters than this, but I wanted to leave it on a cliffhanger (kinda?)

Anyway, if you actually read this then thx. The next chapter will probably be in about a week.

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Byee