Chapter 1
A Bitter Reunion
"What was that?" Lloyd whispers.
"I…don't know," I respond, but my heart freezes. I can only hope it's not Kai, Jay, or Cole, yet the sound was certainly from a human in pain.
"Which way do we go?" Wu asks.
"Let's go towards the place where the cry came from; then we'll see," I say softly.
We all rush to the left, knowing we have hardly any time before the gunmen catch up to us and I cannot shoot more ice to stop them for five minutes. All of us burst into a widened room, lit by a single bonfire, and Cole is lying on the ground in front of it. Kai is tied up to a boulder in the rear. Blood permeates his spiky, brown hair and his head is slumped down. He is gagged. A tripod is in the middle of the room and Jay is tied to a chair, unconscious, though not gagged like the fire ninja. My heart skips a beat.
"This…is the-same," I barely make out before I sink to my knees. Terror grips me and the killer from five years ago seizes my throat, squeezing me so tightly that everything blurs in an instant.
"Zane? Zane, are you okay?" Lloyd's distant voice trails off. Black blotches start to appear in front of my eyes, and fade away, and return again. The man releases me and I immediately get up, nearly falling from a potent swoon. I stoop down, putting two fingers up to Cole's nostrils and sigh, relieved.
"He's alive," I say, my vision clearing and my strength returning.
I glance at each of my family members in turn. I cock my head, seeing Lloyd's lips are moving, but I cannot hear him and glance back to the man, who smiles, fading from the scene. Everything feels like a waking nightmare, yet I know I'm in the real world. I feel numb, almost as if I'm a phantom, revisiting my own death scene. I need to wake up. I cannot hear anything; I cannot speak; I cannot feel any longer; I cannot move. I have to. My family is here and they…need me.
"Zane, can you hear me?" Lloyd's voice becomes audible to my ears all of a sudden.
My voice returns, and so does every other sense. "Yes. Are the others alright?"
"They're fine, but Kai has been starved and beaten, I think."
"Starved and beaten," I murmur, "Starved and beaten." I've heard those words before, though from someone else. I raise my voice more audibly. "We need to get them out of here, now!"
"Shouldn't we take care of his wounds first?" Lloyd asks.
"No, we don't have any time!" I shout frantically, my shrill voice bouncing off the walls with a loud echo.
Garmadon lifts Cole onto his back while Wu unties Jay's ropes and I go over to Kai, beginning to unfasten his. "Lloyd, make sure no one comes in," I tell him.
"Okay," the green ninja responds.
Kai's bonds are tight enough I can't undo them without some kind of tool and I reach out, grabbing a stick that's on fire. I burn into the ropes, careful not to catch him on fire and put the torch back before picking Kai's limp body up. I flinch, nearly dropping him from the pain in my arm, but keep a steady grip on him. "Are we clear?" I ask.
"Yeah. It's strange, because there hasn't even been a sound," Lloyd responds, "Do you think it's a trap?"
"Trap or not, we need to get out of here," Garmadon says and we all move to the "hallway". Kai's body is cumbersome to carry yet he needs immediate medical attention or else he might not make it from blood loss alone, not including infection or perhaps even tetanus.
2 Hours Later
Lloyd pounds on the door of the Monastery, shouting, "Mom! It's us! Open the door! Mom, help us!"
I hear a heavy bolt being slid and the metal and wooden door groans. "Lloyd?" Pixal comes out and gasps, "What happened to you?"
"I…don't know. No one stopped us from saving them and we found them in this condition," I respond.
"Come in," Pixal lets us in and I place Kai on the table I had been on mere hours ago.
Marcy and Misako quickly set to work on him and both Sensei Wu and Garmadon put the other two ninja in Lloyd's room. I sit in the living room, waiting anxiously for news of them while Pixal cleans my grazed arm and Lloyd sits on the couch across from us. "What happened back there?" Lloyd asks.
"What do you mean?" I respond.
"You were acting strange and you kept muttering something about how 'this…is the-same.' You acted like something like this happened before. What exactly is going on?"
"It did happen!" I blurt out, startling Pixal. She knocks onto my wound, jumping in surprise at my sudden loudness.
"Ah!" I gingerly touch my bloody arm.
"What happened?" Lloyd demands.
I draw in a deep breath before saying, "I saw what happened to Kai's parents. They died, the same way."
