I can't believe I'm on chapter ten. Chapter ten. In one week I wrote TEN CHAPTERS! This must be celebrated. It has to. Maybe I'll write a song or something. Gallery, o' gallery, how twisted are your visions? Yeah I'm pretty sure Christmas carolers won't like that one. Well, I'll work on it. Anyway, did you like that cliffhanger on the last chapter? Did they drown? Did they live? HOW MANY MORE CHAPTERS UNTIL SOMEONE FINALLY DIES? I'm not entirely sure. So, here's the next chapter.

Review please. I love hearing your feedback!

Ib walked briskly in front of them and Garry and Adrian almost had to run to catch up with her. The corridor was long and the walls gradually changed color as they went along. The light was dull and the shadows were cast in every corner, every cranny.

"Ib, sweetie, slow down," Garry said, and he actually had to grab her to slow her down. He gave her a concerned look and said, "We shouldn't rush."

"What do you mean, 'we shouldn't rush'?" She growled as her face heated up. "Mary has our roses! How can you not be panicking?"

"Trust me, I would usually be panicking," Garry said with a small shake of his head. "But this is NOT the time for that. When we panic, we make rash decisions, and we can't afford that if we want to live. Now we just have to find our way through this place and find any leads to who this girl Mary wants is or why she wants her."

They turned a corner, and suddenly they were in a room. It was illuminated blue by tinted light bulbs and there was a large staircase ascending up out of the other end of the room. There were paintings hanging on the wall, strange as always, but that's not what was strange. Laying collapsed in the middle of the room was a person.

Ib let go of Garry's hand and rushed over to the person. She crouched next to him and placed her hand on his neck. Her father was a doctor and taught her how to do this. She felt a slow, faint beat under her fingertips and called out, "He's got a pulse!"

The boy had dark brown hair, darker then Ib's, and he was wearing a blue gamer tee of some kind (Ib didn't know the game). He looked about two years older than Ib, maybe less. His skin was pale from being passed out, but Ib thought that would go away when they revived him. If they revived him…

She saw something rolled up in his hands and when she unrolled his fist and collected the contents she gasped. How could she not have noticed the blue petals littering the floor around them? This boy had a rose… a blue rose.

"Garry!" she said. "Is this your rose?"

"No," He said, sounding quite certain. "Mine was lighter, definitely, and brighter. His is more of a deep ocean blue."

"'Deep ocean blue'?" Adrian lifted an eyebrow. "Been writing poetry lately?"

"Yeah, I wrote a haiku this morning," Sarcasm dripped in Garry's words as he joined Ib by the boy's side. He was breathing, but his rose only had the middle bud left, which meant that he was dead. But… he wasn't. He wasn't dead, and Ib didn't know why. Did he know about the save book? No, they hadn't seen any on the way in. So how was he still alive?

"We need water," Ib said. "We need to get the petals back on his rose."

"Um…" Adrian dug deep into his coat pockets and pulled out one of those mini water bottles that held about a pint of water. It was easily concealed in his jacket. "Will this do?"

"Perfect," Garry said as he lobbed it at Ib and he caught it in midair. He tossed it to her, but she fumbled with it and it fell on the ground. Garry tried to teach her how to properly catch a baseball about a month ago, but she was no good.

She unscrewed the cap on the bottle. It was about half full; good for about three petals. Looking at the petals strewn around them, he had six on his rose originally – one more than Ib. She picked up the rose and put it in the water. It glowed brightly with a deep blue sheen and the petals spurted out of it almost immediately, growing in one by one. The color returned to the boy's face and his eyes fluttered open. They were a similar deep blue color to his rose. He took a deep breath in and sat up quickly, looking around. He locked his eyes with Ib's and his eyes widened.

"My sister!" He cried out as he scrambled back away from Ib. "Get away from me! Get away from us!"

"Hey, it's okay," Ib said. She moved closer to him and sat on her knees in front of him. He was breathing heavily and his back was pressed up against the wall. His eyes darted around nervously, and he looked past her towards Adrian and Garry. "Who are you? How did you get here?"

Adrian stepped forward, but Garry held him back. "She's got this."

"I…" He looked at her again. "Me… and my sister, she…"

"You have a sister?" She asked, and her chest ached when she thought of Holly. Maybe he knew her.

"Yes," he nodded. His body loosened and he shook his head. "We got lost when the lights went out… we got separated from our mom and went down this corridor… we went through something…"

"He probably went through the portal without knowing it," Garry added.

"My sister and I were at the museum," He was speaking in complete sentences now and he sat forward on his knees like Ib. He was a good head or so taller than her. "We came here for my birthday and my mom left us to look at some de Mois stuff in another section. I dragged her to the ancient cultures exhibit, and she really didn't want to go, so she ran off. I followed her, and when I caught her, the lights went out. After that, we went through something that didn't feel like a door and ended up here. We were chased by a hoard of monsters, and I told her to run. I passed out here after I lost them."

"You said you came here because today is your birthday," Ib said. Her heart was skipping like a humminbird's, because this sounded like Holly's story. Was this Holly's brother? Did he know where she went? Why in the world was he passed out on the floor, and where was Holly? "How old are you?"

"Thirteen," he said. "What about you guys?"

"I'm eleven, Garry over there with the purplish hair is sixteen, and Adrian is fifteen."

"My name is Toby," He said, and Ib's face lit up. This was Holly's brother!

"Oh God, you're Holly's brother!" Ib squealed. She stood up and brushed off, and so did he. "I know her! We're friends!"

"Really?" he said. "Are you Ib? The one she always talks about?"

"Yeah, that's me. You said she's alive?" Ib looked at him hopefully.

"If she ran like I told her to," he said. "Ib. That's a funny name."

"It's a nickname," she said.

"So what is your real name?" Toby asked.

"I don't tell people my real name," Ib said, and she led Toby over to Garry and Adrian, who was holding Toby's rose in the water bottle. The rose had sapped all the water out of the bottle, so the next time they saw a water vase they'd have to replenish. Portable water was a luxury Ib and Garry didn't have before. "It's a little old-timey. I and B are my initials, so my dad called me Ib and it stuck. Only Garry and Holly know."

"At least my parents didn't name me something ridiculous like Tobias," His laugh was infectious, at least to Ib. "Just Toby."

"Okay, not that I don't love playing the name game," Adrian said irritably. His hand was at his temple like he had a migraine. "but I for one want to make it out of here alive. Any objections?"

"Right," Garry said with a nod. "No more games. Let's get down to business."

Adrian turned to Toby. "You said you have a sister?"

"Yeah. That's Holly, Ib's friend. She's seven, almost eight. How did you get here, Ib? And these guys, Garry and Adrian?" He asked.

"Garry is my legal guardian and we kind of picked up Adrian along the way," Ib said. "Garry and I… well, we've been here before. In the Guertena Gallery. We were lucky to make it out alive, so when Holly said you were coming for your birthday I tried to talk her out of it because the Central Art Museum was built on top of it, but she didn't listen. Then our roses went missing," She pointed to his rose that he held in his hand. He'd removed it from the water bottle and given the empty plastic container back to Adrian. "and they look like that. I called your house, but none of you were home, and that's how I knew you guys were in trouble."

"You came here just to save my sister and I?" His face looked awestruck.

"And now we have to find her. I have to know that she's all right," Ib said. "Garry and I need to recover our roses too."

"That's really brave," He said, and Ib felt her cheeks flush. She was mad that Holly never mentioned that her brother was cute. No, she thought with an imperceptible shake of her head. Stop it, Ib. Your life is on the line. Now is NOT the time for this.

"O-kay," Garry said. He had suddenly appeared at Ib's side. He often did that when she didn't expect it, especially when he was feeling protective. "Let's go. The only way out is up, right?