The walls shook violently, jarring me from my sleep. I bolted upright, panting and darting my head around in an attempt to figure out where that sudden rumble came from. We almost never got earthquakes around here, and when we did, they weren't severe enough to shake the entire Academy. Five, somehow, was still fast asleep, hugging Delores close to his chest as he slumbered right through the momentary panic. The tremors stopped just as quickly as they started, but that didn't mean there wasn't cause for concern. I pushed myself up and threw open the door, joining an equally confused Klaus and Diego out in the hall.
"You guys felt that, right?" Klaus asked, looking around at the ceiling. The corners where the walls met now had hairline cracks running along them, slightly threatening their stability.
"Yeah... what the hell was that?" Diego shook his head, still staring at the little fractures.
"More importantly, what caused it?" I tapped them on their arms, heading toward the stairs.
"Let's get a look around, make sure nothing else in the house got damaged."
I unfurled one of my silks and slid down, beating my brothers to the bottom of the stairs. Nothing in the foyer looked like it had been damaged, but dust had piled up on the floor, shaken down from above. The same went for the drawing room and the rest of the hallway: nothing had been knocked down or damaged, but the union of the wall and the ceiling had been riddled with cracks. I turned to Diego and Klaus as they made it down to the bottom of the stairs, both shooting me unamused looks.
"What? We need to figure out what's going on. I just had an advantage." Their faces remained unchanged. "I know this doesn't help, but like Dad said: I adapted."
"Weren't you the one he was saying that to? When you accused Five of cheating during our training session?"
"Not important," I snapped. "Nothing's been damaged here except the ceiling, just like the top floor. I'm pretty sure that's the extent of the damage in the house, but we should check downstairs, just to be sure."
The three of us rushed over to the staircase that led to the bottom floor, and strangely enough, there wasn't any damage whatsoever. It seemed whatever happened only affected the floors above-ground. Considering how intense the quakes were, that seemed near-impossible.
I turned the corner, when my eyes rested on something strange: the doorway to what appeared to be an elevator. I'd never seen this before, never even knew we had one in the house. I supposed Dad could have had it built after we all left and he started to get older, but that would mean he actually left that office. Besides, the button next to it only went down. I didn't even know there was anything else below the house.
"Hey, guys? Did you know this was here?" Diego and Klaus made their way over, staring at the machine.
"No..." Diego muttered.
"Why would Dad need an elevator that only goes down? There isn't anything below this house but dirt." I glanced back at Klaus.
"Obviously that's not the case. Dad put something down there and didn't tell us."
"What do you think it could be?" I took a deep breath and reached for the old button encased in cracked plastic.
"One way to find out."
The dated chime rang just moments later, opening the doors to whatever unknown abyss awaited us. None of us spoke a word, attempting to keep silent trembles and fears in check for the sake of the others. The natural lights slowly faded away, and instead shadows were now cast by an ethereal, blue light. Patterns of dark and light flashed over our faces the further down we descended, until finally, the elevator landed with a definite 'thunk'. All three of us stumbled a little at the harsh landing, resting our hands on each other's shoulders for balance. None of us wanted to be the first to move, but we couldn't just stay in here forever. Daring to solve the mystery, I took the first steps into the dark, dank tunnel, wary of every place my feet landed. Water sloshed below me, dampening my flats and further weighing them down.
The sickening, yellow glow faded to blue again as the tunnel opened up, revealing some room with a large, darkened chamber stuck right in the middle. A little window on the door revealed Vanya, collapsed in a heap on the hard ground. Luther stood menacingly in the corner, keeping a careful eye on the prison.
"Luther? What the hell is happening here?" He looked to the three of us with wide eyes.
"How'd you guys find this place?" Diego pointed to the tunnel behind us.
"You left the door to the elevator open."
"You still haven't explained why Vanya is locked up in whatever this thing is." Luther remained silent for a while, arms crossed as he glared down at us. "Well? Out with it." Realizing I wasn't going to relent, he bounced his eyes between the three of us again before sighing.
"Vanya... is like us," was the only explanation he offered us.
I blinked at him a few times, stuck in disbelief. The possibility of that being true certainly couldn't be discounted, but our whole lives, we had always been told Vanya was ordinary- that she had no powers. If she was like us, wouldn't she have trained with us as well? We should remember that if she did, but no matter how far back I reached into my memory, there was nothing but the times she would play with Five and I. Her 'training' had always been playing her violin, but that was all. Besides, if she had powers, why would Luther lock her up? Did he seriously hate her that much?
I jumped at the abrupt pounding of Vanya slamming her hands against the glass. Though we couldn't hear her, the frequency of her hits and the distressed expression on her face told us she couldn't scream any louder if she tried. My confusion turned back to rage as I turned back around to glare at Luther.
"You locked up our sister because you think she has powers?" I demanded, seething.
"No, I know she does," he answered calmly. "Pogo told me. He's always known, and so did Dad." I reached out and placed a hand against the glass, staring in at my sister.
"Why would they hide this from us? I mean, are we the only ones that didn't know this place existed?"
"He hid so much from us," Klaus sighed.
"He hid it because he was afraid... of her."
"Oh, that's ridiculous," I scoffed. On the chance that she did, in fact, have powers, there was no reason for him to be afraid of Vanya. Based on evidence from the past, I'd say she had been Dad's favorite.
"Is it? Dad's lied about everything else, why is this so far-fetched?"
"If you're right, then maybe she's the one that killed Peabody." My eyes widened as I looked to Diego. He couldn't believe this... no...
"And cut Allison's throat."
"Whoa, no," Klaus interjected. "Let's... I ju- Sorry, just, let's go back, all right? This is Vanya we're talking about. Our sister. The one who always cried when we stepped on ants as kids."
"Yeah, I know. I know it's difficult to accept-"
"It's not difficult to accept, it's impossible to accept!" I shouted, throwing my arms down.
"No, they're right." Thank God Diego changed his tune. "Look, we can't keep her locked up without proof."
"Wh-What more proof do you need?" I stuck my head out a little, unable to process the words that came out of Luther's mouth. He thought he was completely in the right here, as always. Just because he had always been Number One didn't mean his word was the leading authority. I'd never subscribed to that mentality.
"Why don't we just open the door and ask her?" Klaus tried to reach for the wheel that would open the door, but Luther slapped his hand away.
"No, she's not goin' anywhere." I rolled my eyes at Luther, my irritation with his insistence only growing.
"No. Even if you're right, she needs our help, and we can't do that if she's locked in a cage."
"Yeah, and for all we know, she might be struggling with his new power. I mean, it must be scary. Terrifying, really, to discover that you can do something that you never thought you could do." Strange. Klaus almost sounded like he understood what she was going through.
"Look, if what Pogo told me is even half true, then she is not just a danger to us."
I refused to believe it as I watched my sister bang her hands against the class and sob, her begging completely lost to us. I did start to trust, more and more, that she did have powers, but there was no way Vanya could ever be dangerous. At least, not any more dangerous than any of us had been when we were first learning to control our powers. We just had to help her learn her limits and what made her powers work, that way she couldn't be this present threat Luther seemed to think she was.
Another set of footsteps echoed in the tunnel, causing the four of us to turn around. Allison stood in the opening, leaning against the scratchy wall, holding a yellow pad of paper and a marker in her hand. A clean, white bandage had been placed over the wound, preventing it from suddenly ripping open.
"Allison, what are you doing down here? You should be in bed." She began to quickly write something on one of the sheets of paper, presenting her neat handwriting to all of us. My eyes widened a bit as I realized she couldn't talk anymore... the source of her powers, ripped away in an instant.
'Let her go,' Allison demanded. Luther shook his head, as though unable to comprehend that Allison wasn't on his side about all of this.
"I can't do that. She hurt you." Allison flipped to another page and wrote down another one of her thoughts.
'My fault.' I tried to process that as I stood between Klaus and Diego. I never thought I'd see Allison take responsibility for something.
"I'm sorry, but she's staying put." My hatred for Luther started to rise again, as I glared up at him defiantly for a moment. Our whole lives, he had the final word; he was the one giving us orders. But we weren't kids anymore, and we weren't under Dad's rule. What gave him the right to tell us how we were supposed to treat Vanya and what we had to do with her?
I tried to rush to the door and open it, but just as my fingers brushed the wheel, Luther grabbed onto me and yanked me backwards. The force with which he set me back on the ground nearly caused me to fall, Klaus and Diego only preventing me from tumbling by catching me at the last second. Allison tried to push past Luther as well, but he stuck his arm out, preventing her from even getting close to the door.
"Just until we know what we're dealing with." Did he really think anything he said would come off as reasonable to us?
Frustrated, she began to slam her hands against Luther's chest, trying to get him to budge and give in to her.
"She stays put." Allison pushed back a few more times, before her injury got the better of her, and she collapsed against him. "Come on. Come on, you need to rest."
Before I could do anything else, I felt Klaus grab onto my arm and start to pull me away, muttering something I couldn't make out over the ringing in my head. I yanked away from his grip and stared daggers at Luther, taking another moment before I left the room.
"You always were such a dick," I snarled.
He gawked at me as I turned on my heel and followed Diego and Klaus back to the elevator, hesitating before ascending back to the main floor of the house. I could feel a heavy weight settling in my chest, causing a dull pain every time I thought of Vanya trapped down there. I hated to think we all had given up on her just because of one prick, but that prick could throw us across the room without a second thought. And something told me that he would if he got the chance.
The moment I entered my room, all of my guilt came flooding back, forcing my legs out from under me and causing my body to crumple onto the floor. It wasn't just the deep wound on Allison's throat I could have prevented, or the fact I'd left Vanya to scream and beg to be let out in some spiked chamber, it was... everything. I'd always gotten along better with Vanya, that was no secret, but even when we were children, Dad had always pitted the three of us against each other. We were made to see the other two girls in our lives as competition, and nothing more. Funny how that ended up translating into the three of us becoming the most quote-unquote famous in the family.
But that wasn't how we should have looked at each other. We should have been a wall, standing firm against our brothers, but instead, that wall got split up and put between each of us. I thought, coming back here, maybe there was a chance we could dissolve those barricades and just try to start over.
We lost our chance, and now, it probably was too late to ever fix the way things had been.
Quiet cries turned to loud sobs the longer I waded around in my own head space, stirring around the misery that already bubbled and boiled over. I could feel my mind slipping, falling down that dangerous slope I'd fought so hard to ignore the past few days. My hands tingled, and I clenched and unclenched my fists, fighting down the urge to run back to that cursed studio and push my body to the brink of death.
It was just a relapse... I could fight this. I was better than this.
I shot up as the door opened, without even a knock. My heart pounded against my chest, threatening to burst free from my rib cage before I realized it was just Five. He just stood there for a moment, donning a concerned and slightly saddened expression as his eyes met mine. He stood completely on his own, without a stutter or sway, indicating the alcohol had completely left his system. I had promised him we'd go once he was sober, and here we were...
"You ready?" I croaked out, wiping my eyes and hiccuping a little.
Rather than responding, my brother made his way over and took a seat next to me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and pulling me into a hug. I got caught off-guard for a moment, attempting to process Five actually offering support to someone in a time of emotional distress. Sure, we had been there for each other as kids, but he still had that snippy attitude about it all, not wanting to waste too much time with anything.
After the initial shock faded, everything else came rushing back, leaving me with that same heavy and hopeless feeling as before. Without a second thought, I crumpled up again, allowing a few more tears to slip out as I attempted to pull myself together.
"You want to talk about it?" Five asked quietly, as though afraid he would strike a nerve and set me off again. I sighed as we pulled away from our hug, unsure if I could relay this information to him without causing both of us to fly into hysterics. But, he needed to know...
"Luther..." I took a deep breath, attempting to calm my shaking voice. "Luther thinks that Vanya... might have powers... so he locked her up in this chamber in a room below the house- I didn't even know that existed." I watched as Five's eyes turned to fire, and the moment I finished speaking, he shot up.
"He what?" I could tell Five was about to jump, but before he could, I reached out and grabbed his arm. "Mina, let go."
"Five, Luther wouldn't let you pass. Even if you went down there, you wouldn't be able to open the door before he threw you. And I'm sorry, but I'm not letting him hurt you."
I slowly released my grip, taking a moment to think about what I had just said. I sounded exactly like Luther...
"Look, we'll talk to Klaus and Diego later and try to figure out how to get her out of there without Luther stopping us, but for now... I don't know, I just need to get my mind off things." Carefully, I managed to stand and force a little smile onto my face. "So let's run that errand of yours and get some dinner."
Reluctantly, Five turned on his heel and started to head out.
"I'll get Delores," I heard him mutter