Enneagon
Chapter 16: Negotiation
[Hexagon Academy, Briox]
[10.4.2065]
Firestar had been headmaster for only a few months when he once again relived the most terrifying event of his career. Students, gone. Again. Once, the parents could forgive. Twice? Hexagon had been on shaky ground after the first kidnapping, and now Firestar could feel the metaphorical ice beginning to crack under Hexagon's feet.
"Sir?"
Right. Somebody was speaking to him.
Indeed, the airport manager on the screen seemed to be getting rather annoyed. "Sir-", he bit out, as though he wasn't sure Firestar was listening. "Sir, did you hear me?"
Firestar started and gave screen a reassuring handwave. "Yes, yes, carry on please."
"Well. I'm happy to inform you that we have successfully made contact with the stranded shuttle. The Brioxian military will take over from here."
"Take over?", Firestar asked dumbly. This, it seemed, was the price to be paid for not listening. A vein throbbed dangerously in the airport manager's temple.
"Yes. Take over." There was a rather nasty emphasis to these words. "The military will most likely tow the stranded shuttle to the nearest safe location, where they will be checked for injuries. They'll be sent back to school as quickly as possible."
Well, Firestar thought resignedly. Assuming their parents didn't pull them out first, which he certainly couldn't blame them if they did.
The airport manager had seemingly tired of him and hung up. Firestar couldn't exactly blame him, either.
The other sector heads were shooting periodic looks of concern at him at him. The conference room was unusually quiet, the other five sitting subdued in their chairs. There hadn't been a single squabble in the entire forty-five minute duration of the meeting. Blackstar and Onestar hadn't snarked at each other once.
With the airport manager gone, every eye in the room was fixed resolutely to a small, unassuming cell phone, sitting in the middle of the conference table as though it were on display.
"They're late", Mistystar muttered, leaning back in her chair and watching the ceiling fan spin.
Firestar appreciated more than ever that it was Mistystar who had taken up the mantle of Deputy Headmistress. Out of all the other heads, Bramblestar, Onestar, Blackstar and Leafstar, it was Mistystar who could be counted on to have her shit together.
Even now, she was the only person comfortable speaking the elephant in the room.
They were, in fact, late. By over an hour now, and Firestar could feel the inside of his skin itch with unease.
"Let's call the police!", Leafstar squawked from her spot at the far end of the table, shooting up eagerly to grab at her phone. "They're clearly not going to call, so-"
As if the universe intended to spite her, the phone on the table began to ring, vibrating loudly against the wood laminate. The room seemed to freeze. Then Mistystar and Firestar swiped for the phone all at once.
It was Firestar who answered.
"Who is this?"
The person at the other end paid his question no mind. "Hexagon Academy, we will give you one week to make the necessary arrangements."
"Arrangements?", Mistystar muttered under her breath, giving the phone a mistrustful look.
"Wait!", Bramblestar gasped, reaching across the table for the phone. "Before we do that. Please- let us speak to our students!" The man on the phone ignored him, continuing to talk as though Bramblestar hadn't spoken. He might as well have whispered into an empty shoebox for all the good it did.
"Six million dollars, in cash. We want it delivered by two teachers in an orange backpack. You will be given more information the day of."
"Wait a minute!", Bramblestar called. "Hey!"
The phone gave two final beeps and Firestar lifted it from his ear. Call ended blinked over the screen in white letters. Suddenly angry, Firestar threw the phone back onto the table with unnecessary force.
"Well then", he said grimly, pushing his chair back and standing up. "We don't have much of a choice, do we?"
…
[Straul Memorial Hospital]
[Hauserton, Briox]
[10.5.2065]
[0200 hours]
Cinderheart's scar stood out, a pink rope of gnarled flesh against the white skin of her cheek. She had her head tucked somewhere in the region of Lionblaze's armpit. Her silver hair had gone a damp-looking gray, greasy with anxious sweat and the noxious air of hospital waiting rooms.
The tan had drained alarmingly out of her face. It had gone pale and blotchy, every blemish and scar glaring red against the pallid backdrop of her skin.
She looked terrible. Lionblaze doubted he looked any better.
Lionblaze shifted gingerly. The sheet of paper laid down over the stretcher crinkled obnoxiously, and Cinderheart's head slipped down his body to nestle in the soft spot between his hip bone and his ribs.
His heart abruptly stuttered in his chest. It was a racer at the start line, realizing it'd been left in the dust, and suddenly Lionblaze's pulse seemed to accelerate. It rushed furiously in his ears, speeding through his veins with an intensity that made his stomach lurch and his head spin.
The soft fuzziness of Cinderheart's hair was gone then, replaced by a the feather-light trailing of a long-nailed hand. Up his hip, skimming along the bone, pausing to snap teasingly at his waistband.
Hands, creeping along his neck and into his hair.
Hands, plucking tauntingly at his clothes.
Below him, Cinderheart wheezed as she woke up. Lionblaze's eyes snapped open.
He felt, briefly, as though he were looking at the world through waterlogged swimming goggles.
An emergency room, its details blurred oddly around the edges.
He and Cinderheart were sitting together on a stretcher with bottle-green padding that had been plastered in a sanitary paper sheet. The hems of a privacy curtain fluttered slowly in the draft of an air conditioner.
Cinderheart's eyes had opened then, perhaps feeling the jolt of tension that had run through him.
Lionblaze stared into her face, analyzing every detail and committing them to memory. It was a face he'd scrutinized so many times, with the hope that each additional time would inscribe it further into memory. Everything from the curve of her jaw to the moles clustered at her temple.
He hoped that one day, he'd be able to overwrite Heathertail. To put memories of Cinderheart into even the darkest, nastiest corners, where Heathertail's influence still lurked.
Heathertail is dead, he thought to himself.
Cinderheart killed her.
He closed his eyes and focused. These were Cinderheart's hands, restingly limply in his lap. Her hair, brushing up against him. Her breath, unsteady and ragged from fatigue, rasping over the noise of the air conditioner.
Heathertail was gone.
Cinderheart was looking at him, the concern reading clearly on her face now. "You okay?", she whispered, her voice croaky from disuse.
"Yeah, I-"
He swallowed. He had fully intended to lie, to say it was nothing. Maybe it would be best to be truthful?
"-remembered something."
She sat up. Her hair hung in greasy rats' tails around her face. Cinderheart grabbed a rough fistful of it and stuffed it into hasty topknot. Then she directed her attention onto him, suddenly alert, the sleep cleared from her eyes.
"Do you want to talk about it?", she asked gently.
Lionblaze thought about it. That brief, horrible flare of Heathertail had fled from his mind, and he had little desire to bring it back at the moment.
"Not right now", he told her hesitantly. "Later, maybe. I just…don't want to reopen that can of worms right now."
"Alright", she said serenely, leaning back against him. "If you ever want to talk about something, just ask."
They settled into comfortable silence like that. Cinderheart's eyes fell shut again, her head resting in his lap. Lionblaze quietly passed the time, listening to Cinderheart's breaths, mentally tracing patterns onto the popcorn ceiling.
Not long after, the privacy curtain shifted aside, admitting a pair of nurses and a somewhat greasy-looking doctor. Behind it, a digital clock blinked out the time: just past four in the morning.
"We just got word from Hexagon", one nurse informed them. "Arrangements have been made for your transport back to school. You're to board the shuttle in half an hour."
"Off one shuttle and onto another", Cinderheart muttered. "I was hoping we'd travel by I-M."
Lionblaze snorted, albeit avoiding eye contact with the sour-faced nurse.
It wasn't until the doctor had gotten in one last examination of the two of them that Lionblaze and Cinderheart were escorted to the shuttle docks. The doctor had patted them both down for injuries with an unnerving thoroughness and gotten in another drug test to boot before the two nurses had taken pity on them.
As soon as the pair of them had hurried past the privacy curtain and into the makeshift hall, they spotted familiar faces. Jayfeather, Hollyleaf, and Ivypool. All of them were blessedly alright, standing with their backs against the curtains to stay out of the way.
"Lionblaze! Cinderheart!", Hollyleaf called happily. "Oh, good. You've been a while. We were wondering where you were."
There followed a minimal exchange of pleasantries. Suddenly, Lionblaze and the others had to put their minds to a different task entirely: navigating out of Straul Memorial and making it to the shuttle on the top floor.
"Here!", Ivypool bellowed at the top of her voice. "This one!"
Lionblaze spotted Ivypool standing right below a narrow metal ladder that seemed to lead onto the roof. "Shuttle's up there!"
Just as Ivypool tried to climb the ladder for a second time, the skylight opened, and a shiny leather shoe came poking out into the hallway. Ivypool leaped backwards off the ladder as if burned.
"What the hell-?"
The shoe was quickly followed by a pair of trousers and a crumpled-looking button-up. Then came the mane of red hair, and Lionblaze and Hollyleaf simultaneously burst into laughter.
"Firestar?", she got out.
The man in question jumped the rest of the way and stood in the hallway, grouchily dusting off his collar. Lionblaze snickered. What an entrance.
"I apologize for leaving you in this hospital so long", he said, sounding exhausted. Slowly but surely, the mirth slipped out of Lionblaze like smoke through a net.
"We've just finished negotiations with the kidnappers."
His eyes glinted sharply then, looking around at all of them. "Get in the shuttle. I'll fill you in."
End Chapter 16
*knowing smirk*
Azra out!