Hello, my friends! Yes, it's true I have returned from my long break with a new chapter! Honestly, I felt awful about leaving this the way it was (especially since I was so excited to start it in the first place) and with my medical problems sorting themselves out and being on break from college, I decided to tough it out and hopefully get through one chapter at a time! Updates will hopefully be weekly, but it all depends on my schedule.
I hope you all enjoy my come-back chapter! Also, reviews would be greatly appreciated! Thank you! ^w^
Chapter 8: Break Outs and Bite Marks
It only took Eren two days of rigorous butchering (and the unceremonious branding to his right bicep that read: PT-SR), for the boy to realize what he needed to do. It would take a lot of courage and a hell of a lot of persuasion, but luckily, Eren had both of those factors. So after dinner had been finished and the doors had closed, the brave boy acted.
"Riah, I need a word," he said, nodding to a secluded corner of the room. The cat's tail flicked as she joined him, that spine-tingling grin plastered on her face.
"What ya need, Jaeger-boy?" she said, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.
"You said you'd tried to escape before, right?" he stated, bluntly. He wanted to get straight to the point.
The feline girl suddenly tensed, eyes narrowing, and ears swiveling to gauge if anyone else had heard.
"I did say that. I also said we failed and we decided not to attempt another escape," she hissed, still trying to appear nonchalant but her ears and twitching tail gave her away.
"I know, but that was before I got here and I want to give it a shot," explained Eren, sending a reassuring smile to Hannah and Lily, who were both watching them. "I don't expect you to get involved and I'm not asking you to. I just need to know what you did before to get caught, so I know better. After I'm out I'll find help and—."
"And what? Come back and save us?" Riah barked out a laugh, doubling over and gripping her stomach as she wheezed in laughter. "Oh man, you're more delusional than I thought. Even if you do get out on your own, which is highly highly unlikely, what makes you think anyone will believe you? Or want anything to do with this freak show?"
Eren paused, stumped for an answer. Riah snorted and shook her head. She was about to walk away when Eren grabbed her arm, his head hung and his face hidden.
"Please, Mariah. I need to at least try. If I fail, then all the blame goes to me, but I need to try and get out of this place," he pleaded. He looked up and Riah nearly shrunk away from the fiery look in his oceanic eyes. "I made a promise years ago that I have every intention to keep, but I can't do that here. Please, just tell me how you tried to get out, that's all I'm asking."
Riah stared at him, thinking over her options. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, another voice finally interrupted their little secret meeting.
"You two want to tell us what you're whispering about back there?" called Lily, gaining the attention of all the others in the room, besides Dove who was contently staring at the light fixture.
"Eren wants to escape," Riah replied plainly.
"Oh, here we go," Gabriel sighed, pushing his glasses back up and turning to his book. "I don't want to be a part of this."
"Why?" the brunette asked rounding on Gabe. "Why are you all so afraid of leaving? Yeah, I know, you'll be punished, but isn't being forced to stay here and become titan slaves worse? Don't you guys want to be free?"
"Honestly? It's not all bad here," Hannah said, shrugging and doodling on a notebook. "I mean, yeah, the training kicks my ass and the food tastes like dog vomit but compared to where Riah and I lived before, this place could be worse."
"Besides, even if we do leave, what are we supposed to do? We'll have to go on the run, because Violet will sooner jump down a titan's throat then let us go, and we'll have to deal with keeping our titan abilities under wraps too," said Lily, coldly. "Staying here means free food, shelter, and a warm bed, is that really so terrible?"
"Maybe for you it isn't!" Eren snapped, finally letting his rage loose. "You're not the ones being ripped apart on a daily basis! You're not being pricked and prodded with needles and given so many drugs you barely remember your own damn names! I've only been here for a few days, and I've experience just as much trauma as I have the last three years of my life!"
Silence followed Eren's outburst, most of it based in guilt. None of them had to experience what he was going through, so of course, they didn't know what it was like. The worst they had to deal with was sore muscles and exhaustion from training, and knowing what Eren was forced to go through made them all extremely uncomfortable.
"What do you suggest we do then?" Gwen asked timidly. "If we keep disobeying them, they'll probably make the punishments worse. They might even…"
"They won't kill us if that's what you're thinking," Gabrial said, cleaning off his glasses. "They've come too far and spent far too much money to simply kill us off and start over because we won't behave. Chances are they'll lock us in our rooms and only let us for training and necessities."
"Look, if we do get caught I'll take the blame for it," Eren said nobly. "It'll be my idea, I'll take the fall if we don't make it."
"Damn right you will," snorted Hannah.
"So…does that mean you'll help me?" Eren asked hopefully, looking around at everyone.
"I'll help!" Jimmy offered excitedly. "I hate this place anyway. There's not enough room to run."
"Well, if Jimmy's in, then I suppose I'll have to get involved as well," Andy conceded with a sigh.
"Ah, fuck it, what's one more escape plan?" sighed Riah. She thumped Eren on the shoulder, nearly sending him into the ground and added, "Alright, so you wanted to hear how we tried to get out before, yeah?"
"Right," Eren gasped, rubbing the place Riah had assaulted him and wincing. He really hated when she did that.
Eren sat and listen intently as Riah explained their past attempts at escape while being sporadically interrupted by the others in the group. Apparently, the group had tried everything from the most basic of sneaking out past the sentries to the complicated idea of mapping out an escape tunnel from the training room and then using their titans to slowly dig through to freedom while the guards were playing cards instead of keeping an eye on their training. Suffice to say, their plan was discovered after a cave in nearly crushed Gabriel while he was digging, and in all honesty, it probably wouldn't have gotten any further anyway. Riah even had a good laugh at one of Hannah's ludicrous plans to hypnotize the guards into unlocking their cells and escorting them to the front door, which only ended with the men snickering and shaking their heads in disbelief as Hannah attempted to wave a plastic pocket watch in front of their faces and order them to let the subjects out. After that, none of them gave much credit to anything Hannah came up with.
Eren sat and listened intently, weaving his own ideas and formulating a plan while the others babbled out as much as they could remember about their failed attempts. A few of them even managed to give Eren a clearer map of the compound and what guards were placed where and at what times. When all was said and done, and the room became quiet, the green-eyed boy sat and tried to sift through all the information the others had eagerly provided. Many pairs of anxious eyes bored holes into him while Eren turned over an idea in his head. It wasn't fool proof, or by any means simple, but it was definitely more of solid plan than anything he'd heard so far, the only problem was that he'd have to rely heavily on a certain subject for his plan to work and that alone could be abhorrently dangerous…
"Jeesh, kid, you look like you're about to shit your pants. Just spit out whatever the fuck your thinking so hard about," Riah snorted, lounging across the couch in a very unlady-like manner.
"Yeah, can't be any worse than what we've tried already," Gabriel added encouragingly.
"Alright, alright, I do have an idea," Eren admitted reluctantly. "But if we don't do it right, it'll seriously end bad for us."
"Eh, enough with the stalling, we know how badly it'll be if we get caught again, just hurry up and explain your plan before I get bored," whined Hannah.
"I'm not just talking about if we get caught! Look, have you guys considered using a distraction to get out of here?" Eren asked tensely.
"Of course, we have! We tried getting into fake fights, pretending our titans have gone rogue, hell we even tied Hannah to the railing in the training room and threw her off the balcony!" explained the cat subject irritably.
"That wasn't a distraction! You just threw me off because I wouldn't give you my dessert! By the way, I still need to get you back for that…" the tattooed girl hissed wickedly, an evil smirk plastered on her face. Riah only rolled her eyes, unimpressed.
"Okay, as I was saying," Eren interrupted, quickly nullifying the fight he could feel brewing. "I think we should trying using a distraction again, in fact we'll probably have to use two different distractions. The first one will keep the guards busy enough so one of us can grab one of their keys—."
"If you think taking their keys and sneaking out at night will work, it won't," deadpanned Lily. "We've tried it before and they immediately noticed their keys were gone. I mean, it's pretty obvious they've lost their whole key ring when they try to lock or unlock any doors."
"That's why we'll only take off the ones we need, which will hopefully only be one. It's much less noticeable and it'll give us more time to make our escape, but it also means whoever is taking them will have to be fast and unnoticeable," Eren explained, looking around at everyone for any volunteers. He wasn't surprised when he saw a tiny hand shoot into the air.
"I'll do it! I'll do it!" Jimmy insisted, practically bouncing in his seat. "I'm small and fast! I can grab the keys and put the rest back without them knowing!"
"But will you grab the right ones?" sneered Piers, who had remained in disgruntled silence the entire time and refused to contribute. "Also, how will you even know which key opens what? And chances are we're going to need more than just a couple, we'll need ones to open the cells at night, to open the checkpoint doors and finally to open the exit door which had two guards posted outside at all times. They'd have to be a moron not to notice that many keys missing."
"Maybe we don't need a key for all those doors," Riah implied, smirking. When she was met with suspicious and confused looks she rolled her eyes and dug around in her pockets for two pieces of twisted metal. "Manage to snag these from some broken weights in the arena and lucky for you bastards I'm damn good at lock picking. All these flimsy locks—" she waved around at their bedroom doors, "—I can pick easily. Hell, I bet I could even get us out of that door—" she nodded toward the common room exit, which definitely had much more security on it, "—but I know there's no way of getting through that main exit without a key. That lock will be way too heavy for a makeshift lockpick like this."
"Alright, so then all we need is the main exit key, right? Since the door at the top of the stairs is basically the same as this one, you should be able to pick it as well," Eren said thoughtfully, imagining the scenarios in his head. "Since I'm the only one who goes past that door regularly, I'll try to watch out for which key they use on it, then I'll point it out for Jimmy."
"What about the guards?" asked Gabriel. "They'll be posted at every door and if we make too much noise trying to take them down, that'll only alert the others."
Eren sighed and nervously wrung his hands. "I have a solution for that as well. It's actually the second distraction I was talking about before and it's going to be the most dangerous part of this whole mission but if we do it right, we'll all be able to escape before the guards even have a chance to stop us."
"Oh, now I'm interested," Hannah said, leaning forward in anticipation. "So, what are we gonna do?"
The brunette took a deep breath and rushed out the final piece of his plan.
"We're going to let Mathias loose in the facility."
Over the course of the next week, the subjects slowly put their plan into action by memorizing guard layouts, figuring out which key unlocked the front entrance, and planning out the perfect timeframe to launch their escape.
Initially it had taken some convincing on Eren's part to rally the other's behind his idea of using Mathias as a distraction for their escape, but in the end, they all reluctantly agreed to the insane but grudgingly decent plan. It wasn't the idea of getting caught that now frightened them, it was the terrifying belief that if they messed up Mathias would be dismembering them instead of the guards. They only had one shot at this, and Eren was doing all he could to make sure everything was air tight, even if it costed him a few sleepless nights.
When the day came that they were all relatively confident in their plan, Eren gave the signal to their first distraction after lunch: a mass fight.
"Hey! Is that my fucking shirt!?" snarled Riah at Hannah, while grabbing the front of her jade-green sweater. Obviously the two girls would be the ones to instigate the mock riot. "You been stealing from me again, you little shit?"
"Eh, fuck you, it looks better on me anyway," snickered Hannah, poking the bear aggressively. The two guards stationed outside their door heard the rise in voices and opened the door to investigate, only to nearly get hit by a flying chair that Riah had launched at her friend.
"Give it back, you fat fucking cow!" The cat girl tackled Hannah and started pulling at her hair and clothing. On cue, Gabrial and Eren jumped into the mix to pretend to pull the two apart while Gwen ushered the others across the room and away from the chaos.
Eren yelped when Riah elbowed him in the face and had to scramble back to prevent Hannah from sinking her teeth in his shoulder. Even though it was supposed to all be staged the girls were fighting like they were truly pissed at each other. Across from him, the brunette could see Gabriel struggling just as badly as him, and had actually managed to receive a bloody nose when he wasn't quick enough to dodge a blow from the rough blonde. There were shrieks of fury from Riah when her tail was stepped on or pulled and aggressive snarls from Hannah when Riah managed to bite into her tanned skin. Blood was actually being drawn on all four fighters, despite Eren and Gabriel's attempts to separate the two. It was truly a scary sight, even to Eren, who had watched and participated in plenty of fights back in training camp. Compared to these two, Eren and Jean's fights looked like child's play.
It wasn't until Lily joined in and pinned Riah to the floor, pummeling her face in, before the guards decided enough was enough.
Eren felt a pair of strong arms trying to pull him out of the cacophony of fists and kicks, but a moment later there was a loud grunt and a thud as the guard was yanked to the floor and into the madness by an unknown force. Pained exploded on Eren's arm as the heavy man landed on him and forced his arm to twist at an unnatural angle. This was not going as he predicted it would.
"We need back up down here!" yelled the second guard still on his feet and shouting up the stairs. Seconds later, three more guards came bursting into the overly cramped and chaotic room and after another few minutes of grunts and pained groans, the two hissing girls were finally pulled apart and restrained by the guards. Eren, Gabriel, and Lily sat a few feet away, wiping blood off their faces with their shirts and breathing heavily. Now, that Riah and Hannah were still, Eren could finally see their faces and he was shocked by what he saw.
Both of their eyes were focused intently on the other, completely ignoring the furious remarks by the guards. Riah's face was a bloody mess from being punched repeatedly by Lily and Hannah had several bite marks and bruises over most of her skin. All of the shifters wounds were oozing steam and causing the room to become foggy and dense. The two girls continued to stared at each other as if they absolutely despised the other and their eyes held a strange, animalistic ferocity that was never before present on either of their carefree faces. Riah's tailed flicked back and forth and her ears were flat against her skull in a defensive manner. If Eren didn't know better, he would have thought the two were out for kills.
"Now, who the fuck started this mess?!" snapped one of the guards, glaring at Riah as if he already knew the answer. When no one spoke out, he ordered the others to haul the cat and her bloody friend to their rooms, not bothering with medical treatment when most of their wounds were already healing.
Returning to the front room, the man that spoke earlier glared around at all of them before stopping on Eren, Gabriel, and Lily.
"And what were you three doing? Stopping it or participating in it?" he asked harshly.
"We were trying to stop it," grunted Gabriel, trying to clean his glasses in his bloody shirt. "We may have underestimated their anger at the time."
"That's an understatement," grumbled Lily.
Eren stayed silent on the floor while he cradled his injured arm. Luckily, it hadn't broken during the fight but it would definitely take a bit more time to heal than his other marks.
After a couple more questions, the guards finally left to return to their posts and all the subjects, besides Riah and Hannah, huddled in the middle of the room.
"Jimmy please tell me you got the key," groaned Lily, smoothing one of her bruises on her cheek.
Jimmy popped up from his hiding place behind the sofa and smiled proudly before lifting up a small silver key.
"Got it!"
The other subjects sighed in relief and Eren took the key from the excited boy. He went to his room and slipped it under his mattress for safe keeping before going back to the main room.
"Alright, now all we have to do is wait for tonight and then we'll make our move," Eren said, confidently.
"What time we doing this?" Gabriel asked.
"I told Riah to break us out around midnight. It'll be late enough that most of the guards will be off duty and we should be out and far away from here before dawn," Eren said, firmly. He stared around at the other subjects, worry and hoping that their plan worked out. "If any of you want to take belongings, just bring a small bag, we can't afford to be dragged down by too much."
Everyone nodded, already thinking over what they should bring and what should be left behind. They still had the rest of training that day and then the evening to pack up and steel their nerves, but most of them were anxious to leave at that moment.
"And when does he get involved?" Gwen asked hesitantly, indicating Mathias's door.
"Gabriel and I will be let out ahead of everyone else and we'll take care of the…distraction. When we think the coast is clear enough, we'll come back, grab all of you, and get out of here," explained Eren, standing up and flexing his healed arm, wincing as it popped back into place. "For now, let's just tough out the rest of the day."
The others mumbled out in agreement and waited for the guards to return and take them back to training while Eren was dragged off for more tests. Luckily, Violet was going easy on him today and only doing simply physical exams, another reason Eren decided to proceed with the plan that day. Riah and Hannah were forced to stay in their rooms and await punishment, but hopefully they wouldn't be there the next day to receive it.
None of the subjects discussed the plan during or after dinner, too worried they might be overheard and too anxious to really voice their concerns or questions. Many of them went to bed early, including Eren, who wanted to go over every scenario in his head and make sure he had everything he needed before that night. He should try to get some rest as well, but he knew it probably wasn't going to happened, still he tried. Eren laid in bed and attempted sleep, still in his day clothes with his light duffle bag hidden.
Just when his eyes began to droop there was a clicking and jingling from his door. The shifter sat up in time to see it swing open to a triumphant Riah, yellow eyes glowing in the semi-darkness, and a reluctant Gabriel, lifting up a stolen lantern to illuminate the room.
"Hey, boss, ready to go?" Riah whispered, practically vibrating with anticipation while her ears swiveled on her head.
Eren took a deep breath and gathered his belongings, making sure the main entrance key was tucked safely away in his pocket.
"Yeah, I'm ready. Let's get this over with."