Author's Notes: Second chapter=) It won't take long between chapters for this story; I wrote this quite a while ago. (And a special thanks to darkyami1214, ElodieKumari94, konomixkatya23, and TheRoseShadow21 for reviewing; you guys make it worth posting=))

Anyway, on with the plot=)

Chapter Two - Yesterday Is Gone

Two Weeks Later.

"What?" Naomi breathed, stunned. She sat down hard in the chair behind her. "It can't be true!"

Mieke could only nod, lavender eyes wide and misted over with tears. "It's true!" she whispered into the silence. "Crow was so horrified and hurt he could barely tell me about it, but he didn't have to; I saw Jori for myself! He really is dead, Naomi!"

Naomi refused to believe what her black-haired friend was telling her. Just yesterday he had seemed as optimistic as ever about the future. It just couldn't be true...

Flashback

Naomi was standing, looking out over the open ocean as she had so many times before, when she heard footsteps approaching. It was a grey day, clouds hanging overhead, threatening an early-spring rain; the wind blew wildly from the south, and the waves crashed violently below. As the footfalls subsided beside and just a little behind her, she asked, "Do you really think any of us will ever get out of Satellite? It seems like such a long shot..."

"I believe you will, Naomi," Jori answered softly. "Someday. You just have to believe and never give up hope."

She turned to face the brown-eyed boy, her own green eyes full of doubt.

"I know you feel trapped sometimes, Naomi, but a day will come when someone will hand you the key to escape this cage called Satellite. You just have to keep your hope alive long enough for that to happen." Jori pulled the younger girl into his warm embrace as the first few drops of rain began to fall. "C'mon; let's go in before we get soaked!"

End Flashback

"Naomi? Are you gonna be okay?" Mieke asked gently as a tear slid from the corner of the other girl's eye.

Naomi wiped a hand under her eye, erasing the wet streak from her cheek. "I just need to be alone for awhile." She stood and started out the door to her favorite place on the rocks. The sun shone brightly, reflecting off the water, but it offered no warmth to her soul; she felt completely numb. She didn't - couldn't, really - understand why he would commit suicide. Mieke had said that he'd lost all hope, but she refused to accept that for the reason. Jori had always been the one with enough hope for himself with some to spare on top of it. He was the one who had convinced her she could one day get out of the Satellite. But now that he was gone, her hope had faded with him.

Her tears came as easily as the crashing of waves against the rocks below. He was gone, she knew, but it seemed unreal. Just yesterday they had stood on this very spot, talking. He couldn't be gone; he just couldn't be! ...Yet he was. She was sobbing now, unable to control her sadness. And anger. He was a hypocrite, after all! He kept telling her to hold on to hope, but he himself had lost it! She wasn't sure which emotion was driving more of the tears now: Her sadness over having lost her best friend, or her anger at his hypocrisy!

After some time, the tears subsided, though the pain of loss did not. She didn't know how long she remained there on the rocks, staring out at the ocean waves; it must have been quite awhile, however, as the sun was slowly sinking in the sky when the sound of a ruckus down the street broke through her thoughts. She rose to her feet after a moment and sprinted down the road, realizing that someone must be in trouble; even though she was in pain, that didn't mean she couldn't help them. She rounded a corner and froze dead in her tracks at what she saw there.

"C'mon, you! Stop struggling!" a Sector Security Officer was saying as a boy in handcuffs fought against him.

"I'm tellin' ya: We didn't do anything wrong!" This voice belonged to Alex, she knew, though his face was turned away.

Another officer had her brother in handcuffs and was escorting him to a patrol car. Ryan glanced back over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of his sister. Fear flooded his face, and he mouthed, "Run! Hide!" at her.

Naomi found her feet just in time and ducked into the shadows of a nearby ally just as the officer holding Ryan turned to see what his captive was staring at. Her black short-sleeve shirt and jeans concealed her easily in the dark shadows, and the officer didn't spot her. As she peered out around the corner from her hiding place, another officer appeared from the doorway of a building, fighting against a black-haired girl.

"Ouch! STOP KICKING ME, YOU LITTLE BRAT!" the officer hollered.

"Mieke!" Naomi whispered in horror. She felt like someone was strangling her, tearing the life out of her. This was not happening! In one short day everything she knew was being torn away. And all she could do was watch, helpless to do anything.

Mieke swung out in one final attempt to get free and managed to hit the officer in just the right spot so that he lost his grip just enough for her to escape. A spark of hope returned to Naomi's heart, but it was quickly extinguished. With Ryan seated in one of the cars, the officer who had been holding him had his hands free. In an instant, quick as lightening, he had drawn his gun and fired it once. Though officers were normally only issued stun-guns, these particular officers were the exception.

It was all Naomi could do to keep from screaming and rushing over to her fallen friend. Her head swam as a pool of deep crimson blood polled around the lifeless body lying face down in the middle of the street.

"...No! ...No..." she whispered. "Mieke..." She could feel her eyes misting over again. She'd thought she'd had no more tears to cry, but now that her whole world was crashing down around her...

A blue and white security runner turned the corner and pulled to a stop next to the two cars already there. The man dismounted, sauntered over to the car with Ryan in it, and said a few words to her brother. Her brother's blue eyes doubled in shock, his face paling. As the officer stepped away from the car, laughing, he removed his helmet.

Naomi felt as though someone had stabbed a knife through her stomach and her heart at the same time. She gasped for breath, but it felt as though none of the air was reaching her lungs. This wasn't possible; it wasn't happening! It just couldn't! She pressed her back to the wall, not wishing to see anymore, and slid down until she was sitting on the hard ground. After a moment, she heard the cars pull away, and with them, everything she had ever known was gone.

"Well, well, well," a hard voice spoke. "What have we here?"

Naomi didn't look up; she already knew the voice's owner. "How could you, Jori?" she accused him in a whisper. "How could you?"

He chuckled, a mirthless sound. "You should already have an idea of why, Naomi. Remember out conversation yesterday? This is my key out of here! I work for them long enough, and eventually Sector Security will send me to the city to work!"

"But why my brother? Why Alex and Mieke?" she whispered, her voice strained with renewed sadness and anger. "Why didn't you turn me in, too, since you obviously knew I was here?"

"Isn't it obvious?" he crouched down to her level. "It wouldn't make sense to mark up your beautiful face."

Naomi looked up, startled, and met his gentle, loving gaze. For a moment, she forgot what had just taken place as she stared into the face of her friend. In that moment, it felt as though nothing had changed.

"As soon as I can get out of here," he continued, "I'm gonna take you with me! That's why I told you yesterday that you had to be strong and hold on."

Naomi was mesmerized by his words. She was going to get out of Satellite? Could it really be true?

"But why did you pretend to kill yourself? How in the world did you even manage to fake it?"

"I had to find a way to completely disappear, a way that no one would come looking for me! As for how I managed that... well, that's a bit of secret I'm not allowed to tell! But I just have to keep helping Security round up this Scum; then we'll have our ticket out of here, I promise!"

Whoa. Wait just a second. Jori should have stopped talking while he was ahead. "My brother is NOT Satellite Scum!" She didn't care now if Jori could get her away from here; it wasn't about that anymore. "Alex and Mieke aren't either! How DARE you say that they are? If you consider them to be, then I am too!" she spat as she stood to her feet and moved away from the wall she had been leaning against.

"Now, hold on just a cotton-pickin' minute!" he retorted, getting to his feet as well.

Before he could continue, however, Naomi cut back in, the fog over her mind clearing. "You really believe working for them is going to get you out of here? They're using you, Jori! They'll never send you to the city because you're only valuable to them here! As soon as you can't help them anymore, they'll dispose of you by sending you to the Facility! And believe me, you won't have many friends with all the people you'll end up sending there!"

"Would you LIKE to follow you brother and Alex to the Facility? If not then I suggest you watch yourself, or you'll be following them shortly! Sometimes you have to make a sacrifice to get what you want - to get what you deserve! - "

"But you don't sacrifice FAMILY!" she interrupted, almost screaming at him now. "You don't sacrifice everything you ever cared about! You're such a hypocrite, Jori! You're the one who taught me that family is the most important thing there is and that NOTHING is worth sacrificing it for! And now here you are, telling me that freedom is worth more than my brother! Well, let me tell you something, Jori: I DON'T AGREE!"

"Well, let me tell YOU something, Naomi! If you don't watch your mouth, that pretty little face is gonna have an ugly yellow criminal mark on it! You realize that I'm doing all of this for you, don't you?" His voice softened on the last sentence. "I want you to have the chance to live out all your hopes and dreams! Don't you see that, Naomi?"

Unmoved, Naomi stood her ground, fists clenched at her sides. "No," she said bluntly, "you're doing this for you, Jori, and no one else. The only person you've ever cared about is you; I don't know how I ever trusted you or called you my friend. You're just like them!"

The boy-turned-officer took a startled step back. Then he laughed. "Well, Naomi Mori, if that's the way you really want it, then I'll be leaving now." He turned his back to her as if to walk away. Before he took a step, he added, "But just to clarify: I'm nothing like those thugs."

"Oh really?" Naomi retorted. "Because it would seem to me that you both like to push people around and betray them in order to get what you want."

Without warning, Jori spun around, arm outstretched, ramming it into Naomi's side. The girl lost her balance, sprawling into a pile of old wooden crates behind her. Not waiting even until the noise of splintering wood ceased, Jori started out of the alley back towards his runner and a moment later was gone.

Naomi didn't move for a moment, wondering what had just happened. The Jori she knew would never even think about hurting a fly, much more a person, without good reason. But then again, the Jori she had just encountered wasn't the same Jori she had know for over five years either. He'd changed over night it seemed.

After what felt like an eternity of thinking - but was in reality only a moment or two - she began to pick herself up from the broken crates. She looked herself over, noting that she had only a few scratches on her arms. Most of them weren't deep, but one - she assumed that it was on the arm that had broken her fall - was bleeding quite badly. It wasn't nearly as long of a cut as she first suspected, she realized upon rubbing her finger across the the streak of red on her arm. The wound was simply bleeding enough that the blood was rolling in drops down her arm, tracing a path through the dirt she acquired from the crates.

She returned back to the old warehouse and found the first-aid kit her brother had insisted on having on hand. Though neither had ever needed more than a band-aid from it, she was glad he had insisted now. The cut ended up being no more than an inch long so it didn't take much to bandage it.

The sun was beginning to set in the west as she wandered back outside, over to where the rocks dropped away to the ocean below. A gentle breeze blew, sweeping her hair around her face, much as it had earlier that day and every day before. Only now she had no hope left. In a matter of hours her whole life had come crashing down around her.

But it wasn't the first time something like this had happened. A few years before, she had gotten herself mixed up with a bad crowd - the "thugs" Jori had referred to. The only difference was when everything went awry, she'd still had someone to turn to. Her so-called 'friends' had betrayed her trust, but she still had her true friends: Ryan, Mieke, Alex, and Jori were still there for her. It had been from that point on she had sworn never to trust anyone but those four.

And until now not having to trust anyone else hadn't mattered. But now Mieke was dead, Ryan and Alex were on their way to the Facility, and Jori - her own friend - had betrayed her as well. If she couldn't couldn't trust her own friends, then who could she trust? Was there no one whom she could trust anymore?

It was then that Naomi Mori completely turned her back on the world. 'Looking for angels?' she thought bitterly as she stared out into the sea. 'Impossible in a city of devils...'

Author's Notes: Reviews=Happy Writer=Another Chapter=)