[chaptered] Breaking Zero Kelvin - Chapter 12 (Take One)
Title: Breaking Zero Kelvin (Multichapter)
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx)
Pairing: Kazuyuri
Genre: Fantasy/Scifi
Summary: AU. They are two runaways, chased out of society through a deep-rooted stigma though they have no say in it at all. Only relying on word-of-mouth rumours and a set of sketchy directions, they now have to set out on their own journey to accomplish the impossible: escape.
Notes: Character list here.
Previous chapters: Prologue | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11
~
12: Take One
Kei looked up questioningly as Kenta replaced the manhole cover gently, then twisted his head to look downwards.
“It’s day,” he called. “Let’s go.”
There was no way they could leave Kohei alone in the tunnels, so they spent quite a while helping him up the ladder. Once the three of them had climbed out and put on cloaks, they began to walk out of the thankfully deserted alley.
“Kenta,” Kei hissed. “What if they recognize you? Or Kohei?”
Kenta shrugged.
“The black market sold hair dye. We dyed our hair and cut it, didn’t you notice?”
Now that he mentioned it Kei realized that while Kenta’s hair was indeed blonde instead of the black it was before, he had actually registered the change but not recorded it in his mind as an actual change.
The streets were bustling with people, and Kei could see, even from far away, a steady stream of people heading towards a tall metal building in the center of the district.
“That’s the Central prison,” Kohei whispered. “That’s where we’re headed.”
Slipping into the stream of people, they began their walk towards the prison.
~
After the first two hours, Tae figured she was beginning to understand what Shizuna had meant when she had likened the public opening of the prison to torture.
“Witch,” snarled an old man, rattling the bars of their cage.
Tae cringed as she saw some spittle fly from the man’s mouth and narrowly miss her foot, to land on the floor in a disgusting mess.
She could spy a bottle clutched loosely in that man’s hand, and figured that he was probably inebriated to a certain degree, at least. She pretended to ignore the man, just like how Shizuna was studiously staring into empty space in a corner of the cell, trying her best to be oblivious to everything around her.
Obviously annoyed by their lack of reaction, the man shuffled along to harass the people in the next cell. Tae let a small sigh of relief escape her lips.
Just how long is this going to last?
~
There was a long queue leading from the reception of the prison building, and when Kei, Kohei and Kenta had reached the end of the line so they could start queuing, the line already snaked out of the building and was now in compressed waves stretching over half of the carpark area.
“This is crazy,” Kei muttered in an undertone to Kenta.
“The people seem to really hate witches here,” Kenta replied, then fell silent as two boys shushed them fiercely from behind.
Thankfully, the line moved fast, and in a relatively short amount of time the trio found themselves in the air-conditioned lobby of the building.
“Remember, you point her out discreetly so I can memorise her face,” Kenta murmured under his breath, and Kei nodded as an officer with a clipboard came up to them.
“Names, please?”
They gave their aliases to the officer, frantically hoping that he would not suspect anything was wrong. To their relief, all he did was give them a small sticker to stick on their clothes.
“You are only allowed one entry each week, remember,” he told them, and they nodded. Smirking slightly, the officer gestured behind him, and they took it to mean that they could begin heading for the prison cells.
~
Tae fidgeted a little as what seemed like the thousandth person for the day stopped by their cell, throwing them a dirty look and flinging a chewed apple core at the door. It was too fat to get between the bars of the door, and thus thankfully bounced back out.
She was about to wriggle backwards when the next group of people came. This time it was a group of three. A short man with blonde hair led them, flanked by two taller people wearing hoods. One of the taller men stopped the blonde one right outside Tae’s cell, and the blonde man stared at her for a very long while.
Tae stared back, feeling slightly nervous at the scrutiny.
After a while, the blonde man nodded and moved on. Shizuna chose that moment to shift, and the movement caught the eye of one of the taller hooded figures. He stood there staring at the area where Shizuna was for a long while, before running to catch up with his companions.
Strange, Tae thought to herself, before scrambling backwards as some little girl tried to spit at her face next.
~
The plan went smoothly at first.
The three of them made their way slowly down the row of cells, and suddenly Kei caught sight of a familiar person in cell number 54.
Tae.
He tapped Kenta’s arm to let him know that they had reached the cell they had wanted to see, and Kenta nodded, stopping. He watched along with Kohei as Kenta stared at Tae, and Kei hid a small smile as he noticed Tae stare defiantly back.
She looked terrible, he realized. Her hair was even more tangled than it had been when he had last seen her. She had several red markings on both her wrists, and a few scratches on her face and legs as well.
Finally, Kenta nodded again, and began to walk off, Kohei following him and Kei trailing behind a little.
As he turned back to take one last look at Tae’s cell, he noticed some movement in a corner, and another familiar face shifted into the light for a short moment. Nevertheless, it was enough for him to recognize who it was.
He chased after Kenta.
“There is someone else in that cell,” he whispered. “I know Tae will want to save that other person since she helped us before. How?”
Kenta looked troubled, then looked back at the crowd swarming around, pressing them onward.
“We can’t go back,” he said quietly. “We can’t make another round, either. If you really want to save the other person we’ll have to come again next week. Or rather, I can probably come alone since we have the cell number now.”
Kei bit his lip, extremely upset at having to wait another week, but since he had forgotten to carry out his bit of the plan in the shock at seeing Tae’s cellmate he had no choice but to nod and follow Kenta out of the prison building silently.
His spirits remained down for the rest of the day.
~
Eventually, the stream of people wandering past their cell stopped, and Tae sagged, lying on the mat in exhaustion.
“I can see why you don’t like the public opening,” she groaned to Shizuna. “It’s so stressful and tiring.”
Shizuna only mumbled in reply, trying to fall asleep.
Tae rested her head against the wall, hoping she wouldn’t get called out for an interrogation session - she was too tired to be able to stand up to any sort of torture right now.
~
“How are we going to spend this week?” Kei groaned.
Kohei shrugged.
“We’ll end up low on food at some point in time, so we can have an exciting night sneaking through this district stealing food. It’ll take too long to drive all the way back to District 8 to steal food.”
Making a face, Kei yanked out his sleeping bag.
“I’m going to sleep,” he grumbled.
Burying his face in the cool plastic material, he tried his best to let sleep overtake him for a while.
~
The next day she had been fetched for another interrogation session.
“There you are,” Professor Clipboard greeted as she entered. “Did you enjoy the public session yesterday?”
She glared at him stonily, but he did not seem particularly fazed. If anything, he seemed even more gleeful when she had been strapped to the chair and he had taken out his remote control.
“Now, are you going to be as cooperative as the other day?” he asked.
Tae kept a firm silence, and Professor Clipboard shrugged, pressing a button on the remote control. Slowly at first, the chair began to spin, gradually accelerating as it spun round and round.
Tae squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the dizzying whirl in front of her. Dimly, she could hear Professor Clipboard laugh coldly, but she paid it no mind, focusing on trying not to get sick. Breakfast had not been much, but she would rather it stayed inside her rather than out into a bucket.
Or all over Professor Clipboard’s pristine white coat, though that sounded rather tempting to her the more she considered the image.
Eventually, the chair began to slow down, and as she tried to regain her bearings a bucket was placed in front of her.
“Now,” Professor Clipboard said. “Do you have any partners?”
Tae did not reply, concentrating on refraining from puking her guts all out into that metal bucket on her lap.
“Well?”
She looked up from the bucket to glare at Professor Clipboard, who merely looked back at her. Annoyed, she spat at him, feeling slightly vindictive to see a large blob of discolouration stain his pristine white coat.
Imprisonment had turned her into somewhat of a female barbarian, but she didn’t really care anymore.
She felt a stab of savage glee as he scowled, waving his hand to signal for the officer to come in.
“We will continue this another time when you are being more civilized,” he told her smoothly, before sweeping out of the room.
The officer walked in and twisted her hands behind her back roughly, before forcing her to stumble towards the door and back towards the elevator. Now that she was moving, Tae felt slightly more sick, but held back the urge to vomit as well as she could.
When she was pushed back into her cell, she immediately stumbled for the corner and sat there, her knees pulled up to her chest, and tried to focus on ridding her mind of the dizziness and seasick feeling.
Shizuna shot her a concerned look, but she did not catch it.
~
Time was passing agonizingly slowly for Kei.
To pass the time, he had taken out the name generator, and was currently attempting to create new aliases for both himself and Tae to use after they had escaped from the prison.
Kenta was playing with sticks, trying to make a little stick house out of whatever little twigs he could find littering the tunnel floor. Kohei was helping him search for said twigs, walking back they way they had come to pick up more twigs by the light of a lamp.
“Did you ever see Tsukasa and Rui?” Kei asked after a long while, putting aside the name generator. He had not had much success with it, and desperately needed a break.
“I did,” Kenta said, studying the first floor of his stick house while his fingers fiddled with some smaller twigs to try and make a small door for it. “They left though, because when I saw them it was right after I broke Kohei out of jail.”
“Were they fine?”
Kenta smiled.
“They looked to be doing well to me.”
“Good. That’s all I need to know.”
Kei’s lips quirked slightly, and he felt a little more at peace.
~
The officers were no longer marching up and down the corridors, and Tae guessed that night had fallen.
Shizuna was quiet, staring at the wall with a brooding look on her face.
“You okay?” Tae asked softly, and Shizuna blinked, startled out of her reverie.
“Oh? No, just…I miss Tai-nii. I’ve always been with him for the longest time, and…I don’t know.”
Tae’s thoughts flitted back to Kei, and she smiled a small, sad smile, patting Shizuna’s head awkwardly.
“I’m sure he’s fine, wherever he is,” she told Shizuna softly.
“He had better be,” Shizuna replied. “There’s no way I can believe otherwise.”
“He’ll be fine,” Tae repeated, no longer sure if she was talking about Taisuke or Kei.
They sat throughout the whole night in silence.
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx)
Pairing: Kazuyuri
Genre: Fantasy/Scifi
Summary: AU. They are two runaways, chased out of society through a deep-rooted stigma though they have no say in it at all. Only relying on word-of-mouth rumours and a set of sketchy directions, they now have to set out on their own journey to accomplish the impossible: escape.
Notes: Character list here.
Previous chapters: Prologue | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11
~
12: Take One
Kei looked up questioningly as Kenta replaced the manhole cover gently, then twisted his head to look downwards.
“It’s day,” he called. “Let’s go.”
There was no way they could leave Kohei alone in the tunnels, so they spent quite a while helping him up the ladder. Once the three of them had climbed out and put on cloaks, they began to walk out of the thankfully deserted alley.
“Kenta,” Kei hissed. “What if they recognize you? Or Kohei?”
Kenta shrugged.
“The black market sold hair dye. We dyed our hair and cut it, didn’t you notice?”
Now that he mentioned it Kei realized that while Kenta’s hair was indeed blonde instead of the black it was before, he had actually registered the change but not recorded it in his mind as an actual change.
The streets were bustling with people, and Kei could see, even from far away, a steady stream of people heading towards a tall metal building in the center of the district.
“That’s the Central prison,” Kohei whispered. “That’s where we’re headed.”
Slipping into the stream of people, they began their walk towards the prison.
~
After the first two hours, Tae figured she was beginning to understand what Shizuna had meant when she had likened the public opening of the prison to torture.
“Witch,” snarled an old man, rattling the bars of their cage.
Tae cringed as she saw some spittle fly from the man’s mouth and narrowly miss her foot, to land on the floor in a disgusting mess.
She could spy a bottle clutched loosely in that man’s hand, and figured that he was probably inebriated to a certain degree, at least. She pretended to ignore the man, just like how Shizuna was studiously staring into empty space in a corner of the cell, trying her best to be oblivious to everything around her.
Obviously annoyed by their lack of reaction, the man shuffled along to harass the people in the next cell. Tae let a small sigh of relief escape her lips.
Just how long is this going to last?
~
There was a long queue leading from the reception of the prison building, and when Kei, Kohei and Kenta had reached the end of the line so they could start queuing, the line already snaked out of the building and was now in compressed waves stretching over half of the carpark area.
“This is crazy,” Kei muttered in an undertone to Kenta.
“The people seem to really hate witches here,” Kenta replied, then fell silent as two boys shushed them fiercely from behind.
Thankfully, the line moved fast, and in a relatively short amount of time the trio found themselves in the air-conditioned lobby of the building.
“Remember, you point her out discreetly so I can memorise her face,” Kenta murmured under his breath, and Kei nodded as an officer with a clipboard came up to them.
“Names, please?”
They gave their aliases to the officer, frantically hoping that he would not suspect anything was wrong. To their relief, all he did was give them a small sticker to stick on their clothes.
“You are only allowed one entry each week, remember,” he told them, and they nodded. Smirking slightly, the officer gestured behind him, and they took it to mean that they could begin heading for the prison cells.
~
Tae fidgeted a little as what seemed like the thousandth person for the day stopped by their cell, throwing them a dirty look and flinging a chewed apple core at the door. It was too fat to get between the bars of the door, and thus thankfully bounced back out.
She was about to wriggle backwards when the next group of people came. This time it was a group of three. A short man with blonde hair led them, flanked by two taller people wearing hoods. One of the taller men stopped the blonde one right outside Tae’s cell, and the blonde man stared at her for a very long while.
Tae stared back, feeling slightly nervous at the scrutiny.
After a while, the blonde man nodded and moved on. Shizuna chose that moment to shift, and the movement caught the eye of one of the taller hooded figures. He stood there staring at the area where Shizuna was for a long while, before running to catch up with his companions.
Strange, Tae thought to herself, before scrambling backwards as some little girl tried to spit at her face next.
~
The plan went smoothly at first.
The three of them made their way slowly down the row of cells, and suddenly Kei caught sight of a familiar person in cell number 54.
Tae.
He tapped Kenta’s arm to let him know that they had reached the cell they had wanted to see, and Kenta nodded, stopping. He watched along with Kohei as Kenta stared at Tae, and Kei hid a small smile as he noticed Tae stare defiantly back.
She looked terrible, he realized. Her hair was even more tangled than it had been when he had last seen her. She had several red markings on both her wrists, and a few scratches on her face and legs as well.
Finally, Kenta nodded again, and began to walk off, Kohei following him and Kei trailing behind a little.
As he turned back to take one last look at Tae’s cell, he noticed some movement in a corner, and another familiar face shifted into the light for a short moment. Nevertheless, it was enough for him to recognize who it was.
He chased after Kenta.
“There is someone else in that cell,” he whispered. “I know Tae will want to save that other person since she helped us before. How?”
Kenta looked troubled, then looked back at the crowd swarming around, pressing them onward.
“We can’t go back,” he said quietly. “We can’t make another round, either. If you really want to save the other person we’ll have to come again next week. Or rather, I can probably come alone since we have the cell number now.”
Kei bit his lip, extremely upset at having to wait another week, but since he had forgotten to carry out his bit of the plan in the shock at seeing Tae’s cellmate he had no choice but to nod and follow Kenta out of the prison building silently.
His spirits remained down for the rest of the day.
~
Eventually, the stream of people wandering past their cell stopped, and Tae sagged, lying on the mat in exhaustion.
“I can see why you don’t like the public opening,” she groaned to Shizuna. “It’s so stressful and tiring.”
Shizuna only mumbled in reply, trying to fall asleep.
Tae rested her head against the wall, hoping she wouldn’t get called out for an interrogation session - she was too tired to be able to stand up to any sort of torture right now.
~
“How are we going to spend this week?” Kei groaned.
Kohei shrugged.
“We’ll end up low on food at some point in time, so we can have an exciting night sneaking through this district stealing food. It’ll take too long to drive all the way back to District 8 to steal food.”
Making a face, Kei yanked out his sleeping bag.
“I’m going to sleep,” he grumbled.
Burying his face in the cool plastic material, he tried his best to let sleep overtake him for a while.
~
The next day she had been fetched for another interrogation session.
“There you are,” Professor Clipboard greeted as she entered. “Did you enjoy the public session yesterday?”
She glared at him stonily, but he did not seem particularly fazed. If anything, he seemed even more gleeful when she had been strapped to the chair and he had taken out his remote control.
“Now, are you going to be as cooperative as the other day?” he asked.
Tae kept a firm silence, and Professor Clipboard shrugged, pressing a button on the remote control. Slowly at first, the chair began to spin, gradually accelerating as it spun round and round.
Tae squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the dizzying whirl in front of her. Dimly, she could hear Professor Clipboard laugh coldly, but she paid it no mind, focusing on trying not to get sick. Breakfast had not been much, but she would rather it stayed inside her rather than out into a bucket.
Or all over Professor Clipboard’s pristine white coat, though that sounded rather tempting to her the more she considered the image.
Eventually, the chair began to slow down, and as she tried to regain her bearings a bucket was placed in front of her.
“Now,” Professor Clipboard said. “Do you have any partners?”
Tae did not reply, concentrating on refraining from puking her guts all out into that metal bucket on her lap.
“Well?”
She looked up from the bucket to glare at Professor Clipboard, who merely looked back at her. Annoyed, she spat at him, feeling slightly vindictive to see a large blob of discolouration stain his pristine white coat.
Imprisonment had turned her into somewhat of a female barbarian, but she didn’t really care anymore.
She felt a stab of savage glee as he scowled, waving his hand to signal for the officer to come in.
“We will continue this another time when you are being more civilized,” he told her smoothly, before sweeping out of the room.
The officer walked in and twisted her hands behind her back roughly, before forcing her to stumble towards the door and back towards the elevator. Now that she was moving, Tae felt slightly more sick, but held back the urge to vomit as well as she could.
When she was pushed back into her cell, she immediately stumbled for the corner and sat there, her knees pulled up to her chest, and tried to focus on ridding her mind of the dizziness and seasick feeling.
Shizuna shot her a concerned look, but she did not catch it.
~
Time was passing agonizingly slowly for Kei.
To pass the time, he had taken out the name generator, and was currently attempting to create new aliases for both himself and Tae to use after they had escaped from the prison.
Kenta was playing with sticks, trying to make a little stick house out of whatever little twigs he could find littering the tunnel floor. Kohei was helping him search for said twigs, walking back they way they had come to pick up more twigs by the light of a lamp.
“Did you ever see Tsukasa and Rui?” Kei asked after a long while, putting aside the name generator. He had not had much success with it, and desperately needed a break.
“I did,” Kenta said, studying the first floor of his stick house while his fingers fiddled with some smaller twigs to try and make a small door for it. “They left though, because when I saw them it was right after I broke Kohei out of jail.”
“Were they fine?”
Kenta smiled.
“They looked to be doing well to me.”
“Good. That’s all I need to know.”
Kei’s lips quirked slightly, and he felt a little more at peace.
~
The officers were no longer marching up and down the corridors, and Tae guessed that night had fallen.
Shizuna was quiet, staring at the wall with a brooding look on her face.
“You okay?” Tae asked softly, and Shizuna blinked, startled out of her reverie.
“Oh? No, just…I miss Tai-nii. I’ve always been with him for the longest time, and…I don’t know.”
Tae’s thoughts flitted back to Kei, and she smiled a small, sad smile, patting Shizuna’s head awkwardly.
“I’m sure he’s fine, wherever he is,” she told Shizuna softly.
“He had better be,” Shizuna replied. “There’s no way I can believe otherwise.”
“He’ll be fine,” Tae repeated, no longer sure if she was talking about Taisuke or Kei.
They sat throughout the whole night in silence.