The room she was in was an old room, clearly. It wasn’t maintained at all, the walls having turned a disgusting yellow and the chains holding her in place having rusted. Amity knocked on the glass, but Himiko didn’t even bat an eye. She did it again, to which she glared. A third knock finally got a response.

“What?!”

Amity was taken aback, surprised at her friend’s outburst.

“Himiko! It’s me, Amity!”

Immediately, she looked away.

“No it’s not! You said she could never find this place!”

Amity looked at the panel in front of her, not finding anything useful until finally spotting it. There was a slider, currently resting at the far left side of its path. She slid it to the right, and a small opening began to widen as she pushed it further and further.

“This is possibly the worst mechanism to open a door I’ve ever seen.”

Nonetheless, she walked over to the newly opened passageway, where Himiko was glaring still, although she wasn’t able to see very much of it due to the restraint keeping her facing more or less straight forward. Amity went through, and got in front of Himiko, who immediately had her eyes widen.

“A- Amity? It really was you?!”

“Yeah, it was! I can’t exactly let you die in some random facility. Speaking of, we need to get you and the rest of them out of here.”

Amity tried her hardest to avoid staining the bottom of her shoes in the blood laying on the floor, not cleaned. The paring knife sat directly under an arm that had been hooked to… something. It was pulling out Himiko’s blood, but it didn’t look like anything she had seen before. She pulled it out, as carefully as possible, while pulling out a series of bandages and one sheet of gauze to cover the wound.

“How long have you been here? In this room, getting your blood taken, I mean.”

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“Not very long, maybe 10 minutes? I don’t think they’ve even- SHIT- turned on the blood pulling thing yet.”

“Are you good? These tight bandages do hurt.”

“I’m fine… Thanks.”

Amity slipped off the restraints holding Himiko in the corner, before helping her up and leading her out.

“Okay, we need to get Raleigh and Katie. Do you know where they went?”

“Yes, I think so. I kept hearing the phrase ‘fourteen-x’, and-”

“That’s right next to here! Lets duck back over here.”

Amity led Himiko and Kaiya to a hall behind the two buildings and they walked behind the two.

“Uh, Amity, who is she?”

“Oh, that’s-”

“I’m Kaiya. Amity rescued me from the castle of the princess, right before you got captured.”

“Wait… Kaiya? Weren’t you… the first half of the year, we…”

“We had 3rd period together, I believe. Nice to meet you outside of school, Himiko.”

“Nice to meet you too..”

They reached the door to the next chamber, and Amity quickly opened it and found yet another window. Although, in the room they found Himiko, she learned this wasn’t entirely a window, but rather a one-way mirror. She could see the ‘subjects’, her friends, but they couldn’t see back through it.

She knocked again, yelling the same thing as last time, but this time they were a lot more receptive to the idea that Amity was saving them.

“Amity, is it really you?”

“Yeah! I have Himiko, too!”

Amity pushed the slide to the side, opening the door and allowing her to get through. There wasn’t any blood on the ground, but this room was still decrepit and the floor slightly wet. The shackles on each person’s arms and legs stood steady, their hands were too big for Amity to coerce them out of the tightly locked cuffs. She reached into her bag, grabbing two metal lockpicks and slipping them into the keyway. She applied tension and began pressing at each individual pin, but there was no sound or any change in the tension to indicate it was working.

After maybe two minutes, the lockpicks were removed and hastily stuffed back into the shoulder-bound bag resting on her side.

“Amity, did it work?”

“It didn’t… Hold on.”

She slipped over to the wall with the mirror, grabbing a rock and holding it tight as she ran back over to the trapped girl. She heard footsteps creaking into the room, just as she made it back to the girl. Amity was plainly in view if you were even a step into the area, but she continued her plan.

She felt power course through her, the thoughts of who the people who almost certainly see her now are.

What they would do if they caught her.

The thought of Katie and Raleigh, trapped still.

The thought of Kaiya, stuck in this world after months, and how she wanted to free her.

The thought of Himiko…

She brought down her hand and...

*CLANG*