"Ma'am—"

But the woman shakes her head and continues walking.

"Please," Thomas tries. "We—"

She holds up her hands, fastening her pace before she disappears around a corner.

I don't know what day it is, but it seems to be one of the days on which barely anyone is shopping. And the people we do meet, refuse to listen and won't help us call the police.

"We should just go to a store," I say. "Ask the cashier. They can't just send us away."

"I haven't seen much open stores. It must be a Sunday," Thomas mutters. "Maybe a restaurant, though, yeah."

We're literally walking through the streets, barefoot. Our clothes are ripped, dirty, and damp. My hair must look like a complete nest. Thomas's face still looks abused and my neck has Austin's fingerprints on it.

We don't look very approachable.

"Hi, sir." Thomas steps up to a man. "We got kidnapped by my father and—"

The man shoots him a look. "Funny." And continues walking.

"That sounded ridiculous, indeed," I whisper to Thomas. "Don't pull that again. Leave the part about Austin out."

"Here?" With a questioning look, Thomas points at cafe.

"We'll give it a try."

We enter the cafe and immediately receive a few glares. I cringe at the people covering their noses or sniffing in disgust. We must smell horrible.

"Hi, sir," I start talking to the younger male behind the counter. "I think you might've heard this from police before, but my friend and I got abducted a while ago. We managed to escape and we would really, really appreciate it if you could call the police or let us call a family member."

He squints his eyes at us.

Gosh, I probably sound way too formal for someone who got kidnapped.

"Are you pranking me?" He asks.

"No," Thomas's voice does sound more desperate, luckily. "We swear. Please, call someone or let us do it."

"It's illegal to call nine-one-one without—"

"But this is not an illegal case!" I yelp. "We've been gone for I don't know how long and this is like our third attempt of reaching our family and our thousandth attempt to get a stranger to help us. Please."

The man looks around the cafe. With a sigh, he walks off. I start getting angry at first, thinking he won't help, but he returns with a colleague.

"Can you stand there for a few minutes while I help these kids out?" He asks the woman. She nods, not very interested in us.

"Thank you," Thomas says. "Thank you, thank you, thank you—"

"Let's go," he interrupts. We follow him outside the cafe, where he pulls out his phone. "Do you want me to call the police or someone specific?"

"The police," I say.

We can't risk someone not picking up.

"Okay."

He types the number in. For a second, we wait, anxious. Then there's a voice on the other side.

"Yes, hello. I've got two kids here. Said they have been abducted a while ago. Their names? Uhm."

"Lelia Blake and Thomas Edison," Thomas says into the phone.

"We're at the local town." For the following minute, the man shares information about our location.

Then I feel Thomas squeeze my arm in an alerting way, and my heart sinks.

I don't even know what's wrong, I just know something is.

"Go inside, sir. Our kidnapper is right there and— oh God." Thomas takes a step back. "Go inside before you get in danger."

I curse below my breath at the sight of Austin. He's pacing towards us, face made of stone. He's holding what looks like a knife.

Why? Why. Why— "Sir!" The bartender starts yelling at Austin. "Let go of that knife and leave these—"

Of course that does not work.

Austin presses the man against the wall by wrapping his hand, the one holding the knife, around his neck. I think it's his favorite move. Then he snitches the phone away, drops it to the ground, and stamps on it until it's shattered.

The man is gasping for air, clawing at Austin's hand just like I had done.

"Stop!" I try to rip him off the poor man. He didn't do anything wrong. He was helping us. I don't want us to be the cause of his death.

Thomas and I start yelling and causing such a scene that eventually, the colleague the man spoke to exits the cafe. She has a teapot in her hands. I'm genuinely impressed she doesn't think anything through; she just starts emptying the steaming hot water on Austin's body.

He lets go of the bartender. Screams leave his mouth. He kicks around, splashing drops of water on our skin as well. It hurts, a lot.

"Thomas!" Right before Austin manages to grab him, Thomas ditches away. He goes for the run. I don't hesitate to follow him.

There we are again. Running away from Austin. Closer to the woods again. No, please no—

Thomas crosses the street instead of entering the woods, thank God, and we continue running. Cars horn at us. I hear yells coming from windows, but we can't stop now.

His hand reaches for mine. I take it, and suddenly we're running so fast that I'm surprised I'm capable of it.

I lean closer to Thomas. "How do I beat him?"

"You don't beat Minho in running," he says easily, shrugging. "I can't even beat him. He goes running almost everyday. Not much to do about that."

"So if there's no way to slow him down, I'm gonna have to find a way to push myself to my limits."

"Eh, perhaps?" Thomas seems confused on how serious I'm taking this. "It's not really a competition, though—"

"Imagine something you're afraid of is running behind you," Ben suggests.

My eyebrows furrow. "I'm not really afraid of... things that could chase me," I say slowly, unsure.

Now I am, and now I'm running the fastest I've ever ran.

"Here." Thomas slides into an alley. I panic at first, until I see his idea. It leads into a neighborhood, and I know what one. My neighborhood.

Our house is a few streets away. We can make it. When I look back, Austin is quite a distance away from us. Enough to warn everyone and... and what? What are we even going to do?

I'm not good at running and thinking at once. Thomas seems to be. It looks like he knows what he's doing.

"Lyndon!" He slams against the windows of my house the second he can reach them and then rings the door bell for at least ten seconds straight. "Teresa! Newt, Minho—"

"We're here!" I yell. Then I force Thomas to run with me again, before Austin gets too close.

My lungs are starting to give up and both my chest and side hurt, but again, we can't stop. We can't stop until someone stops Austin.

I push my feet as fast as I can. We're being chased around the neighborhood. All we can do is choose the smartest turns and run. For our lives, literally.

But no matter how much we're running, Austin keeps up. Is that a thing? Do psychopaths have some kind of power when they want to get something so badly that they keep pushing?

I don't know— at some point, we're forced to run past the cornfields and back into the woods. We would've been slowed down had we not.

"Thomas!" My voice comes out panicked. "He's coming closer!"

Things start getting thrown at our legs like before. I have a hard time focusing on so many things at once. Or maybe I'm struggling with that exact thing. I'm focusing on too much, and not the thing I should be focused on. I just need to run. Not focus on the pain in my body. Not what will happen if he catches us. Not on how long we'll be running. Not on where we're going. Just gotta run.

But Thomas trips just as I realized that. He muffles a scream of agony in his arm. I fall with him, as I was right behind him. And I get up, but he doesn't.

Oh— the knife landed in his leg. At the sight of it, I freeze. Then the knife gets pulled out of his skin. Thomas screams again.

I'm not glad that it got pulled out, because Austin is now holding the weapon again. I try to slam it out of his hands. All it leads to is a cut in my arm.

He tries to stab Thomas. Right before he can, Thomas takes ahold of his wrist. Austin presses towards Thomas, and Thomas tries to push him away. In the end, the tip of the knife makes it into his skin, then I'm kicking the man in the stomach as hard as I can.

I don't know what to do. I do my best to hurt him as much as possible, but it's not as affective as I want it to be.

In the corner of my eye, I see Thomas gets off the ground. He can't run. But if he hides right now and I start running with Austin on my heels, at least Thomas will be safe.

I try to do it. I'm standing... and that's the perfect opportunity for him to slam his fist against my cheek. I cry out in pain as he does it again, and again, until my back is pressed against a tree.

When he slams my head against the trunk, too, I feel my legs giving up. Black dots appear in my vision.

No, get up, I tell myself. He just hit your head. He just hit your head. Get up—

A kick in my stomach. Get away, Thomas. Another one in my stomach. Punch, kick, slice, I don't know. Everything was hurting already anyway.

I drop onto the floor. Tears leak from my eyes but no sounds escape my lips, even though they're parted. I gasp for air once the air gets kicked out of my lungs again. Nothing works.

"Stop." I see a blurred image of his leg and reach out for it. Maybe if I can make him fall— a stamp on my hand and my idea is ruined.

My eyes squeeze shut at the pain. Screams start echoing in my ears— or am I starting to hallucinate? It wouldn't surprise me.

"Lelia. Lils," the most comforting voice I've ever heard finally makes its way into my ears.

No, no. I'm definitely hallucinating that.

I force my eyes open. Maybe I'll see his face and can confirm I'm not dreaming.

But even if I am, I'd still see Minho's face after forever, so that's good enough. After everything that has happened, that's good enough.

"I'm here," he assures. His voice sounds angelic right now. Softly mirroring in my ears.

Less pleasant grunts and cries of pain sound beside me. I turn my head, biting my lip at the pain— which feels weird, by the way. I feel like someone sedated me and everything passes in a blur

Not the point. I want to see what's going on beside me.

"Whatever he said, don't be ashamed to feel hurt by it. Indeed, he's just a stupid boy. Next time I see him–"

"As if you would hurt anyone," I say. I try to add a laugh, but it sounds too fake.

"For you I would," Lyndon says. "Not on accident."

I catch a faint vision of my other favorite person before it all goes black, my mind full with one last thought.

Lyndon never lied.