They both watched the scene unfold in front of them with the shivers passing through their bodies, straightening the hair on their necks and hands. Three girls, each in a different mood. You only had to look at the mixture of confusion, horror and satisfaction on those faces to understand that the fight took place behind the backs of the four.

The results of that fight could have been much worse.

Britt had an image in her head of gray eyes hiding all the secrets of the world. She remembered the little nod she got on her first day at the bar. That's it. She'd been getting those nods for weeks. If not for her friends, it was possible that she would never have known what was hidden behind the gray hair, the chill beating from her posture and the neutral, lower tone of voice.

She still did not know most of the secrets behind the mask, which did not change the attachment that arose over this inconspicuous period of time. She saw all the little things, she knew the moments when Glass, or rather Georgia, intervened, bringing a solution. Fully conscious or less.

At that moment, in the middle of the club, she felt the blood drain from her face, and all hope evaporate in the hot air.

If it hadn't been for Kendrick breaking their silence, the girl would probably have started a string of meaningless doubts under her nose, only getting more emotional. He gave her a look she couldn't interpret. She wasn't sure if he was determined or angry. He put his hand on Britt's shoulder, which brought her momentary comfort.

"Let's split up."

That definitely reversed the hand effect. She frowned, but Kendrick continued, not noticing, or not wanting to notice her reaction.

"You watch what they do, I'll look for Georgia," he pronounced the name with strange ease.

Britt stopped thinking about the meaning of the situation and just nodded to her waiting friend. Only then did she notice how tense she had been until now. Both of them. With her answer, the boy took a short breath, and then smoothly moved in the direction from which the blonde girl came, remaining partly in the dancing crowd and thus being out of sight of any of the three girls.

When he finally disappeared from her sight, Britt took out her phone, ready for any signal. From anyone. Out of idleness, she began to look around for people, hoping to find gray hair somewhere there. She wanted so badly for it to be over and for Glass to be found safe and sound.

She'd got her eyes set on three girls she didn't know. Almost strangers. Watching them, she wondered what she didn't know. Why were they sitting so still at the bar? Why was the red-haired girl so pleased with the blood-stained hand? Why did it satisfy her at  a l l?

If they apparently already got what they wanted, why were they still at the club?

She understood the second she asked herself that question.

They were guarding something.

Hitting the phone against her palm, she bit her lip and felt a flame of hope rise in her chest. Of a solution. Of course, they couldn't leave. They were on the lookout. They were spreading fire. The fight was still on. They didn't do anything because all they had to do was make sure the fire didn't go out prematurely.

So, the only way they could put out that fire was to do it behind the arsonists' backs or... distract them in any way.

Britt stopped tapping her phone momentarily, looking at its screen. She unlocked the device and started typing a message with her fingers twitching with emotion.

'Do you have any idea how to get them out of the club?'

After sending a text to Valentia, she waited less than ten seconds to see her reply.

'I have one.'

And for a long moment, nothing happened, until finally Rita picked up her phone from the counter. She read something on the screen, and Britt could have sworn that the girl went pale as the wall when she was completely covered in the light of the pixels. She poked the girl next to her and showed her a text. In the blatantly cold, white light, it was easy to see how Glass's cousin's face turned from satisfaction to pure annoyance, and then into a hollow, echoing mocking smile. She even sniggered, artificially amused.

She said something to the other two confused girls, heading for the exit at a lightning pace. Rita and the blonde girl followed her, forced to speed up.

After that reaction, Britt could only guess what was in that text.

Regardless of its content, the plan was successful, which she quickly typed on the keyboard of the phone and sent in a message to a friend. She hid her phone, starting her own search.

They had very little time to put out the fire.

'They're outside, for now. Valentia flushed them out.'

The text from Britt came to him when he had just checked both the men's and women's bathrooms. For the latter, he received many female insults, but he wasn't bothered by it like by everything that did not matter at that moment.

He went to where he first saw the blonde, but it was not very far, so from that moment he had to cope on his own and surrender to his own intuition. He looked and glanced wherever he could, including the not so obvious places, but with every second there were more and more options. The club, to his disadvantage, was huge. The new corners just kept coming.

He went up to the top floor, which he discovered only when some drunk boy almost ran right into him, coming out of the turn of the stairs. He passed him with some difficulty, and after a few moments he was already on top. The density of the air, the constant squeezing through the crowd and the anxiety got him more tired than the very walk up the rather long stairs.

There, in contrast to the ground floor, was much less room for dancing and less colorful, glaring lights, and more heavy, black curtains of people practically falling on their faces, but still having conversations with each other. Not to mention, he barely saw it all, surrounded by a dark, maroon light. At this point, the alcohol would spread across every table and spill down their throats, even hanging in the air. Smokers also found their corner here, creating clouds of smoke everywhere.

If there was barely any air on the ground floor, here was a pure space void.

Not helped by thick, high to the ceiling glass panes blocking the air and most of the music from below. Everything above hung on the sides of the walls of the building like balconies, leaving a sizable hole in the middle with a view of the lower dance floor. The number of people he saw there only strengthened his resolve. And reminded of the time chaotically slipping through his fingers.

He was about to move along the black walls and thick curtains covering them somewhere, when an unusual metallic hum along with a bang broke through the layer of sounds and stopped him in half a step. He frowned, looking around. No one else seemed to have heard it.

Then he heard it again, and he knew it was somewhere to his right, by the wall. And then came a series of equally metallic taps, each louder, echoing. The last thing that pointed him right at the source of the sound was the monotonous sound of an object rolling on a hard surface.

The creak of a door somewhere higher brought after a while a cold gust of wind. It moved one of the curtains, and it was a curtain that was right in front of Kendrick.

The boy instinctively grabbed the black material and pushed it aside.

The rod fell out. I even heard how, after the fall, it began to roll down the stairs to the accompaniment of a distant, growing echo.

The stone weighing on my chest fell along with the rod, spreading the same echo.

I grabbed the handle, pulled the door with my aching arm, and I couldn't believe it when the door gave way and started to open. The breath I took after that seemed like the first I'd taken in ages.

I set myself free.

I really did.

As quick as the desire to escape faded, so quickly did the pain and fatigue return. The door gave way, but it seemed to weigh a ton. I had to use the strength of both hands and even my whole body to fight my way inside the club. It was not without involuntary clinging to the metal tile. The balance was evaporating in the air from second to second.

My arm was numb from the constant banging on the door. Everything I saw made my head spin again. The tightness of my stomach was making me hiss, and a thousand needles were going through the side of my face. I closed my eyes, looking for one of the stairs with one of my legs. When I found it, I threw my hands from the metal to the rough wall and took the first steps down, and the door closed behind me with a loud, gut-wrenching bang.

The wind ceased to pull and blow, and the warmth of the building brought me momentary solace. I heard muffled music. I lifted my eyelids, wanting to look into the darkness of the next steps, when my attention was caught by the dim light at the end of the stairs. Someone was standing at the bottom, holding the curtain up and letting a red light into the narrow passage.

Despite the darkness completely covering the silhouette standing there, it was enough for me to see the outline of the hairstyle, the shape of the coat and the feeling in the cage to know who it was. He wasn't supposed to be there, but he was. I don't know why, the stone that just fell from my chest has returned to its place. Something inside me started to boil.

It just sped up my pace and strengthened the fight with my body. Wall, steps, inhale, exhale, inhale. I had to push forward.

"Georgia?"

Feelings mixed with each other in one, strong battle cry. I didn't know what they were individually, let alone what they were as a whole. Walking down the stairs, I could hear my heart beating in my ears. It was banging, screaming in pain and numbness of every other part of my body.

I was maybe two or three staircases from the ground, but before I got there, I looked ahead, and then Kendrick, apparently seeing more, suddenly rushed toward me, as if awakened. Closer to the light, I could see the honey gleam in his eyes. Not wondering, not skeptical.

Just angry.

"What are you doing here?" I asked without recognizing my voice. Full of hoarseness, heavy air and exhaled abdominal pressure. There was no room for the cold.

Kendrick traded my question for his.

"And you?" He burned holes in my face with his gaze, frowning. It only lasted a moment, because after a second, he turned around and stood next to me, putting my arm on his neck and holding me by the waist.

I immediately felt the heat beating from his neck, and only then did I realize how cold my own body was. The relief of taking part of the weight off was indescribable. We went out behind the curtain, and then slowly went down the second stairs. The sounds and lights grew stronger, irritating mercilessly.

"You shouldn't be here," I threw a cold sentence between exhalations.

Everything I was trying to accomplish here suddenly connected to the person who was supposed to be the furthest away from it. I remembered Kendrick's arguments with the girls, and I certainly remembered Britt's request and my response, almost a promise made to both her and myself.

A promise suddenly on the verge of breaking.

"Is there a back door?" Kendrick asked, staring straight ahead. He ignored my earlier words. He ignored everything that was directly related to me.

Finally, we reached the ground floor, and there the music blew in my head several times more painfully. I squinted my eyelids, irritated by the pulsation of the surroundings. The stairs we went down by were exhausting enough. The lights only amplified the swirling sensation. Involuntarily, I put pressure on Kendrick's neck to keep myself from losing balance.

Despite the chaos, I heard the question clearly. I frowned, looking at his profile. He didn't want to use the main entrance. He knew more than I did. About something, or maybe even someone. His eyes were focused on the way, looking around at the people, looking for something.

It dazzled me in an instant.

"Are they here?" I asked firmly, watching the crowd. I was sure they were long gone. Something dormant came back to life in me, and my pulse found a new, faster rhythm. I couldn't just let that information go. The opportunity was back. Hope was back. The fire ignited in my frozen chest.

I didn't lose. The fight was still on.

"They're in front of the entrance, so we have to use any other route, quickly."

I used all the energy I could to get my hand off Kendrick's neck and not fall over in the sudden movement. Because of this move, glowing floor tiles dragged my body down much stronger, but I could not bend to their strength. I took a deep breath, straightening up, and a caramel, lost look landed on me.

I realized what I had to do to keep my promise. What was necessary so that no one else would bend under the weight of not their problems. To end the spiral of blows, reaching further and further, hurting more and more people. My opportunity was just around the corner. A short but insanely steep road.

"I need to talk to them."

Hearing this, Kendrick frowned, piercing me with a pretentious look. The flickering lights around him emphasized his indeterminate emotions hanging between us in the thick air. He seemed to have a thousand thoughts currently running through his head, but for some reason he chose only one.

"Did you see yourself by any chance?"

I felt a pinch in my chest, so I looked away and toward the exit. I didn't have to see myself, because the pain kept coming, stuck in my body like needles, moving with every movement I made, tearing me apart from the inside out.

"I have no choice," I said with conviction. With a purpose in mind, I moved to the passage leading outside.

I did not get there, however, immediately stopped by the hand grasping my wrist. I looked at it, bigger and a little darker than mine, and then I looked up at Kendrick in confusion.

He threw out words full of irritation, and it seemed to me that they wanted to come out on the surface from the beginning.

"You can barely stand, you have blood on half your face, and you want to go to them again of your own volition?" He pointed with his free hand to the exit, then dropped it inertly and gave me a questioning look. "Can you explain to me why?"

I stood in silence, letting the music hit us from every possible direction. I couldn't say anything. I didn't quite know why, without much thought, I wanted to throw myself into the embrace of my past, despite the wounds it had inflicted on me.

Before, I had no problem escaping, cutting myself off from all events, people and places. I left, pretending that I could just create a new reality for myself. A new clean page. I even foresaw that I would not get away with it, and the consequences of my choices would reach me many times, not letting me forget about them.

However, there was an element that broke down the wall of indifference. Complicating the closure of the past, completely changing my attitude and drastically spreading seemingly minor consequences, increasing them many times over. It made me want to get rid of the darkness that followed me once and for all.

"I need to keep my word," I said, and when the boy frowned in constant cluelessness, I added more confidently: "You once told me that what I'm going through affects others, so I'm going to finish it here and now."

His face relaxed in awareness and understanding. He knew the moment I was talking about. I've seen his mind go back in time to this point. His eyes went blank. He realized something important.

"I also told you that you were safe."

The tightness in the chest was back, but in a completely different shade.

"Despite what happened next, I felt safer." I lowered my gaze to the hand still embracing my wrist. I put the dots together, not too surprised by the simplicity of the answer. "It still is that way."

I looked him in the eye, completely sure of my intentions. I had to go outside. Kendrick must have noticed, because the lightning beating from his pupils at some point was replaced by a flash of resignation mixed with some kind of warmth. I'd seen that expression very rarely, if not for the first time. Even if, it seemed incredibly familiar.

He was obviously struggling with his thoughts. I didn't know what he was fighting, which left me curious. He finally took a resigned breath, saying:

"I'm not gonna talk you out of this, am I?"

I shook my head gently.

"Then I'm coming with you."

And I might have expected it, but it wouldn't have changed the intensifying pain in my chest. The two worlds I created had to collide sooner or later. I felt that this was the moment when all the cards were to be revealed. All the secrets were gonna come out.

The person I used to be was going to see the light of day. Or night.

I had no idea how huge the consequences could've been.