Day 14

Time: 3:58 PM

Location: Outskirts of Rime 12

It took a while, but eventually, the three found a place that wasn't quite so compact with ice that they could sink their shovels in, which they found out when Darius sunk into it himself, and Ai and Molly had to haul him out. After a bit of complaints, they got to work, sinking their shovels into the hole and hauling up the snow, throwing it to the side. At first their hole started small, width-wise, but as they dug more and more, they had quickly realized that they'd have to make it wider, enough to fit themselves in. The ground was much further away than they'd thought, and for some reason, Darius found that unnerved him. Maybe it was the literal feeling of the ground being ripped out from under him, but also... it felt almost unnatural, this much snow piled up on top of each other. It felt weird to know that they, and the base they went to sleep in every night, was much farther above solid ground then any of them had originally thought.

Darius shook off that strange thought, and continued digging, falling into the familiar pattern of pushing his shovel into the snow, lifting it up, and throwing it to the side, over and over again. With Ai and Molly, the three of them worked quickly, making the ground underneath them disappear. They were silent for long stretches of it, and though Darius frequently checked his watch, he could push back the feeling that they had gone past hours passing by, now, the days came and went, hidden by the thick cloud above them.

Darius straightened up, sighing as he stretched out his back, feeling horrible agony dance above it after being bent over for several hours. It was then that he suddenly heard a scream.

Darius and Molly quickly turned around, panic on both of their faces, but when their eyes met with Ai's, she only stood there, staring at them through goggles and layers upon layers of cloth. There was no sign of what possibly could have scared her.

"Guys..." she gasped wetly, sounding close to tears but also... happy?

"What is it?" Darius asked her, quickly.

"Are you hurt?" Molly cried. "Ai shook her head, beaming.

"No... No, look!" Ai exclaimed, and she moved aside, pointing to her plastic shovel sticking upright in the dirt. Molly tilted her head, seemingly as confused as Darius felt. They both studied the shovel closely, but couldn't see any reason that Ai could have screamed like that.

Perhaps sensing this, Ai took the shovel and heft it up for them to see clearer. Finally, Molly and Darius gasped, just the reaction she had been hoping for. When Ai spoke next, she sounded rather smug, but Darius hardly noticed for there was dirt on the end of that shovel.

"I told you!" Ai said, and Darius could hear a smirk.

"The ground," he gasped. "We made it!"

Without further delay, he started digging once again. There was only about a foot of snow on the ground to clear before, finally, his shovel hit the ground as well, and Darius could have cried in relief. He swung the rest of the snow aside with reckless abandon and fell to the cold, hard ground, relieved.

"We... we did it," Molly said. Darius looked to find her looking up to the sky in wonder, her gloved hand tightly clasped around her shovel. "I knew we could do it... I told you we could do it!"

Molly hadn't, and also neither of the other to had ever questioned it, but Darius shoveled his confusion aside, instead following her gaze up to the rolling clouds above them.

Darius hadn't realized how deep the hole had gotten. It was easily three times as tall as he was, and though the three had been careful, leaving a slope for them to climb out of and leaving them in the bottom of some sort of bowl type crater, but it was still easy to see the height of it, towing above them.

Darius gloved hands fell on the tough dirt beneath him. It wasn't true, but it had felt like they had travelled under ground to get here.

"We have to called roots now, right?" Ai asked, shaking Darius back to reality. He jumped, and then nodded stiffly.

"Yeah... we should hurry, though," he told her. "We've already been out her a long time, I don't want to push our luck."

Ai nodded in a swift agreement. Then she and Darius both looked to Molly, still staring at the sky above them, the gentle snow falling lightly on her scarves and goggles with the lightest of touches. Ai and Darius waited, but only for a couple seconds.

"Um... Molly?" Ai called. "Is something... wrong?"

Molly, startled, seemingly coming back to herself with a shudder as she looked over to them. Realization lit up her eyes and she bounded over to them, an apologetic smile on her face.

"Sorry, sorry, I was just thinking," Molly apologized as she knelt beside them.

"Oh? About what?" Ai asked curiously. Molly froze, but only for a split second. Then she shrugged.

"Oh, you know, the usual," Molly told them, a small smile on her face. "I already forgot it. Let's talk about something else."

"Or we could work," Darius reminded them, holding up one of the roots he had picked out from the ground. It was a rough, weak, tiny little thing that Darius... really didn't want to know what Angelico was going to do with.

"Oh, yes," Ai said, and immediately got to work.

"I forgot about that that," Molly quipped, looking sheepish. After neither Ai nor Darius responded with much other than a nod, she, too, got to work.

They quickly found that there weren't many roots to find to begin with, but they quickly settled into a system of Ai, Darius and Molly founding the roots, then handing them to Darius as he stuffed them in his satchel, find that his watch updated every time he put something in his 'inventory'.

This went on for a little while, again, a very menial job that grew more and more frustrating with every little root they did and didn't find. They looked like little, frostbitten, gray worms.

"What?" Molly suddenly asked, and Darius and Ai looked back to her, then to each other in confusion. Molly was, once again, staring at the sky.

"What?" Darius asked, frowning.

"Do you... see something?" Ai wondered, and it was that question that got a jolt from Molly.

"What?" she said again, but this time the question was directed at the two of them. She looked confused for a second, before she suddenly realized what they were staring at her for. "Oh. Oh! Uh... don't worry about it. I'm fine. We're all fine. Right?"

Ai and Darius exchanged another look, but eventually, they both shrugged it off and went back to work.

But it was only a second later that Molly was shouting. "No!"

Ai and Darius jolted up and looked back towards her with wide eyes. Molly turned to meet them a look of horror on her face.

"H-Hey, t-there's a... a..." Molly couldn't seem to get it out. Eventually, she just shook her head and waved them over. Ai and Darius came immediately, and quickly saw what had terrified Molly.

There, in the wall of there cave and uncovered by some fresh snow Molly must have just swept aside... was a glove. No... not just a glove. There was a hand in the glove.

Ai sucked in a breath. "Oh no."

Darius felt himself gagging. A body... he was looking at a body...

"We..." Darius clutched at his mouth, his stomach rolling. "We have to get Angelico... Now!"

The other two didn't argue, stumbling to their feet and racing up the slop, slipping and sliding all the way... and then back towards the base at as much of a run as they could manage in the snow, gently falling like soft rain, and covering their footsteps as they went.

When Angelico first saw the three of them racing towards her, she blanked, drawing back as her eyebrows knit in concern. None them called out to her, they couldn't, when they were too busy sucking breath into their own lungs, but even without that, it only took one closer look at their faces for Angelico to understand the urgency of the situation.

"What?" she insisted, surveying the three of them as they slid to a stop in front of her.

Darius opened his mouth, ready to answer her, but before he could, he was doubled over, clutching at his stomach as he coughed violently, feeling his throat grow more and more sore as he sunk further and further to the floor.

Luckily, AI grabbed him, holding him up.

"There's... there's... a person... there's a..." Molly gasped breathlessly, desperately spitting out the words like that would help, but all they did was make it look like she was drowning above water.

"We found something at the place we were digging," Ai picked up, and Darius was surprised (and embarrassed) to find that Ai did not seem out of breath even slightly, despite being the fastest out of all of them. Shouldn't Darius be just a little better at running after doing basically nothing but for the past... well... year or so?

Angelico straightened. "What? What did you find? This better not be a joke..."

"A hand!" Ai told her quickly. "A hand. We found someone's hand."

Angelico didn't respond at first, a slow look of confusion drawing over her features, before, suddenly, a flash of horrified realization flashed across her face.

"...No..." she whispered breathlessly, and without another word, she was sweeping past the three of them, rushing out of the kitchen.

The three kids gaped at her for a moment, still processing what had happened, and Angelico's strange reaction. For a second, they didn't move, leaning against each other and staring, slack jawed, at the swinging door in front of them. Whispers filled the kitchen, and despite not really listening, Darius heard a few of them.

"Do you think..."

"Could it actually be them..."

"But I'd thought they..."

"What the hell is going on..."

Darius' ears perked up, but before he could hear more, the door was suddenly swinging open violently again. Angelico poked her head through the door, glaring at them.

"Hey, come on!" she hissed at them. "This is NOT the time to slack off. Let's go!"

The three of them jumped, and immediately started running after her like a few had been lit underneath them. By now, they had regained control of their breathing, but as they raced back through the halls of Rime 12, Darius knew it wouldn't last long.

He had already started to loose his breath by the time they arrived at the entrance to the base, leaning against the wall as Angelico strolled forward to shove it open. But she didn't go through it, she just... paused.

And then she swore, loudly. Nearly shouting it.

Darius didn't get a chance to be surprised before Angelico was turning around, looking surprisingly anxious as she tapped her foot out in a rapid beat, looking at each of them in turn.

"Well?" she huffed, visibly gritting her teeth. "Which way was it? Where are the bodies?"

Darius blinked, and then frowned, leaning around her to take a look at the bright expanse of snow outside the base. Endless, uniformed, rolling white hills that surrounded them in all directions, trapping them.

And their hole was no where to be seen, their tracks haven already been covered up at the lightly falling snow.

Darius shivered, and then gulped nervously. He surveyed the land again, unable to meet Angelico's eyes, but that pass told him the same thing the other pass had: there were no landmarks, no indications, and absolutely no clues as to where they had gone. Every trace of them had been simply erased.

"Um..." Darius started awkwardly, his voice sticking to his throat. "I...I..."

Suddenly, Darius was violently pushed to the sigh was Molly ran past him.

"Here!" she cried over her shoulder as she ran out to the white that surrounded them. "Over here!"

The others exchanged a confused glance, but nevertheless, they did as she said, rushing out into the white snow, even Angelico, who was desperately not prepare for it...

...And neither were Darius, Ai, and Molly, Darius realized as he touched his bare face.

A good amount of steps away from the base, Molly suddenly sunk down heavily into the snow, brushing it away in front of her as the rest of them surrounded her. It only was barely a second, before Molly took a hold of whatever she was searching for, and held it up triumphantly.

It was... a scarf. One of their scarves, that Darius suddenly remembered they had been shredding as they had been trying to run as fast as they could. Apparently, the things they had thrown off had been left behind and Molly realized that it could be used as a trail.

Except...

"How-?" Ai started asking, but whatever she was asking was cut off as Angelico huffed.

"Don't waste your clothes," she complained. She nodded at Molly. "Keep going. We need to hurry."

Molly nodded, standing up quickly and clutching the scarf in her hands as they keep going, pushing through the snow, with various stops along as Molly grabbed more of the clothes buried beneath the snow. Darius would have thought that this would only waste time, but Angelico seemed to prefer this method, as she was able to grab everything the two had dropped before. Darius had a feeling they'd all have a strong talk later.

Eventually, they finally came back across the hole, and Angelico seemed to pause for a second as she looked over the crater they had created, before shaking her head and following Molly down.

"Where?" she asked as Ai and Darius slipped down afterward. "Where are they?"

"Over here," Molly replied, waving Angelico over. She was already kneeling there, digging her gloves into the ice in an attempt to get the person out. Angelico glanced at her, before her eyes finally settled in the hand, numb and lifeless, rest limply in the ice.

"Get them out," Angelico ordered quietly, and then, louder: "We need to get them out right now!"

Ai and Darius glanced at each other in confusion, but before Angelico could snap at them again, they were lifting their shovels and digging them harassingly into the hard, thick snow that surrounded the walls of the bowl. They worked quickly, in a near flurry, but after an already hard day of doing nothing but, Darius found it was getting more and more difficult to lift his own shovel, much less dig out into snow that was getting increasingly harder and more solid.

But just when Darius' aching arms and back were beginning to pound with even more pain, someone suddenly crested the lip of the bowl, looking down at them. And even though it was impossible to make out any of their features, Darius knew exactly who they were: it was Pin, here to help, and they weren't alone.

Darius fell backwards, exhausted, as Pin came down. They surveyed Darius for a moment, tilting their head and seemingly studying him, but why, Darius couldn't be sure. It was impossible to tell anything about Pin, especially with their face hidden as it was.

Finally, Pin reached forward, taking the shovel from Darius' grip without a word. Without as much as an acknowledgement, they turned to Angelico, who, Darius suddenly realized, was barefaced and hugging her self tightly, her blue lips pressed in a tight, stubborn line. Her eyes were firm and her stance was authoritative, but even she couldn't hide her shivering.

"...Angelico..." Pin nearly whispered, the name a mere breath. They didn't continue, but Darius suddenly felt like that name carried so much more than it could ever seem to.

Angelico's lip curled up in a sneer. "Oh, shut it, Pin, I'm not stupid. I'll go inside with these three before we die out here. You all dig out those two."

Darius' head perked up at 'those two'. What could that mean? When Darius looked back at the wall of the bowl there was nothing but that hand, everything else buried under snow. How did Angelico...?

"It's them?" Pin asked, sounding taken aback and just as surprised as Darius. "You're sure."

"Who else is it going to be?" Angelico asked, exasperated. "Dig them up as quickly as possible and bring them to the fire. There might be a chance they're still alive and kicking but if not we can... well, never mind. Do it quickly, now."

Pin drew back, again tilting their head at Angelico, but if they had questions, they didn't voice them, instead giving Angelico a swift nod. The two turned away from each other, Angelico towards the base, and Pin towards the hand, holding the shovel like a threat.

Other's, who Darius suddenly realized had also been watching, started moving as well, apparently haven gotten their shovels earlier. Then, all of them, and there must have been about a dozen or so, all descended upon the spot, conglomerating into a disorganized clutter as they started piecing away at the snow faster and more effectively than Darius had done all day.

Angelico didn't turn to look as she walked away, passing by Darius as she did so.

"Let's go," she muttered to him, not stopping nor looking directly at him. "And you two as well! Let's go!"

Ai and Molly, who had been watching the scene unfold with the same slack jawed voyeurism that Darius had been watching with as well, finally snapped out of whatever had been enticing them to see. As they turned to look, Darius knew it was him who had caught their eye first as they dropped their shovels, and then Angelico next, as they scrambled over the sloped hill leading into the hole, rushing over themselves to try and get to their leader's retreating back.

Darius did not follow with so much enthusiasm, choosing to instead take his time as he crawled out of the bowl, following after Angelico, AI and Molly's footsteps. Sure, his face was beginning to hurt from the snow hitting it like tiny, painful little BB pellets. And his fingers were starting to become a little numb, is not outright lifeless. And everywhere else? Darius knew his legs and arms were moving but only on the fact that he could look down and watch them do it. Other than that, he couldn't feel much of them at all, and when he wasn't looking, moving his legs felt about as ineffectual as trying to pick of Rime 12 with his mind.

Still... Darius wasn't sure he wanted to go inside, especially knowing that he almost certainly wasn't going to get fed. But more than that, Darius had started feeling... suspicious, something he probably should have been feeling this whole time when he was too busy trying to prove a dead person wrong than to see the evidence in front of his own face.

Who was... or Darius supposed, were those two people buried in the ice? When Ai mentioned them, Angelico seemed to immediately know who they were so obviously they had a connection, but why would those two be all the way out there, buried in the snow?

Darius didn't like it. A sinking, suspicious pit was starting to form in Darius' stomach as millions of guesses as to what happened, some nice, most not, raced through his head. Darius couldn't stop thinking of that hand, gloved and leaving no indications of size or skin colour as he looked at his own.

Buried under snow... dying there... what would that feel like?

Probably not good, Darius decided, and he suddenly made up his mind that no matter what, Darius did not want to be left buried alive in snow, no matter what. Still, when the looming tower of Rime 12 leaned over him, casting it's shadow like a net. Darius couldn't stop himself from reaching forward and immediately taking a hold of the door handle, wrenching it open and ducking inside, where warmth beckoned.

What were they going to do?

Aaaand he was back in his room. Again. Great. Well, at the very least, it was warmer here, and Darius sighed, leaning against the wall as he savoured it as much as he possibly could.

"A GHOST?!"

Darius' eyes opened slowly, and he sighed, this time in annoyance rather than content. Sticky to the wall, Darius moved through his own that that was quickly becoming more and more unfamiliar. He felt like a stranger. An intruder. A ...ghost.

Darius' stomach tightened at that.

At this point he was kind of figuring out how this works, so instead of peering around the conor, Darius stopped with his back to the wall, hidden, but listening in.

Even though he really, really wanted to look around the corner, because he could have sworn that squeaky, high pitched yell came from Ben. But it couldn't have, right? Because Ben wasn't like that anymore... right?

Apparently the others thought so, too, as they didn't respond for several shellshocked seconds.

The pause was only ended when Ben said, slightly embarrassed: "What?"

"Uhhh... dude? I thought you weren't afraid of anything anymore," Kenji told him, and Ben huffed indignantly.

"Well, not stuff like germs and dinos, yeah," Ben explained. "Because I know I can BEAT that stuff. I can punch a dinosaur! I can't punch a ghost!"

"Um... by that logic, they can punch you, either," Yaz pointed out, and Sammy giggled. Darius felt his heart pinch painfully at that. Man... he missed these guys. So much. It hurt not to be able to turn the corner and see them, to see how his friends were doing after so long but... Darius grit his teeth and held still.

"Aw, cute," Brooklyn cooed, and Darius breathed a soft sigh of relief at that. So Yaz and Sammy were still together than? That was good... though Darius wasn't quite sure why that was unexpected. It wasn't like he expected them to break up... but it was still nice to know. Were Brooklyn and Kenji still together, though?

"That is so not how it works," Ben argued, and Darius suddenly remembered that he was listening in on a conversation.

"We don't... know how it works," Darius, the other Darius said, and the real Darius fumed. He'd forgotten that he was listening in on a conversation, with a fake version of himself within it.

"All we know is that it shows up sometimes just..." Brooklyn spoke up, trailing off as she searched for the right word. "Just watching, in the background. We don't know when it appears, it seems to be random, but we do know that as soon as it's seen, it disappears."

"And it looks like Darius," Sammy added.

"And it looks like Darius," Brooklyn confirmed, sighing. "We don't know why."

"It's so creepy," Kenji hissed. "It just-I don't know, you turn around and it's just there! I can't go five seconds before looking over my shoulder, certain that thing is going to appear again!"

"You also can't go five seconds without poking me," the fake Darius said, teasingly.

"I need to be sure," Kenji told him, gravely.

"Huh," Sammy said, thoughtfully. "Well, Darius, have you ever had a secret twin you never knew of?"

A split second of silent confusion followed that.

"Um... no?" the fake Darius tried. "Not that I, well, know of."

"Sammy, you don't really think-," Yaz started, but before she could finish, Sammy interrupted her.

"Well, then, what if this ghost is your secret twin?!" Sammy blurted. A loud slap was heard, and the real Darius could imagine Yaz hitting the palm of her hand against her head.

"And he's dead?" Ben asked.

"That's morbid," Kenji muttered.

"Well, if it's a ghost and it looks like Darius then it's the only possible solution!" Sammy declared, and this time, it was Yaz's turn to laugh.

"Only possible?" Ben asked skeptically. "I mean it could also be a poltergeist that taking the shape of Darius, so... ugh, never mind, I really hope it's not that."

"Me too," Brooklyn agreed with a slight tremor. "Although it could be-."

"We can sit here, guessing, all day," the fake Darius interrupted, and Darius' blood boiled. He'd never do that. He'd never interrupt their friends while they were speaking. Who was this guy, who'd came into his family home, into his friend group, and into his life without anyone, not one person, noticing?! Didn't anyone see that this... whoever, whatever it was... was clearly not Darius?! Did anyone care?!

"But I don't think we're actually going to get anywhere by guessing," the fake Darius continued while the real one grit his teeth. "We could sit here and come up with a million different things it could be-."

"Well," Sammy said skeptically.

"-But we won't get any answers from sitting here," the fake Darius told them. "We need to get up and do some research. To figure out what we're up against and then, hopefully, to catch it."

Silence greeted this.

"You want to... catch it?" Kenji asked hesitantly, and the real Darius was unsure why he sounded so against that. It was nice, but also... why?

"You're long lost twin brother?" Sammy gasped.

"How are we going to catch it?" Ben pondered. "With a net?"

"I..." the fake Darius stammered. "I-um... well, I hadn't actually figured that part out yet. That's what the research is for."

"Why do you want to catch it?" Brooklyn asked, and the real Darius felt himself take a deep breath. Kenji was maybe on his side... would Brooklyn be as well? "I mean, it haunting you, right? We have to get rid of it so it stops!"

...Oh.

"No, not yet," the fake Darius told her, and the real Darius' frown deepened. "I want to know what's going on. Why it's doing this, why me specifically. I want answers, to find out what it's really up to."

Yeah, right. The real Darius could just imagine it now. The fake Darius and the real Darius' friends would catch him, and then put him in the basement or... whatever. The real Darius would try to explain that he's the real one, and the fake Darius is the imposter, but the fake Darius would have already planned for that, telling the real Darius' friends that the real Darius would try to trick them and he was lying about everything... and then the real Darius' friends would go back upstairs and leave the real Darius alone with the fake Darius, who would then monologue about how he's going to take over the world, or destroy it or... whatever.

No, worse. The fake Darius would monologue about his evil plan to wipe ALL DINOSAURS FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

...Maybe the real Darius was getting ahead of himself.

"Well, we could also sell it," Yaz suggested, and Darius winced. They didn't know, they didn't know... "I mean, real, irrefutable proof that we have a ghost? That'd make up billionaires!"

"Um..." Kenji said.

"The rest of us billionaires."

"You don't have to rub it in, you know," Brooklyn told him teasingly. Kenji scoffed.

"Nah, I won at online Uno last night I'm pretty sure we agreed that gave me bragging rights," Kenji laughed.

"For Uno only!" Ben shouted, but there was no real malice behind the words.

For some reason, that was the thing that had sent Darius' walls down. Uno online? Kenji living with them? Teasing? Darius' friends coming out to help with an insane task just... just because he had asked?

He... Darius missed it so badly right in that moment that for the next several, he was both in control and not in control of his body.

He stepped out into the corner, right into the kitchen where everyone was gathered in a circle around the breakfast table. Yaz and Sammy had their hands clasped on the table. Brooklyn And Kenji were leaning on each other, nearly cuddling. Ben was standing up on his chair, glaring at Kenji, but there was a smile tugging at his lips, too.

Darius, the imposter, was the first on to see him.

And then it all went away.

When Darius' eyes started fluttering open, the first thing he noticed was the heat flickering on his skin like ants.

He was on fire.

Just like-

Darius' eyes flew the rest of the way open, his arms circling around himself as he panicked, but all that his ungloved hands felt was the thick, dry fabric. He was fine.

Darius breathed a sigh of relief. To his right was a wall of heat and light flickering on the edge of his vision. Darius didn't look that way. Instead, he looked to his left, where a boy with black hair and a black face he'd never seen before was lying beside him, his eyes closed.

"Oh good," a voice said, and Darius' eyes flickered up to see Angelico standing above him, a severe look on her face. "You're awake. We need to talk."

Footnotes:

Level up. The Skill Faithful Listener 1 has increased to Faithful Listener 2.