The Gemini Age: Book One

[11-3] Ensnared - Part Three

    "We've been walking for a while now. Are you sure you remember where this place is?"

    "Of course I remember! It's tucked away. Gangs don't put their hideouts right on the main road, you know."

    "Are you sure you're sure? I think we've walked past that electrical substation before..."

    "Just trust me, Jade!"

    The clouds overhead had thickened since they left the flat this morning, and Marcus' quickened pace carried him into a cut-through coloured a dismal grey from the lack of direct sunlight. Jade watched him shrink down the alley and let her eyes bulge at the back of his head. "Is he always like this when he takes the lead?" she asked Lloyd over her shoulder.

    Lloyd looked up to the clouds. "Not always. Sometimes, he doesn't even say anything before he races ahead, so he's doing pretty well so far." A slight squeak tailed behind his trainers as they left thin wet prints on the paving stones, and spots of brown water already dotted both his bare ankles and the hem of his tracksuit trousers.

    A sigh woven from equal parts amusement and confusion left Jade's lips. She glanced between the two brothers as she walked, struck by the distance that had grown between them. "Really? Maybe it's a sibling thing. Do you ever ditch him like this?"

    "Are you kidding? I wouldn't know where to start if I left him behind." Shaking his head, Lloyd regained Jade's attention by tapping her shoulder after he answered her. "Not that he leaves me! He comes back! He usually does, anyway. Except when he doesn't. He likes to scope things out, to know what we're walking into. That's all!"

    Jade narrowed her eyes at the distant burgundy dot ahead of her as it stepped into the daylight out the other end of the cut-through. "If you say so."

    As the others approached, Marcus held up a hand and pressed himself against the wall of the passage. "We're here." He did not turn to face them until they all hid behind the corner of the alley, his eyes locked onto a rusted steel door fixed in the alley-facing side of the right-hand building. Though it was concealed behind some communal dumpsters and a chain-link fence, enough of the lip of the door poked out to show how much slack it had in the breeze. The crack flickered with crumpled clothing or the sheen of bare skin. "And so are they."

    Peering around the corner, Jade tilted her head to get a better look through the slim gap in the doorway. Each of the windows on this side of the building turned her gaze away with oversized fibre board panels, and Jade wrinkled her nose as she fell back. "You weren't kidding about this place being tucked away. It's literally covered in trash." She tapped her necklace with the backs of her nails, her eyes downturned. "Are all the arenas this...gross?"

    Lloyd lit up on the spot. "Oh, if you want gross, then this is the place. See, when we got tossed out of here last time, Marcus had this huge chunk of –"

    "Stop wasting time." The finger pressed to Marcus' lips sewed his brother's mouth shut, though Lloyd's eyes continued to glitter with mischief in Jade's direction. Marcus removed his cap, ran his fingers along the blades of his hair, then replaced the cap and twisted it onto his head. "Since we got banned a few days ago, I'd bet the bouncers are still looking out for us. We'll need to be smart about getting through that door."

    Jade raised an eyebrow at what she could still see of Marcus' face beneath the visor of his cap. "And how do you figure we do that? We don't have much to work with."

    Clouds drifted overhead to absorb more of the sun's glare before it reached the alley. Obscured by darkness, Marcus signalled for Lloyd to fix his cap to better resemble his own. "Gangs are always on the hunt for desperate people. Just...act like a street rat." He lifted his arm from the wall and flicked a fan of stagnant raindrops into Jade's face. Flakes of dirt lingered on her clothes and cheeks even after she batted at them with her fingers. "There. Now you look enough like one."