I bristled, memory stinging my scalp. “That was one time. And you’re the one who locked me in, jackass.”
He shrugged, not even pretending to care. “You were pissing me off.”
We trailed the group through narrow, echoing corridors. Half the class dissolved into the museum gift shop, but Caiden herded me toward the back stairs, away from the slouching chaperones.
“If you’re gonna murder me, at least do it somewhere scenic,” I muttered. My sneakers scuffed over warped floorboards, each groan of wood a complaint.
Caiden said nothing, just kept a pace a step behind, herding me up the narrow stairwell. The air at each landing grew colder, closing in hard.
At the top, a low door opened to a catwalk strung with icicles, the sky above gray as a spent shell casing. Wind whipped over the parapet, slicing my cheekbones.
He followed me out, lighting a cigarette with hands that shook slightly.
“For real?” I gestured to the ‘No Smoking’ sign staked in frosted mud. “Don’t you ever get tired of rules you’re going to break?”
He squinted into the wind, exhaled smoke that spun away in ribbons. “Only if they’re boring.”
The lighter clicked shut, metal on metal.
We stared out over the old battlefield: a patchwork of dying grass and rust-stitched mud, the memory of slaughter covered thinly in frost.
I half-expected to see spectral uniforms crawl from the trenches, bayonets and bones. Instead, I saw a murder of crows rocket up from the trees.
He sat on the edge of the catwalk, feet dangling, cigarette balanced between two fingers. I stayed standing, arms wrapped tight, wishing the cold could reach in and hush every muscle.
“You know,” he said finally, “I expected you to try harder to get away from me.”
I laughed, the sound torn raw by the wind. “I don’t give you the satisfaction if I don’t have to.”
He peeled his eyes off the horizon, settled them on me. “Why are you so obsessed with not letting anyone see you scared?”
I flinched. “Because you’d sniff it out and eat me alive.”
He grinned, a slow, leeching thing. “You’re not wrong.”
“Look, you can go back down. Smoke your cigarette in peace. I’ll wait five minutes before I go in, so we don’t have to pretend to be on speaking terms.”
I shifted my weight to the balls of my feet, ready to spring away the moment he loosened his attention.
But he just watched me, eyes narrowed like a predator testing the fence.
He looked over the bay, cigarette ash falling onto frozen dirt below. “My old man says people like you, people who break easy, are why the world’s a joke. Maybe I just wanted to see if you’d prove him wrong.”
I clenched my fists. “I’m not broken.”
“Sure.”
He stubbed the cigarette out, flicked the butt over the rail.
I trailed after him, down another set of shuddering stairs into the bowels of the fort.
Past the ropes and plexiglass that guarded the “authentic” rooms, down a corridor that shivered with the cold breath of history.
The air was darker here, denser. The only light came from a distant exit sign, bleeding red against the stone.
A trickle of other students moved through, their voices echoing from the next chamber, but Caiden led me the opposite way, into a hall bricked off from both ends.
He stopped, one hand drifting along the rotten timbers as if searching for a secret panel. He found a door—unmarked, uncurtained, slightly ajar—and nudged it open with his boot.
