“Nina, can you hear me?”

It hadn’t taken Jade and Saela long to find Nina. After entering the building by sneaking in through a rear door, the pair had quickly realised that the ground floor of the building wasn’t going to be where she was held. Spacious, elegantly decorated, and furnished in a similar fashion to the estate manor, it was clear that what Rucille had described as a lab was actually much more of an oversized residence.

Until they saw the stairs leading down into the earth, that was.

If the ground floor of the lab was a perfect image of what Nina would have considered medieval style nobility, the basement of the lab would have been a perfect image of anything but. By the time they had reached the bottom of the stairs, stone and timber had given way to steel and plastic as Jade and Saela found themselves in what they swore could have been a different world. Completely devoid of decoration, the actual lab was bright, sterile, and functional. White corridors crisscrossed the space in a grid pattern, while polished steel doors reflected the light from the fluorescent lamps which hung above.

Thankfully it seemed as though despite the light which filled each and every crevice of the basement, the majority of the people that worked here followed regular sleeping patterns. An unforeseen advantage to attempting their rescue at night seemed to be that that the majority of the staff who worked at the lab weren’t around. Any person who was currently asleep was one person less that they would have to avoid.

The pair hadn’t even found that many locked rooms as they scuttled through the maze of white hallways with caution, but when they did come across them Jade would quickly open the lock with a practiced motion. After checking the contents of the rooms, some of which left them feeling rather apprehensive about Nina’s fate, they had continued on until they had arrived at a door in the far corner of the basement.

While they had only been in the lab for around five minutes, they had still needed to dodge two researchers who had been walking together through one of the halls. Worried that Reina had been wrong and they were actually searching the wrong place, Jade quietly pushed the door open after picking the lock to breathe a sigh of relief when she saw that they had found who they had been looking for.

Her condition, however, was worrisome.

“This is awful,” Jade quietly murmured as she walked over before placing her hands on Nina’s cheeks. Raising her head slightly to look into her eyes, she frowned. “Nina?”

She watched as Nina’s eyes slowly rolled in her direction, her expression glassy as she seemed to look straight through her. Opening and closing slowly, her jaw flapped as though weak while no words emerged. Forced to support her head to stop it from lolling over to the side, Jade brushed a few strands of hair out of her face as she bit her lip. If Nina could even tell who was talking to her right now, Jade didn’t know. Fighting back a combination of anger and sadness, she fumbled with the restraints that kept her in place with shaking hands.

As a result of Rucille’s earlier handiwork, Nina’s bare arms were both covered from shoulder to wrist with large purple bruises that ran down them in a steady pattern like an animal hide. Further crisscrossed with streaks of dry blood from where Rucille had constantly drawn blood, the dark splotches were a complete contrast to the sickly yellowness in her face. Saela and Jade examined what seemed to be a murky green circle which was sprawling across the centre of her chest as they released the shackles, and while they didn’t know what it was, it clearly wasn’t good. Supporting her from flopping over as the neck restraint was removed, Jade watched as Saela removed the final restraints around her feet before looking to Nina again.

“Nina, can you stand?”

Nina’s eyes sluggishly followed Jade’s face, although a response seemed impossible as her mouth simply hung open, lifelessly flapping. Quickly realising that there would be no way at all for Nina to stand as her body was weak like a ragdoll in her embrace, Jade looked over to Saela before nodding in the direction of the bench behind them.

“Get her shirt.”

Saela’s expression was cold as she grabbed the white shirt from the desk before helping Jade thread Nina’s arms through the sleeves. Holding her steady as Jade worked her way through the buttons, she wrinkled her nose before looking down.

“She wet herself.”

“Do you think she could help it?” Jade hissed as she finished with the buttons before kneeling down in front of Nina. Placing a hand on each of her shoulders to prevent her from slumping forward, she looked into her eyes once more. “Nina it’s Jade. Can you hear me?”

“Obviously she can’t,” Saela frowned as she folded her arms. “Or she can’t respond. Either way, we are in way over our heads.”

“So help me then,” Jade said as she pulled Nina to her feet before confirming that as she had feared, Nina’s legs were useless. There was simply no way at all that she was going to walk out of this, and carrying her was only going to make their escape even more difficult than it already was.

“We both know that this isn’t going to work,” Saela replied with a cool gaze as she eyed Nina. “Admit it, we’ve failed.”

Jade paused for a moment as she processed what Saela had said before she ran an eye over her posture. After flying over the wall, dodging Royal Guards across the Royal District grounds, and even breaking into the Inin Estate lab , Jade suddenly realized what Saela wanted to do. After coming all this way to rescue her…

“You want to leave her here,” Jade accused her as she fought to contain the rage inside her that was already at a light boil. “After she has been through all of this,” she spat as she pointed at Nina. “You want to leave her here.”

“I don’t want to leave her here,” Saela replied with a frustrated expression as she ran an eye over Nina’s pitiful state. “I’m just being realistic. How do you suppose we’re supposed to get her back to Reina? Not only do we have to escape the lab, we also have to make it all the way back across the District while carrying a ragdoll in a shirt that might as well be a big white flag. Even if we do manage that, we would still have to get her over the wall somehow, pass her down to Svanda or Trim, and then dodge Ormain and his gang of crazies before we can even look at leaving the plate in one piece.”

“I didn’t come all this way to give up now,” Jade hissed as she hauled Nina, with quite some effort, onto her shoulder. “And I’m certainly not leaving her with that monster.”

“Well I’m not risking my life for a lost cause,” Saela replied before she looked towards the door. “If you want to give yourself up to Rucille, that’s your call.”

Jade clenched her fists as she watched Saela stroll through the door without looking back before disappearing down the corridor from where they had come. Pushing down the urge to scream at her for being so heartless, she instead grit her teeth before following her out.

Nina wasn’t heavy, but Jade wasn’t particularly strong either. Traversing flat ground wouldn’t be a problem, but she was already thinking about how she would have to change her return route to accommodate for the walls. She knew that she could easily jump and then climb over some of the three or so meter walls as she had done on the way here, but managing to haul Nina over some of them would probably prove to be impossible. Even if it wasn’t, she would probably spend too much time exposed on the side of the road.

Poking her head around a corner was also something that had now become difficult. Nina’s head lolled around while she tried to balance the weight, and if she leaned to look around a corner, Nina’s body would also stick out. She hadn’t heard Saela raise any alarms yet, so running on the assumption that she had retraced their earlier route she was beginning to think that it might simply be best solution to risk it and go. She didn’t want to admit that what Saela had said had an element of truth to it, but she also knew that throwing caution to the wind right now was probably her best chance of making the rescue successful. Carrying Nina was alright for now, but it would soon begin to drastically reduce her stamina and she didn’t want to run out of steam half way through.

The fact that Nina was slung over her shoulder made it impossible to look to her right, so while awkwardly turning about, she retraced her route to the exit. Walking as quickly and as quietly as she could, her heartbeat thumped as she carried Nina through the corridors before finally managing to make it onto the stairs. She had expected someone to cry out at any moment, yet the cry had never come.

Stopping to think about her good fortune was something that she knew she couldn’t afford, so she quickly turned her attention to scanning the ground floor for any human presence. Finding it clear, she took a short breath before quickly scuttling back in the direction that she had come before opening the door and stepping out into the air.

“You’d be lighter if you didn’t make such good food, wouldn’t you?” Jade mumbled to herself as she readjusted Nina’s position on her shoulder before slowly making her way to the corner of the building. “You have to cook for me again when we get back, okay?”

Nina didn’t respond, but Jade could still feel her weak breathing against her back where Nina’s chest was pressed against it. It was comforting, and she was glad that Nina didn’t look to be in pain despite what she seemed to have been through. Gazing out across the seemingly endless stretch of uncovered lawn, she sighed to herself when she realised that running across the grass while carrying Nina unfortunately wasn’t a possibility. Dragging her across by the feet wouldn’t be any better, and Nina’s white shirt hanging off her back would also act like a flag in the night.

“This is it, huh,” she sighed to herself as she wondered if their escape would have been any easier if Saela hadn’t decided to give up. Maybe they could have carried her together, but that was something that she wouldn’t ever find out. It was up to her alone to get Nina out of there, and that was what she was going to do.

Without any time to think over the potential repercussions, Jade simply steeled herself and then did the only thing that she could do.

She walked.