Page 36 of Hell’s Weapon

Milo glances to the glass pane, his eyes widening a little as he contemplates my words. He looks back at me shaking his head profusely, the colour having also drained from his cheeks a little.

It makes me giggle. “It’s okay, we can sit tight if you’d prefer.”

He nods and jots one word down on his notepad, heights.

“Oh. Damn, you’re so cute.” It slips out before I can stop it. I don’t take it back though. He is adorable and once again has me buzzing with curiosity over what he did to earn his spot here. I could simply ask him, but it feels like stepping over a line we haven’t crossed yet. I wouldn’t normally care but talking about their crimes makes some humans uncomfortable, and I find myself not wanting to be that person to Milo.

The colour returns to his face quickly because of my comment and he drops his gaze, a smile tugging at his lips. I almost reach out to make him look at me but stop myself just in time.

What the fuck is happening? I’m clearly spending way too much time around humans. First, Wyatt has crawled beneath my skin, and now Milo is certainly triggering some feelings I am not going to decipher. He’s so far from my usual type but an emotion I refuse to name is fluttering through my blood stream when it comes to the shy nerd.

Clearing my throat, I step around him and flop back down on my bed, crossing my legs as I sit facing him, my earlier idea coming back to me. “I guess we’re waiting to see if anyone comes looking for us then. How about I start teaching you some sign language whilst we wait?”

Milo’s head snaps back up at my suggestion. He looks confused.

“Do you not want to learn?” I ask, thinking he’d jump on the opportunity.

He nods eagerly at my question and then scribbles something before showing me his notepad again, You want to teach me?

“Yeah,” I tell him, letting the honesty shine in my eyes so he can see my sincerity. “It would be great to talk to you properly. Not that I mind the paper, but at least with signing you wouldn’t have to worry about carrying it around everywhere.”

Milo hesitates for a second, still seemingly unsure that I’m not pulling some sort of trick on him, before he moves. He puts his bag down before moving to his bed and mirroring my position.

“Alright then, let's start with the letters and then we can build on it from there.”

We spend an hour or so practicing some of the fundamentals of signing and Milo is a quick learner. We are far from having a conversation but I don’t think it’ll take him long before we can start talking this way.

It’s a knock at the door and it immediately swinging open that disrupts our lesson. A female guard stands, holding the handle. “Come on, time for breakfast.”

“Were we all locked in?” I immediately start questioning her.

“Yes, sorry about that. It was required.”

“Required? Why?” I push, standing from the bed and moving towards her.

“I’m sorry, do we need to justify our every action to you?” She squares up to me but I see the tiredness in her eyes, no doubt she’s been up all night either dealing with the murder or searching for me–not that they know it was me, hopefully.

“Just seems odd. We’ve not been locked in before,” I comment, acting like I couldn’t care less even though I want her to admit something so I can question her further.

“Go to breakfast, you’ve only got fifteen minutes before classes start.” She makes a sweeping motion with the arm not holding the door, ushering us to get a move on.

Accepting that this is futile, I grab my bag once more and head out, Milo trailing behind.

“What’s your name? I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure yet,” I say over my shoulder to the guard who follows us to the stairs and starts descending them behind us. I spot a couple of others from our floor ahead of us and can hear multiple other humans further down. They must’ve let us out room by room.

“Officer Derran.” Her bored reply comes as we hit the second floor.

“How long have you worked here, Officer Derran?” I ask the follow up question as I rack my brain. I genuinely think I haven’t met her before. She could well be one of the Guards on Tartarus, or an officer that works in Elysium. I know the heads of the main policing force but there are many working in the lower ranks to ensure the city runs smoothly.

“None of your business Ninety-Eight.”

I try one last attempt at getting some information as we reach the ground floor. “Can we expect to be locked in from now on?”

“You’ll have to wait and see,” she says as we exit the building.

Great. That was useless. It seems the guards have been told to be even less friendly than they have been so far.

The extent of the lockdown we seem to be under gets made apparent as we step into the dining hall. The tables are far from occupied and we’ve been given allocated seating. Up in the far corner looks to be the residents of the second floor from our building. On the table immediately inside the doorway are those from our floor.