"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"WHAT THE...?" Wrench's mouth was wide open, his eyes flashing in shock as he stared at the group in front of him.

Stepping out of the lift in two quick strides, the skinhead pushed him, hard. "Oh, you have some nerve, showing up here."

"Hey, hey!" Ember pushed him back. "What the fuck is going on?"

"Your little boyfriend here is the biggest prick back in the UK, that's what's going on." The boy with the split lip spat angrily. "Did you know he's killed people before? One of our guys pretty recently, too."

"Yeah, I pretty much knew that." Ember shrugged. "And?"

"I didn't kill that Davis guy." Wrench stepped back. It was clear that the history between the group and Wrench was a long, hate-fueled one: they seemed to parallel each other, their bodies opposing forces in a battle of rage. "I'm not even in the Mongrels anymore. Leave it out."

"Oh, fuck off. I'm really, really not in the mood for your shit." The skinhead drew something out of his pocket, revealing a long, shiny knife.

"Hang on. Just- just wait a minute." Wrench held his hands up in surrender. His tattoos peeked out from beneath his jumper, revealing several dark black symbols on his wrist. "Why are you here?"

"Trying to help Iris, which you've probably had something to do with." The skinhead inched closer. "We know you were at that stupid camp with her."

"You know Iris?" Ember and Levi practically yelled in unison.

"Yes..." The pale boy frowned, confused. "Sorry, who are you?"

"We're her friends." Ember spluttered, trying to get the words out as quickly as she could. "We know her. We're trying to help her, too."

The tall one put a hand on the skinhead's shoulder, as if to stop him from slitting Wrench's throat. "Wait. Is one of you Levi?"

"Yeah." Levi stepped forward, clearing his throat. How did they know Iris? How did they even know who he was? "Yeah, that's me."

"Well damn." The skinhead replied, pocketing his knife. All eyes were drawn to Levi, looks of respect on their faces.

"I'm Rylan." The tall guy with the afro said, stepping forward and introducing the skinhead as Leon, the pale, scarred boy as Scab and the boy with the split lip as Rex. "We're from Iris' gang. The Sangue."

Leon started chuckling to himself, gaining a glare from Rylan.

"What?" Rylan snapped.

Leon grinned, nudging Scab as if he'd laugh with him. "That rhymed."

Rex, who rolled his eyes at his gang members, moved away from the wall and gave Levi a look of apology. "This happens a lot. I just ignore them."

"Anyway, how did you guys know Iris was in trouble?" Ember asked, drawing their attention back to the situation at hand. She was going more irritated by the second, impatience clear by the rolling of her eyes and the grimace on her face.

"Well that's a long story." Rylan said, scratching the back of his head. "We were asked to by someone. He claims he knows you, and asked us to help."

"And where is this mysterious someone?" Ember asked. She was standing impatiently with one hand on her hip and her head tilted to the side. Despite her pervasive and confident interactions with the gang, Levi could see that she was still nervous. Her hands trembled when she lifted them to adjust her hair, and her eyes flitted around the room anxiously. Perhaps she cared a lot more about Iris than she made out.

"In the lobby." Rex announced. "That's why we came up to get you. He's waiting for us now."

♥♥♥

The decision to meet the 'mysterious someone' in the lobby of a budget hotel was perhaps not the most suitable, for obvious reasons, given that the group were made up of gang members, convicts and juveniles, and the lobby café was bustling with elderly couples and families with young children. This, however, did not seem to bother the Sangue, who filed through the tables to reach the back of the room, talking amongst each other animatedly.

But as soon as they reached the table, it seemed as if all conversation stopped. At least from Wrench and Ember, who halted in their step, frozen in complete shock.

"Chase?" Ember stuttered, her eyes glued to the boy she once loved. It was clear she hadn't prepared herself for this moment, purely because she had prepared to never see him again. And yet there he was, in plain sight, his dark hair swept to one side, a plain navy shirt clutching at his chest and two heavy bags under those dark eyes.

Wrench, who had been unproblematic for the past couple of weeks, had now found himself in a room with the majority of his so called "enemies", cursing under his breath for such bad luck.

Chase smiled sadly as he stared at Ember, one hand clutching the mug of coffee on the table, the other squeezing the edge of the table so hard that his knuckles were turning white. "Yeah."

"What the fuck are you doing here, man?" Levi asked, moving towards him so that he could hug his friend. "How...?"

"I think we should all just sit and talk for a second. I need to fill you guys in on a lot." Chase sighed. As soon as everyone was seated, he began. "Okay. I'll just start from the beginning. It's...well, I don't want you to hate me so just hear me out. I mean, I don't think you'll hate me. I just, well, it might be a lot for you to hear but I-"

"Just start, man." Levi said, smiling reassuringly. It was nice to have his best friend back, even if he did look and sound different. Chase seemed more solemn – less energetic and bubbly, somehow. Something had happened that scared him. And that was unusual in itself.

Chase nodded and took a deep breath. "When I was at Camp Juvy, I noticed that Hunter was behaving weirdly. He was always checking his phone and texting people, not talking a lot in conversations and disappearing for hours." He cleared his throat, making awkward eye contact with Wrench, who had deliberately seated himself away from Ember to avoid any unnecessary anger. After looking away he continued. "It was fine at first, I didn't really think about it too much, and then one night I was heading off to the toilet, and I saw someone with a torch, going in the direction of the gates. I could tell pretty quickly that it was Hunter. You know how he's kinda small and lanky, and nobody really looks like him?"

Levi smiled, Ember nodding too. The Sangue, clearly bored of the conversation already, had taken to ripping up pieces of napkin and placing them on Rylan's head, to see how long it would take for him to notice. Ember flashed them a glare, immediately stopping them from their mischievous behavior.

"Anyway, I decided to follow him to see what it was. You know, I thought it was gonna be drugs or something, and to be honest, Levi, I thought that if I was the one to catch him, maybe he'd be scared that I'd tell you and stop. But when I got there, I saw him talking to two guys who were dressed in black and had a gun each. So I hid behind this tree and listened."

"What were they saying?" Ember asked. Her voice seemed small in the conversation, perhaps calming almost. Everyone could sense that Chase was on edge, and that this story wasn't easy for him to tell.

"About this plan that was going to happen. A place and time that Hunter needed to be there, and how Iris needed to be lured without anyone else following. Hunter was assuring them that nobody else knew and it was all going to plan, until I dropped my torch and it fell on the switch, causing the whole area around me to light up like a fucking Christmas tree."

"Shit." Levi said, thinking of the guns that they had. Sure, Chase had a mean punch, but that was nothing behind a fence and two guys that could pack bullets in his body within seconds.

"They forced Hunter to come and take me to them, so that they could see me properly. And they were going to shoot me, but Hunter was begging them not to, saying that he wouldn't go along with the plan if I was killed. Luckily they stopped, but it was on one condition." At this moment, he looked to Ember, whose eyes were glued to him. It was a tense situation, the suspense drifting around everyone in the conversation. After all, everyone in the group seemed to have at least once hated one or another. "That I left Camp Juvy without telling anyone what I heard or saw, straight away the next morning. Hunter was apologizing once we left, saying that I had to do it after knowing what I knew. I was now in the way of the whole fucking thing, whatever it was, and therefore it could ruin everything. And if I didn't do it, they would kill Ember."

For a minute, everyone was silent. Even the Sangue, who already knew the story, kept to themselves. Ember, sat with her hands underneath her thighs, had her eyes glued to the floor, her face flickering with conflicting emotions.

Levi swallowed. "So you left."

"And I didn't tell you. They were able to call in so the Camp leaders didn't suspect anything. I don't know how they did it, but obviously it worked." 

He exhaled shakily. "I'm so fucking sorry Levi. I know that if I said something I could've stopped this, and now we wouldn't be here." His eyes desperately searched that of his friends, squeezing his arm. "I'm so so fucking sorry. As soon as I left I felt awful, like such a coward. Then a couple of weeks later my mum told me about you guys escaping the camp and how they were looking for you, asking if I knew anything about it, and suddenly I realized how much danger you were in. These guys that had the guns – there could be hundreds of them wherever you were going."

"So he called us." Leon said, grinning. He seemed proud almost, to have come to the rescue, his green eyes sparkling in the light, one knee jiggling up and down enthusiastically.

Chase nodded in clarification. "Yeah. I didn't get a lot from the conversation I heard at the gate but I did hear about Iris and her gang – they kept telling Hunter not to let the Sangue find out, or that would be the end of everything, because Iris being the leader had a lot of connections. So I asked around, and some of the people I knew from Juvy put me in touch with some guys in London, who gave me a number. The first number was some guy called Sniper?"

"Oh, yeah." Leon nodded, pointing in his face, much to Chase's irritation. "He's supposed to be our leader right now."

"Well, I called him asking if he was the head of the Sangue and he seemed pretty rushed and annoyed about the call so he gave me Rylan's number instead." 

"Yeah, that's not a surprise." Scab said. He shook his head grumpily. "Sniper's gone AWOL. On holiday with his family or something like some pansy. He's supposed to be in charge, but he's been shit at it so Rylan is instead."

"Anyway as soon as we got the call from Chase we flew out." Rex added, fiddling with his nose piercing. "We had enough from drug money to make it, so we met Chase at the airport."

Ember frowned. Her green eyes were squinting, one hand tapping the table. "But how did you find us?"

"Iris had texted us on some number, updating us that she was out of camp and heading towards Georgia." Scab answered. "We like to update each other on our whereabouts, and we were lucky enough that she did that."

"That must have been Hunter's phone." Levi said, speaking to Ember, who nodded. Even if Iris had been reckless going by herself to the address, at least she was sensible enough to let someone know roughly were they were.

Wrench leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table. "But how did you track us here, if she only said 'Georgia'?"

"Because, you prick, we used the IP address to track the number – one of my suppliers has a connection with someone who can do that, normally so they can hunt down someone who hasn't been paying up. It cut a lot of our money, though." Rylan said. He shrugged, sighing. "But it was for Iris. If one of us is in trouble, we help no matter what the consequences are."

"How very noble of you." Wrench scoffed, crossing his arms like a two-year-old.

Ember was biting her lip. "Guys, this is all well and good, but in case you haven't noticed, there isn't a lot of us here, and there's plenty of guys out there with who knows what."

She was right. Levi had seen that place, all secluded and cut off from the rest of the world. If these guys had managed to practically kidnap Hunter without anyone knowing, they clearly had a well secured system in place to cover everything up. Whether that was ammunition, plenty of fighters, or worse - both, they were yet to find out. 

"Oh, there is a lot of us." Leon smiled. He rubbed his hands together like an evil mastermind with a grand scheme. "We come prepared. Always."

"We got another thirty guys on their way." Chase said, answering in a more understandable way. "All we need to do now is meet them and head towards Iris and Hunter."

After the next few minutes discussing the plan, the group agreed on what measures were going to take place to ensure ease, security and back up. Luckily everything had mostly been planned out beforehand - Wrench, Ember and Levi hadn't thought of any major ideas, so they gratefully sat and listened like eager puppies awaiting feeding. As soon as it was over, the group stood up and talked amongst themselves. 

Chase turned to Levi and spoke to him privately. "I really am sorry, man. If I could change what I did-"

"I know. You would." Levi smiled sadly. Perhaps if Chase had told him in the first place they wouldn't be in this situation. However, Chase had been threatened, and he was trying his best now to rectify his wrong. In fact, it was more than Levi could have asked for. "I'm not angry Chase. I'm happy to see you."

Chase's eyes seemed to glisten with relief, both boys wrapping themselves in an embrace for old times sake. When they released, the group started to disperse in the direction of the exit.

"Well thank god you didn't accidentally kill me then." Wrench was saying slyly to Scab, a smirk on his lips.

Leon punched him in the stomach. "I can still do that though."

"Hey." Wrench wheezed, clutching the sore spot. "That wasn't very nice. We're on the same team now, buddy."

Levi smiled, but it didn't seem to match the dull, aching feeling in his chest. It was strange, really, how losing Iris and Hunter had kick started memories of his past, of his mother, and that gut-wrenching, terrifying grief of her death.

For now he could only hope that the plan would work.

After all, it was all they had. 

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡ 

AUTHORS NOTE: Another one!!!

Chase is BACK? WHAT?! AND THE SANGUE IS HERE? WHAT?! 

A lot of you guessed that the Sangue were the guys in the lift so well done!!! I realized that although we all know the characters, the characters themselves actually don't know each other face to face so it was pretty fun to play around with the whole 'wait, you know this person too? Technically I know you?' kinda thing. 

Anyway, what do you think? Will the plan work? Will it not?

Hmmm we shall find out soon!

Love,