TW: fictional drugs

Will sank down onto one of the seats in the deserted terminal. Mith stood near the gateway, restless energy fizzing through her veins.

"You should sit down," he said. "It's going to be another ten minutes at least."

The tingly feeling heightened. Mith felt like her blood had been replaced by especially fizzy soda.

"What's going to be another ten minutes?" she demanded, while wondering if she had accidentally swallowed a whisk which was now churning her insides up.

"The plane." Will shut his eyes, suddenly looking exhausted.

"Ah."

A plane. Where the hell was he taking her now?

"Look mate, if I don't get home in half an hour my parents will freak out, and then they'll probably get the Interpol on your ass or something. Either way, it's not going to end well."

"Your point being?" Will said, an eyebrow raised.

"Let. Me. Go. Home. Now." Mith said through gritted teeth.

"Funny girl. What's to say you won't blab to dear mum and dad if I let you go? It's going to be terribly inconvenient to have to kill them too." Will smiled angelically.

"Son, that's brilliant. Quick question, though. How the bloody hell do you expect me to get you any information if you won't let me go back?" Mith glared daggers at him.

He looked confused. "I don't need a spy. I need stuff you already know, like co-ordinates to certain places, knowledge of when the patrols happen, locations of Society headquarters. You know, stuff you've learnt at the Academia Pyxis."

Fuck, I'm done for now.

 First off, Mith hadn't gone to the Carcerem Society's training institute. Her parents hadn't even taken her within a thousand-mile radius of the place. Naturally, she didn't know anything. Not a damn thing. Not patrols or coordinates or any of it. She was a liability all over again. If Will found out that she was faking her identity, he would kill her. Simple as that.

In all her life, Mith had never been as furious with her parents as she was now. Because of their insistence on a 'normal life', she was going to get brutally murdered by some teenage psychopath. It was ridiculous. The absolute, mind-blowing stupidity of her situation actually brought tears to her eyes.

"Are you alright?" Will asked kindly.

Mith wiped her eyes.

"Yeah, no thanks to you," she said bitterly.

Will got up and folded his arms over his chest.

"Are you going to be this difficult the whole journey?" His tone was mild.

"Why do you ask? Are you going to kill me if I say yes?" Mith knew she was being childish. She had to clear her mind and figure this out. Will could not find out that she was in fact not a member of the Society.

She had spent a lifetime soaking in all the stories her grandparents told her about the Ark and the Society. There was at least a small chance that some of the stuff she had learned from her grandparents would help her bluff her way through.

"I'm sorry," she said finally. "That was unwarranted."

"Don't sweat it, love," he said airily. "All my threatening's probably gotten you jittery."

Mith opened her mouth to say something rude, and then shut it. There was no point in saying anything to him. He was off his rocker. The best thing to do would be to get this nightmare over with as soon as possible.

"Where are we going?" she asked instead.

"Up. I've got some work to do."

Up. Mith's heart started to pound. Up meant the Ark. She was going there too. She was finally going to see it, after having wanted to go there for nearly her entire life.

"What you need to do there? And how are you going to get past the patrols?" she asked, trying to sound as if dodging shitloads of Carcerem Society patrols to reach a fortified prison in the sky was no big deal.

Will pressed a palm to his left temple. "I may have, ah...forgotten... to mention that I deal drugs to the inmates."

"You-what?" Mith asked faintly.

"Yeah." He looked down. "My dad invented it. The drug. It sort of, uh, unlocks their memories. Helps them relive stuff that happened really early on their lives. Something to, you know, help them make eternity go by faster."

Sweet merciful heavens, he's a drug dealer too.

"Please tell that we're not actually going to sneak into the Ark and get monsters high," Mith whispered.

"Not high, per se," Will said contemplatively. "But overall that's a pretty accurate description of what we're about to do."

"Jesus.Are you out of your mind? We're not even going to last a minute up there!" Mith tugged at strands of her hair. She wanted to curl up and cry like a baby, because this creep was either going to kill her or get her killed. She was too young to die, damn it!

"Relax. I've been doing this for years. I'm practically an expert." His trademark manic grin stretched across his face.

Mith wanted to leap forward and shake him until his teeth rattled.

She was prevented from doing just that by the loud hum of a plane engine.

"That's our cue," Will said cheerfully.

He strode towards the terminal gate. It was heavy steel, and opened only when he flashed the signum in front of something that vaguely resembled a sensor fastened to its handle.

Mith stuck out her own compass and the door swung open. The walked out onto the grassy airfield, where a tiny plane was gliding down onto the tarmac. It was old and rusty, with too-large turbines and a body that was scratched all over.

The plane's hatch creaked open. Will hoisted himself inside using a rickety metal ladder that had unfolded from the hatch. He held out his hand to help Mith up.

She pointedly ignored it and climbed in, dusting her hands off on her track-pants.

The inside of the plane was dark, the only light coming from the glowing cockpit.

"William! How did it go?" A voice called from inside the cockpit, making Mith jump.

"Fine. I got the signum." Will strapped himself into a seat.

"And you brought company, I see." The smirk in the pilot's voice made Mith nauseous.

"Ah yes, that's Mithali. She's here because she wanted to help."

Mith glared.

"I'm here because you threatened me, not because I wanted to come."

"That's what they all say," the pilot said with a chuckle.

Will grinned, and Mith pretended to barf loudly and violently into a corner.

She quietened down once the plane took off. She was terrified, though she didn't want to show it. She didn't know when- or if- she would see her parents again. She didn't know if she would survive this seemingly impossible mission. She didn't know if she could pose as a member of the Society successfully.

She didn't know. It was confusing, and scary....but strangely liberating. As the plane rose higher into the sky and soared through the stars, Mith felt oddly at peace.

That lasted for all of thirty minutes, and it was rudely interrupted by Will, who calmly informed her that they were about to jump out of the plane.

Mith nearly passed out then. But this was the only way to reach the Ark, and she had to pretend that she was totally alright with it. Her parents had called her phone before they had left, and with Will's watchful eye on her, she had switched it off. What would they think if they knew that their daughter was on her way to the one place they had tried to protect her from? Mith cringed as she thought of how it would destroy her mum and dad when she didn't get home that night, or the next one, or the next one, or the next one...

"I'm not really good with heights," Mith said as Will handed her a portable oxygen mask to strap onto her face. This high up, the air was thinner than paper.

"You've done this before, right?" Will asked, an eyebrow raised.

"Of course," she replied airily. "I'm just warning you in case I, uh, throw up or anything." 

No, I most certainly have not done this before and the blood vessels in my brain are probably going to burst any minute now.

Fuck.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we're currently over a very small village near the Karnataka-Goa border. There should be no patrols here. We're good to go." The pilot's voice over the intercom was wreaking havoc in Mith's brain.

"Alright. Mithali, leave me to do the talking. They are not going to divulge any information about what the drug made them see if you piss them off, and I need them to remember something really important. That's what this whole drug-dealing escapade is for. Do you understand?"

They.The constellations. The monsters. Mith was going to see them.

"What do you need them to remember?" she whispered.