Death Palace

Chapter 3

"Ok, the time passed. It's time for the big reveal... Aeady?" We look at each other in the mirror before she nod.

I slowly take of the silver paper of Zoe's hair. She has pink hair, but the beginning of the hair is still brown. She claps her hands in happiness when she sees how her hair is now and hug me.

"I loved it! Thanks, Jenny!" She called me Jenny! Oh my, this friendship is special!

"Hey there, kids. You know what time is it?! We look at my mom and she points at her watch "Time to sleep."

We look at each other and nod. We go to our room and change to our pijamas. We say good night to my mother before my mom kisses my head, like every night, but this time, she also kisses Zoes head. That actually makes me feel happy, it means I'm not alone anymore. After the goodnight kisses we lay on the bed. We stare at each other for some time and I feel my eyes starting to close.

"Don't worry, it's always like this... All of us... At the same time..." I hear her voice before I fell asleep.

...

I open my eyes and look around me, seeing a girl with brown and pink hair. Wait... I remember.

"Z...?" I call.

She looks at me with a smile on her mouth.

"You remember. Just as I taught." She hugs me and we both get up from the cold ground "We have to hurry up, they must be coming."

-Well well, little Fades could make it out. And she has a friend now. Little Fades, and little Peters... It doesn't seem enough, does it? You know what they say, if they're more, they're better. Well, big brother just caused another gap, so be ready." We hear the voice. It's them again.

The door opens and we go out of the room, with our guard up. I hear footsteps so we enter a room so we can hide. That's when we see her. Another girl. With brown hair and eyes with the same color. She looks to be our age.

"Who are you? Wait... I remember now..." She look at us, now calm.

"You know how this works. Let's get out of this place." I say, ready to leave this place as soon as possible.

"If we get out alive, tomorrow go to the shopping. At lunch time. We pay." Zoe says, with no exitacion.

The girl nods.

"I'm Jennifer, but you can just call me Jen or Jenny." I start, trying to break the ice a little.

"I'm Zoe, but you can call me Z, like bee but instead of a b, it's a z." Well, looks like this is something she will do for a while.

"I'm Alexandra, but you can call me either Alex or Al." The girl says with a smile.

After the presentations, we look out of the room and start to run. I hear footsteps. It's one of them. It's Zoe's fear. The big brother who never seems to sleep.

"Zooooooeeeeeee! Hello sis, come here, let's play a little." His voice echoes on the hall.

"Go to hell! You little-" Alex screams but I pull her to make her stop talking and to run faster.

We all get in a room and I see the well. We look at each other and we run to the well. The door opens and I see three guys. The big brother, the masked man and another weird guy with a black mask and I could see a piece of blue hair.

"Oh shi-" Alex was about to say something, but it's better not to let her finish, so I pushed her to the well.

...

Me and Zoe wake up at the same time. We look at each other. She hugs me and I hug her back.

"We got out alive.!" After some time hugging, she looks at me with a smile.

" Now it's time to find our new partner." We say at the same time.

...

"Good morning ladies." Joe says.

"Hey Joe." I look at him, almost ignoring him "We're in a hurry, so you mind of taking us to the shopping?

"Yeah, sure kids. You two have money?" The guy asked, with his normal smile.

"Yup." Zoe and I answer at the same time.

The man pick the car keys and take us to the shopping. We arrive there and I hear Joe snare the car.

"Aren't you going to say 'Bye dad'?"Joe asks, almost screaming so I could hear him.

"You are not my dad, Joe. You're just my mother's boyfriend. And you're just ten years older than me." Yeah, maybe my mom likes young guys, and she looks quite young so... 

"Ok, ok, you caught me there. Have a nice day, señoritas." Why is he speaking spanish again? Mom, you have the worst taste for men. He is trying to impress me so I can call him dad? Yes, he does some dad jokes, and try to embarace the teenage daughter, but still, that doesn't help at all.

We go inside the shopping and we wait on the fountain, we taught she would come here because of the well, it's like a reference from the palace.

After some time, a girl sits by our side and as we look at her, she smiles.

"Hello there, girls. How are you doing?" She starts. We smile and we all get up and hug. Looks like almost dying together in a paralel reality is a good way to make friends, it's actually pretty natural, eveyone does that and noone can prove me otherwhise.

"You got the reference! That's great!" Zoe said, actually looking exited.

"Yup. It would be a pain in the ass to wait until tomorrow at night to go to that place alone and look for you two. But it's better than seventy years. And we can't forget, I am a Rogers, ya know?- Alexandra Rogers. Nice name. Well, seventy is actually a very specific number... I wonder why...

"What?" Zoe is confused. Ohhhh wait, seventy, Orgers, I got the reference!

"You're the coma girl, aren't you? Did you never saw the Avengers? Well, you don't have to worry about that, I'll show it to you, someday." Alex takes Zoe hand and shakes it.

After a long time talking, we finally go to the restaurant zone. We decided to eat pizza. Not the one with pineapple. It's not that we hate it, but there was a big pineapple in one of the walls from the castle once so... Better keep the distance from that.

"Ok, what is your fear, girls? I'm curious!" Alex asks.

" It looks like my fear is a masked man." I answer first.

"My fear is my brother..." Zoe answers after me.

"Oh! You're the insomniac guy sister!" Alex almost screams.

Zoe explains the story of the night of the "accident", but her version. She also talks about her other brother, the middle brother, Nicholas, or Nick Fades.

"Bro, this is one of my dreams! I actually met someone who has something with some case of killing? That's awesome! And pretty bad at the same time, because you must been thru a lot." She looks happy and nervous at the same time. "Aaaagh, these are too many feelings! I hate mixed feelings!" She covered her face with her hands.

"Al, we have a plan to stop this." Zoe starts, getting Alex attention "We will try to find all the chosen kids on the palace. There are many palaces, one palace to each country. That's something I once heard on a secret passage I found by accident. If we find everyone, there will be no more gaps, and we can face them together."

"I see... You know, this is the second palace I've been. On my old palace, I also found a secret passage. Basically, they were talking about the next owners. The owners on my old country were different, they were... Weird. They didn't send our biggest fears like, I don't know, some old trauma and those things. They used to send pedophiles or just some other creatures of my country." Alex said, looking lost.

Alex than explain us that she used to live in Brasil, but her mother found out about those dreams and then they both changed to Canada. It's not very far away, but her mother believed it would stop the dreams. Now, Alex fakes she doesn't have those dreams anymore, so she wont keep jumping from a country to another without stoping those dreams.

"So, Z said if we sleep near to each other we should wake up next to each other, so we can get back our memories." I said, trying to explain the basic.

"Are yall inviting me to a sleepover?" We nod and Alex smiles "It's a yes for me. Can I borrow your pajamas?"

"Yeah, sure." I say, picking my phone to call Joe "Hey, Joe. Do you mind of getting us at the same place?"

"Sure kiddo. But only if you call me dad." Joe said on the other side of the line, making me roll my eyes.

"Yeah, we both know I'm not gonna do that." I answered, and I swear I could hear him smile on the other side.

"Ok, ok. See you in five minutes." He answers laughing before I turn off the call.