“Seren!”

Two people plopped down next to them. A redheaded boy from about Seren’s age and a girl a few years older than them, maybe about twenty-one or twenty two, with the same kind of dark hair as her. Out of the three of them, only that girl looked as if she could have been from the same kind of world as Twelve was. The redhead’s hair was too bright red, like the red of a fire truck, to be natural where she had come from. It could have been a hair dye of course, but somehow, she could tell it wasn‘t.

“You survived, huh?” The girl asked Seren, who just grumbled something in response.

“You, too,” the redhead turned to Twelve. “Thank goodness. You don’t look fast so I was worried for a moment.”

Twelve cringed. She wasn’t sure if it was a comment on her age or physique, but he smiled so brightly at her that she couldn’t sense any ill intent. Just a stupidly honest, nice guy. The one who had thrown that stone earlier, she suspected.

“I’m Row, nice to meet you.” He held out his hand to her so naturally, as if they weren’t hiding from a monster, that she automatically shook it.

“This is Lily. You remember anything about yourself?” He continued as he let go of her hand.

She just shook her head.

“She doesn’t even remember her name,” Seren added.

Row shrugged. “A bunch of ‘em didn’t.”

Seren lowered his gaze, hearing the past tense in that sentence seemed to hurt him a lot more than it hurt Row to say it, even though their behaviors would suggest the opposite.

“We have to think of a way to get to that door without that thing noticing,” Seren added in a low voice. He didn’t seem like the type to give up easily, but he sounded so defeated when he said that, that Twelve felt her chest cramp.

She glanced around, immediately finding tens of things she could use as a weapon. She noticed Row holding a bloody steel pole in his hand about the length of his arm. Had he somehow injured that beast with it, she wondered, feeling herself get lighter, but then her gaze fell on the long cut running from his shoulder almost all the way to his elbow. He was bleeding out right in front of them. How on earth did he still have such a wide smile on his face? For their benefit?

“Here,” she took off her shirt and handed it to him, “tie that around it for now.”

He gave her a surprised look before he accepted the shirt and let Lily tie it around his upper arm. It was thin and the bright white fabric immediately turned entirely red, but it would have to do until they found a better solution.

So, since the beast seemed unhurt and Row was anything but, was it safe to assume its skin was too hard to be pierced?

She looked at those three kids who somehow all expectantly stared up at her, as if they were so relieved to have someone older there to tell them what to do, that they didn’t have to make all the decisions anymore, that it made her want to cry. Twenty six was hardly that much older and she had come here knowing exactly as little as they did with just as little experience as they had. In fact, there was only one solution she could think of that would give at least the three of them a chance to make it.

“Do any of you happen to know what happened to the ones that died again?” She asked with an awkwardly forced grin.

Lily and Seren just lowered their head, but Row looked her straight in the eyes as he shook his head. “I always thought the end was the end,” he said softly, “but I guess all of this proved me wrong, so who knows what happens to them now…”

She nodded, she had figured his answer would be something like that.

“I always thought…” Lily said in a light voice. “I mean, I wasn’t very religious, but heaven just sounded like…” she closed her eyes and a blush appeared on her face. “Whatever, it was clearly wrong, because there’s no way this is heaven.” She clenched her fists, suddenly looking up with a fiery gaze. “And I refuse to believe I went to hell.”

Twelve chuckled.

“I don’t know what any of that means,” Row laughed, “but that at least sounds like the right attitude.”

Twelve glanced at Seren, who had stayed quiet throughout that conversation.

“When I give you a sign,” she said softly, “can you guys trust me and run?”

All three of them snapped their heads up at her.

“No,” Seren immediately responded. “I told you, we’re not lea-”

“Row, please,” Twelve cut Seren off, looking into Row’s orange eyes, almost like fire.

He hesitantly glanced from her to the other two and back, but then pressed his lips into a thin line and nodded.

“The others are still hiding all around, too,” he told her in a soft voice.

She shrugged and got up, although she stayed low enough to stay hidden behind the tank. “That’s okay, I’ll give you enough time to warn them.”

“Listen Twe-” Seren jumped up as well, biting his tongue as it no doubt didn’t feel right for him to just call her Twelve in that moment. “You don’t have to do this. We’ll figure something else out. There’s no need to sacrifice yo-”

“There is, though,” Lily cut him off with a harsh voice. “We all know it, but no one else had the guts to say it out loud. Who else is going to do it?” She got up, too, firmly planting her heels in the ground as her dark eyes pierced into Twelve’s. “Be grateful to her instead,” she said with a warm smile.

Seren opened his mouth just to close it again, and for a moment, Twelve wished he hadn’t given up, that he had kept on convincing her not to do this. Not that she would have given in, though. She wasn’t even sure herself why she was so ready to risk her life for these people that she barely even knew. Maybe it didn’t matter what kind of people they were at all or how well she knew them, maybe she was simply the kind of person that couldn’t just shut up and wait for someone else to do it. Had she maybe been an extreme people pleaser before she died, she wondered with an embarrassed grin. Well, maybe next time she’d do better.

“Thanks, Seren,” she told the boy who had saved her before with a warm smile. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I feel like you’ll be okay as long as you make it through that door, so please run for your life when I tell you to.”

He nodded, although he couldn’t seem to bring himself to look up at her. He seemed even younger the way he sat there like that, with his shoulders pulled all the way up to his ears, covered in dirt and what she suspected were the spatters of blood of the people he had watched die.

She nodded at the other two and turned around. She stayed as low to the ground as possible while she took overly careful steps. Each little piece of rubble that scratched beneath her sole, each piece of glass that creaked as she stepped on it made her stop and hold her breath, desperately looking around if she had attracted that monster’s attention. After making sure she was still safe, she slowly but steadily made her way farther away from that gray base, until her eye caught a burning puddle of oil that had leaked out of one of the abandoned cars. 

She picked up anything made of fabric, from rags to towels to torn shirts, as carefully made her way towards that puddle. Something like that would be both a sign and a distraction. If she managed to time it well, she may even have a chance to run for the base herself.

She stopped a few meters away from the burning oil and glanced around until her eye caught an ugly, mint green nearby car that had partially fallen to its side. She didn’t recognize the brand and couldn’t but wonder if it was well-known in this world, but then shook her head and walked to the back of the car. She slipped her fingernails in the tank opening and wriggled it until it opened. Gasoline immediately poured out and she quickly put every piece of rag and shirt that she had gathered under it, watching them get soaked until nothing came out anymore but drops.

She leaned over and tried to glance inside to check if there was still enough left in the tank. It was hard to see, though, and the scent made her dizzy, but she decided to just bet on it. She put one of the soaked rags halfway into the tank opening and created a path with the other ones to the small puddle of burning oil.

With the last rag in her hand, she looked around to find that monster digging around not that far from Seren and the others. It had tore that car it had been distracted by to shreds, shimmering pieces of it sticking to its rugged skin.

She clenched the rag and took a deep breath to calm herself down. Had she ever done something like this before in her previous life, she wondered, judging as to how she seemed awfully accustomed to it. Her heart pounded in her throat, yet somehow, she felt strangely calm at the same time. At least calmer than she would have felt if she would have run for the base with the others, while some else would have stood here in her stead.

Okay, she thought, holding the last rag above the lowly burning fire, let's gamble.