twistedLOVE {{--- theCHRONICLES

Later that evening Lyssa found herself lying on her own in her room. She’d been given work to do for the next day but she was in too strange a mood to even consider it. All kinds of thoughts were swimming through her mind. She couldn’t quite sort them all. Thoughts about Will. About Andrea and Mark. The worst ones were the ones about her family. They brought tears to her eyes which she struggled to blink back.

A knock on the door brought her back to the room and she quickly straightened herself up before opening it. Andrea was standing in front of her, a grin plastered on her face. “Come with me, I’ve something to show you.”

She obviously expected Lyssa to just go with her because Andrea was bouncing down the corridor without a second glance back. Reluctantly, Lyssa closed the door behind herself and trotted off after Andrea. Her stomach was clenching at the thought of what she could be getting herself into by following. The smile on Andrea’s face made her suspicious. Something was up with her anyway.

Six minutes and a maze of corridors later Lyssa was crouching on a rooftop with Andrea, her hair blowing behind her in the wind. The rooftop was dark, seemingly the only dark place around them since the school yard and area around the buildings was lit up with floodlights. Andrea whispering beside her made Lyssa jump and she had to bit her lip so as not to squeal and alert someone to them being there.

“We’ve been working on this for weeks now.” Lyssa said nothing but simply watched straight ahead of her into the night sky, waiting for Andrea to elaborate on what “this” was. “Took us ages to find our way up here. Even longer to get the lights down. Hopefully they won’t notice them being out until after they discover our present...”

With every passing moment Lyssa was feeling more and more anxious. By the soun ds of it this was certainly something big. And if something went wrong she’d be there right in the middle of it. It took every last bit of willpower she possessed to stay put and not run off back to her room and wait it out. Not only would she fail in her promise to Will to tell him what they got up to, but she would also get completely lost in the maze of a building they were crouching on.

“Look, down there,” Lyssa looked across to see Andrea pointing to the corner of the school yard just below them. Like the rooftop they were on, it was dark. Following her arm, Lyssa looked down just in time to see a pipe burst and water start spraying out. She nearly ran right there, knowing someone would notice it and they’d be caught. But Andrea held her back, assuring her with a glance it was ok.

A noise behind them startled her again and Lyssa once again found herself having to resist the urge to run. Mark was standing there and another guy was climbing up onto the rooftop from below. Lyssa stared at them, unable to bring a question to her lips.

“Did it work?” Mark didn’t even acknowledge Lyssa’s presence, instead addressing Andrea in an urgent tone.

“Yep. It’s stopped spraying out and now it’s just flowing onto the ground. It should be ages before they notice it.”

“Good. I see you brought Porter with you.”

On any other occasion Lyssa would have objected to being spoken about as if she wasn’t there. But terror and curiosity were pacifying her.

“Yeah, thought it would be a good opportunity to get her onside.”

“By letting her see our biggest project yet?!” Mark seemed to get annoyed at her being there.

“We can trust her. Her parents were resistance and they died protecting her. She’s on our side, Mark. Don’t be so cynical.”

“Fine, but don’t say I haven’t warned you all.”

The two stopped talking and Lyssa turned round to see a group of at least six all on the rooftop. A few were high-fiving and congratulating each other. She still didn’t understand what was going on. Andrea seemed to notice this and finally explained it to her.

“We’ve been working on a plan for major sabotage for almost a year now. Anything we’ve done until now has just been small stuff. Passing pamphlets, disrupting the flow of things. But now we’re stepping it up. Tonight is just the beginning. We’re going to bring this place down from the inside out. You’ll see.”

It was Lyssa’s turn to be a cynic. “And how’s a burst pipe going to bring it down? Surely someone need only fix it?”

Andrea laughed. “Like I said, this is only the beginning. Baby steps, Alyssa. We have to tread carefully. You’ll see though. We will succeed this time.”

As Lyssa was about to ask what she meant by “this time”, the group started to creep back down the shaft they’d come up here through and into the building again. Lyssa found herself getting caught up in the middle of them all making their way back to the rooms. She followed silently, praying they wouldn’t be caught. Will had told her not to get too involved and she couldn’t help but worry this was getting too involved. She’d just seen them burst one of the mains pipes. That would disrupt things for a good few days until someone could fix it. Should she be reporting it to her floormaster or just to Will? For some reason she couldn’t herself explain Lyssa found herself choosing to keep it to herself until her next meeting with Will. For now, she would get some rest.