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skylathescholarly · 1 month ago

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BENTLEY HAD WHAT COULD ONLY BE DESCRIBED AS A MASSIVE EMOTIONAL BREAKDOWN FOR AN UNIDENTIFIABLE AMOUNT OF TIME. same B same

"You can't blame yourself for the actions of other people. You're not puppeteering their lives," Bentley involuntarily shivered. He hadn't heard that word in a long, long time. He hadn't been called that for years, but here he was, still living out the name. Trying to fix everything, to tailor it to what he thought was right, trying to force every circumstance to end up exactly how he wanted it... and willing to do almost anything to make it that way. Bentley Wayne was a control freak. And deep down, he was still just the Puppeteer, pulling on strings. Sometimes, he really, really, really hated himself. OH MY FREAKING WORD. WHY. THAT WAS CRUEL HOW COULD YOU

“No, you’re right, they won’t shoot me. They’ll just take me and torture me for two weeks for betraying them. Then they’ll shoot me.” oh my word stop stop STOP HE IS TOTALLY GONNA DIE

"For years I was just a dog to them. A pet. Something to be ordered around." "And a good little dog, too, given you turned your back on all your friends for them," Bentley hissed. STOP YOU ARE KILLING MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

"Yes!" Rockie snapped, turning toward him with a borderline pissed look on his face. "Yes, I fucking would have. Because I was scared. I didn't want to die!" oh my word yes because HE IS ALSO JUST A KID I CANNOTTTTTT! like that doesn't necessarily... excuse anything? but also. a good reminder.

"What? You'll kill me?" Rockie snickered, shaking his head. "Don't worry, I'm already dead for this." foreshadowing??? FORESHADOWING?????

Bentley unlocked their shackles and pointed them to the exit at the left end of the hall that led to his building, because he's TOO PURE FOR THIS WORLD

"The school is killing us all. We have to go." well i guess it's to the point 😂 i feel so bad but i forgot about Chloe... whoops 😬

“I may not be your best friend, but I don’t want you to die,” Bentley replied like it should’ve been obvious. buddy it's just obvious to you bc you're a fundamentally good person my guy

Blankness was good. no, no it's not

"... Noah went to Redwood, Bentley. And he went missing in high school." OH FRICKING CRAP DARN IT I KNEW THAT WOULD COME BACK TO HAUNT ME

Bellamy suddenly squirmed like he'd been shot, launching himself off of the white floor so he was turned around and sitting upright in record time. why do you insist on hurting me this way

"I know I failed, over and over," Bentley muttered, his own vision going hazy with a wetness he had to wipe away. "I'm so sorry, Bellamy." ASDJFAJRG;RIGBARELHGBIEHRGBAPEIRGBAERLGFBLEARGBAHRBFGLAHEJRBFGLHJDFBLJHFBDVLDHJSBFDLHGBLDFSHGBLADFHGBLADFHGBLAHIFBGLIAREVAERVG

"Bentley." LBAERBRGBERBFBLGERA;BRAB;GEBI;AREG;BAERG stopopopppoaregn;reobaerobgearibgeraihgblearhgpirvhg

Project: Killcode

batfamily + oc insert

tw: none

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

want to read the first fic in the hundred days series so you understand what’s going on here? here it is!

so... prison break round 2?

baby boy bentley is straight up NOT having a good time right now he needs so many hugs

also just so you guys know rockie is NOT HAVING A GOOD TIME EITHER!!! NO ONE IS HAVING A GOOD TIME!!! THE TIMES ARENT GOOD!!!!!!!

part fifty-two

❝ PRISON BREAK ❞

MONDAY — OCTOBER 31 — 12:16AM

BENTLEY HAD WHAT COULD ONLY BE DESCRIBED AS A MASSIVE EMOTIONAL BREAKDOWN FOR AN UNIDENTIFIABLE AMOUNT OF TIME. Maybe it was ten minutes, maybe it was two hours. He didn't know. When he finally managed to shove his mind back into his brain where it belonged, and force himself to stop falling apart for half a second, Rockie was still there.

Bentley took a few minutes to just breathe. To get it together. His friends lives depended on him, he couldn't break now. He couldn't.

Bentley pulled out of the embrace begrudgingly, running a hand through his hair with a deep inhale. "I screwed up again. I got us all put back in here..."

"It's not your fault," Rockie replied, shaking his head at him. "None of this is your fault."

"It's all my fault!" Bentley exclaimed, crossing his arms over his chest. "I tried to save everyone, I got us locked in the dorm. I tried to save everyone again, and we all ended up here."

Everything was always his fault.

"You can't blame yourself for the actions of other people. You're not puppeteering their lives,"

Bentley involuntarily shivered. He hadn't heard that word in a long, long time. He hadn't been called that for years, but here he was, still living out the name. Trying to fix everything, to tailor it to what he thought was right, trying to force every circumstance to end up exactly how he wanted it... and willing to do almost anything to make it that way.

Bentley Wayne was a control freak.

And deep down, he was still just the Puppeteer, pulling on strings.

Sometimes, he really, really, really hated himself.

Rockie exhaled heavily, stepping forward and glancing out into the hallway. "Alright. We don't have long before someone realizes I broke you out. All of our friends are down here, and I have no idea what cells they're in."

Bentley said nothing, but watched as Rockie turned, anxiously running a gloved hand through his hair. "We don't have enough time to search this whole place together. We have to split up."

"Split up?" Bentley questioned, looking over at Rockie like he'd just made the stupidest suggestion ever. "I just got done hating you for betraying us, and you expect me to trust you enough to split up?"

Rockie just sort of looked at him, and Bentley didn't miss the flash of hurt that flickered through his green irises. "No... I don't. But we don't have another choice. They're going to notice I broke you out sooner rather than later, and as soon as those alarms start blaring... we're pretty much toast. There will be guards everywhere, and they will shoot on sight."

Bentley didn't say anything, just sort of looked at him.

"I'm not asking you to trust me," Rockie sighed, taking a small step toward him, something like desperation in his words. "But I am asking you to be desperate enough to believe me, just for now. Splitting up is our best chance at finding everybody before they start dropping us like flies."

“You mean everybody but you,” Bentley replied lowly.

Rockie glanced over at him, something swirling in his eyes that he couldn’t really place. “No, you’re right, they won’t shoot me. They’ll just take me and torture me for two weeks for betraying them. Then they’ll shoot me.”

Bentley said nothing.

“I know I’ve given you no reason to believe anything I say, but it’s pretty much your only hope now, okay?” Rockie continued, turning and glancing out into the hall. “What can you lose? You’re already going to die if you stay here.”

Bentley stayed silent.

Rockie sighed. “Your cell is pretty much smack dab in the middle of this place. The order of operations is: students come here, get a cell, and wait to be taken to a siphon room. That’s where I take their powers. After that, they go to the medical wing to get their blood taken. The people here organize it by severity of power. The more dangerous students are, the sooner they die.”

Bentley listened intently as Rockie continued to peer out into the hallway.

“The siphon rooms are this way,” Rockie pointed down the hall, to the right. “The more dangerous students are that way, too. The ones with more destructive powers — So Layla, Koa, Valor, Vera. The less dangerous ones are that way,” Rockie pointed to the left. “Varian, Summer, Asten. Bellamy is going to be on the floor below, where I was when you found me. All the manpower is in the medical wing right now, because they're rushing — so it might be pretty easy for you to slip around unseen. Until they find your door and sound the alarm.”

Bentley breathed in. “Okay…”

“The elevator that leads down to Bellamy is in the hall directly next to your cell,” Rockie pointed to the right. “Go get the others, find your way back here, go down and find Bellamy. I’ll meet you there with everybody else. There’s an exit down there. You’re looking for Varian, Summer, and Asten, Bentley — don’t forget. Varian, Summer, and Asten.”

Bentley blinked, trying to make sense of all of the information that was flying at him mere moments after he’d finished having a breakdown. “Okay.”

Suddenly, Rockie jumped, ducking back into the room and pulling Bentley away from the door. “Shit. Hold on. Shh.”

Bentley said nothing, but moved off to the side, away from the open door. Rockie settled into the space next to it, his breaths silent.

Bentley heard footsteps approaching.

He kept his breathing steady and quiet as the practically deafening footsteps slowed in front of the door to his white cell, wide open with a supposedly broken panel on the outside.

Bentley’s heart was slamming in his ears so loud he could hardly hear anything else. With a soft hum of confusion, the man stepped inside, a man with a clipboard in a lab coat that looked eerily similar to the guy Bentley had knocked out before. In a way that reminded Bentley so much of Asten and Jesse Todryk, Rockie immediately nailed him in the face with his giant metal glove like he was trying to punch through him and into the wall behind, knocking him flat out on the floor.

Bentley cursed under his breath.

Rockie immediately moved, pulling the scientist into the room and searching his pockets like a scavenger. After a few seconds he retracted a card, holding out toward Bentley. “Keycard.”

Bentley just sort of stared at him.

“Bentley. Keycard,” Rockie waved it in his direction, and Bentley’s brain seemed to snap back on, and he took it from his fingers.

"Remember -- Varian, Summer, Asten. Find them, get to Bellamy."

"Okay," Was all Bentley could manage to say.

Rockie stood up and pulled the unconscious scientist farther into the room, tucking him away in a corner far from the door. Then he moved back into the threshold and looked out into the main hall. "If you're down there with Bellamy and I don't show for... five minutes or so, there's another elevator at the very, very end of that hall. It leads up and out of the facility from the library. You'll need a keycard to use it, so by God, don't lose that thing."

Rockie glanced over at him, his green eyes scanning Bentley's appearance quickly, lingering on the card in his hand.

"Isn't there an exit on this floor? That leads to our building?" Bentley asked.

"Yeah, on the left end of this main hall. But it's less discreet, and I don't think the nine of us want to go down to Bellamy and then come all the way back and run through the entire place again," Rockie shrugged. "Easier to go out down there."

"So we have to check every cell one by one?" Bentley questioned with an exasperated sigh. "That could take forever."

"There's no other way. If we go snooping in files and offices trying to find locations, we're going to die before we even start," Rockie explained quietly. “You have to go into every hall and every room.”

"What do I do about all the other students, then? In the cells?"

Rockie shook his head lightly. "You have to leave them."

"What?" Bentley mumbled, his eyes blowing wide. "L... leave them? Here to die?"

"Yes, Bentley, leave them here to die!" Rockie snapped, turning to him with an expression on his face that seemed... afraid, but masked with irritation. "You can't save everybody. It's a stretch enough to try and save all our friends."

"All my friends," Bentley replied coldly.

Rockie just sort of looked at him for a moment. He opened his mouth to fire back, but nothing came out, and he closed it again. Then he opened it again, then he closed it again.

"I said I was sorry, okay?" He said quietly, looking back down the white hallway. "I was afraid."

Bentley said nothing, and tried to bury the pang of pity that surged up in him deep down somewhere he couldn't feel it anymore.

"You knew what was happening the entire time, and you never said anything," Bentley muttered. "You never warned us. You just let it happen and pretended like you didn't have a clue. You probably knew they were poisoning us, too, didn't you? Using Bellamy? Let me guess, you two knew each other before he moved in, right? Because you're both part of whatever little psycho team this is?"

"Do you want to know the truth, Bentley?" Rockie questioned, turning toward him with a look that almost made Bentley back down, but he didn't. He wasn't that kid anymore. He couldn't be, not here, not now.

Bentley tossed his arms out to the side. "If you're so inclined to tell it now that we're hostages, then sure. Go for it."

Rockie breathed in and out deeply, huffing out a long breath.

"My parents were murdered right in front of my eyes by these people when I was six years old. And they brought me here so they could use me against my will to turn metahumans back into normal people," He explained lowly. "For years I was just a dog to them. A pet. Something to be ordered around."

"And a good little dog, too, given you turned your back on all your friends for them," Bentley hissed.

"Then the Secret Keeper got here, two years ago, and she turned it into a murder establishment," Rockie continued as though he hadn't even heard Bentley's remark. "She said she would kill me if I didn't do what she said. She put me and Bellamy in the school together for me to torture him! To scare him into making more of the bullshit that runs in his veins! I wasn't just doing their shit will because I wanted to, I was going to die if I didn't!"

Bentley narrowed his eyes at him.

"Would you have?" Bentley was quick to ask. "Scared Bellamy, because she told you to. Would you have?"

"Yes!" Rockie snapped, turning toward him with a borderline pissed look on his face. "Yes, I fucking would have. Because I was scared. I didn't want to die!"

Bentley breathed in, but didn't speak.

"There's the truth, Bentley. I'm just a selfish asshole, alright?" Rockie finalized quietly, running a hand through his hair. "But right now, I'm trying to save all of your asses. So maybe stop wasting time interrogating and vilifying me for half a second and do what I fucking told you to, before we get shot right here and accomplish nothing, yeah?"

Bentley glanced down at the keycard, then up into the white hallway. "Fine. But if you betray us again..." He trailed off, his eyes drifting down to the floor.

"What? You'll kill me?" Rockie snickered, shaking his head. "Don't worry, I'm already dead for this."

That was the last thing Rockie said before he turned right and jogged down the hall, toward where he said the more dangerous students were.

Bentley just breathed in and out, glancing down at the keycard in his hand.

Well, shit.

Here goes nothing.

Thirty-three cells over thirteen different hallways.

That's how many he opened before he saw anyone he knew. Every single cell seemed to have a student inside now, and in every single one, Bentley unlocked their shackles and pointed them to the exit at the left end of the hall that led to his building, promptly leaving them to their own devices and trying to ignore the terrible trepidation that surrounded their fates. What was he supposed to do? Escape and leave them all there to die? Even if he did escape, and then he did get to talk to Bruce, and Batman and co did find their way to the school to shut it all down, that would still be long enough for dozens, maybe even hundreds of kids to die. He couldn't just leave them there.

The alarms hadn't sounded yet. Bentley was thankful, because he'd been doing this for almost half an hour. He hadn't come across anybody in the hallways, not even a stray scientist or guard, which he found strange. He wasn't complaining, though.

With a sharp exhale, he jogged out of a small, side hallway, to the next door on the left side of the main hall; a door that had a metal cart with a clipboard and pen next to it; unfinished paperwork. He could see the end of the hall now, the exit with the stairs where he'd come in the first time. He was only one more offshooting hall, maybe a dozen doors away. Then he'd have to turn around and do all the doors in all the halls on the entire other side of the hallway. Maybe fifty something more doors. Ninety something in total.

He could do this.

With a sharp exhale, he tapped the keycard on the panel next to door thirty-four. It turned green, and beeped, and then the metal door slid open.

And he froze in the doorway in utter shock.

Sitting in the middle of the floor, in a solid white jumpsuit, bound by chains... was Chloe.

Her long blonde hair was loose now, and messy, fuzzed up on her head and tangled in a way Bentley had never really seen on her before. She flinched hard when the door open. Bentley stayed silent.

She didn't look up for a few seconds, but the quiet was enough to draw her curious gaze. Her brown eyes landed on him for a second, and then she squinted, leaning forward slightly, like he was too far away for her to really see him or something.

"Bentley?" She said his name softly, brown eyes suddenly blowing wide like she didn't actually believe what she was seeing. "Is that really you?"

Bentley exhaled heavily, hurrying inside and tapping the keycard on the other panel, the one that caused the shackles around her wrists to open and clack on the white floor.

"Chloe," Was his simple reply. He made his way over to her, kneeling down so he was close to her height. "Hey, Chloe. It's me."

When she had stopped texting him... she was here? She'd been here for that long?

"Oh my God," She whispered, her brown eyes flicking across his face, his jumpsuit, his bare feet. She reached out and touched him, grabbing his sleeves like she was making sure he was really there. Her eyes watered up. "Oh my God..."

“We’re going to get out of here, okay? I’m looking for my friends,” Bentley said quickly, rising from the floor and gently guiding her to stand by tugging up on her arms. "The school is killing us all. We have to go."

Chloe's only response was a soft squeak, and a mere half-second later, she moved slowly forward, her arms coming up and around Bentley's back gently.

With a few moments of quiet contemplation, Bentley brought his arms slowly up and around her, too. Her touch was gentle, fleeting -- like she was some kind of phantom or a passing breeze. Bentley heard her sniffle deeply.

"I thought I was going to die..." She muttered, her chin coming to rest on his left shoulder.

Bentley breathed in and out. "Listen, there's an exit at the end of this hallway -- it's close, we can see it from your door. You need to go through it and get out of here."

"What?" She asked suddenly, pulling away from him. Her brown eyes met his, with a mixture of fear and confusion and tears still glistening in them. "Bentley, no... You just found me, I don't want to go off by myself again..."

"I can see all the way to the door. I'll watch you," He continued. He grabbed her arms and walked, pulling her gently, out to the threshold of the room and the hallway. He pointed down at the staircase with the oddly shaped secret door at the top, that was only maybe fifty yards away. "See?"

Chloe looked at it, then back at him, looking miffed. " But I want to stay with you."

"Chloe," He started with a quiet inhale, glancing around, eyes lingering on the clipboard with paperwork that was sitting on the nearby metal cart he'd spotted earlier. "If you stay with me, you're going to get caught, okay? Here's what I need you to do. Are you listening?"

Chloe nodded subtly.

Bentley moved for the clipboard, tearing off a bottom shred of the paperwork and grabbing the pen, scribbling Bruce, Jason, and Dick's numbers all down on it. "I need you to get out of here and find a phone -- and don't go look for yours, it isn't in your dorm, just... get off campus, okay? All the way off campus. Call these numbers. The first should answer, but if not, call the next. Tell them you're friends with me, and tell them exactly what's going on. That the school is killing us and we need help."

He held the shred of paper out to her once he finished writing, and she took it slowly from his fingers, glancing at the numbers. "What if I call the police?"

"You can call them, too. But please, please, please, Chloe -- promise me you'll call them and tell them," Bentley practically begged. "The first one... its my dad. Please call him."

Chloe sucked in a breath, glancing back at the exit door in the distance. Then she turned and eyeballed the paper again.

"Please, Chloe," Bentley practically begged. (Bruce needed to know what was happening. He needed to know so he could save everyone. He needed to know incase Bentley...)

He swallowed thickly when a burn surfaced behind his eyes, and he blinked it away with a soft sniff, sticking his gaze to the floor. "Please call my dad."

With a sharp inhale... Chloe finally nodded, moving the the little paper so it was tight in her fist like her life depended on it. "Okay. I'll call him. I promise."

Bentley exhaled a sigh of relief. "Thank you."

If she succeeded, Batman would be on his way soon. And that realization in itself was almost enough to make Bentley start bawling his eyeballs out again.

Chloe lurched forward one last time, wrapping her arms tight around his neck so suddenly that he flinched. "Please don't get killed."

Bentley rubbed her back lightly. "That's the goal," He replied, though his voice was devoid of any humor the saying would typically carry. "You, too."

Chloe pulled out of the embrace and just looked at him for a few moments, then took a step back, her hands sliding off of his shoulders. "Just remember, if me or you die -- you were the only person to ever meet the real me. And that means a lot."

Bentley opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Without saying anything more, Chloe turned on her heel and jogged down the hallway in her white jumpsuit, and Bentley watched her go until she disappeared safely up the stairs and through the door.

Please, he begged whoever inside his own mind that would listen. Please, please, please get her to a phone.

He sighed softly, looked down at the keycard in his hand, and then moved onto the next door.

Someone he didn’t know. Someone he didn’t know. Someone he didn’t know. Someone he didn’t know. He released students from half a dozen more doors, pointing them to the exit and watching them as they went. One of them couldn’t have been older than eight.

Half a dozen more doors. No one.

He moved to the other side of the hallway, tapping the keycard on the door closest to the staircase. It beeped and flashed and slid open with a hiss.

Bentley stepped inside. There was a girl in there — curled up on her side in the floor, facing away from him in a jumpsuit, with this not-exactly-blonde-but-not-exactly-brown hair spread out around her head. She was shackled down just like everybody else, and if she was awake, she didn’t show it.

Bentley hurried over to the shackle screen and tapped the card on it, and the chains fell off of her with a quiet noise.

“Hey,” Bentley said, making his way over there and kneeling next to her. “Hey, we need to-“

He grabbed her by the shoulder and unintentionally rolled her onto her back, and it…

Was Summer.

Her brown eyes flicked open easily, as though she really had just been pretending to sleep, and Bentley exhaled heavily. “Summer.”

She furrowed her brows at him, pushing herself up and off of the floor quickly, glancing down at her wrists when she realized they were free. “Bentley?”

Bentley stood up, too. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“What are you doing here?” She questioned, leaning slightly to the side like she was trying to glance out the door into the hallway.

“We’re leaving,” He replied. “Me and Rockie are getting all of you out of here.”

“I thought you said Rockie was a bad guy?”

Bentley shrugged, stepping up to the doorframe and peering out into the white halls, making triple sure there were no people there. “I don’t know what he is. Did they hurt you?”

Bentley turned to look at her, and she shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. I was only awake for a little bit before you came in.”

Bentley nodded to himself. Rockie wanted him to bring Summer down to the bottom floor to escape with them, but why drag her along when there was a door right next to them?

Bentley breathed in and out. Rockie couldn’t be mad at him for getting her out, could he?

“There’s an exit right outside your cell, up the stairs,” Bentley started. “You-“

“I’m staying,”

Bentley turned, glancing at her with a deadpan expression. She looked really dead-set for a girl who’d been kidnapped and chained up by an evil supervillain, even having the audacity to cross her arms at him.

Bentley blinked. “No, you’re not.”

“You can’t just tell me no,” Summer argued, narrowing her eyes at him. “I want to help, just like you. If you go and get yourself shot or something, here I am.”

“If you’re with me, then you might get yourself shot,” Bentley replied. “And this whole place has EM. You’re not going to be saving anyone from anything in here.”

Summer huffed loudly. “I’m not leaving.”

“Why not?!” Bentley exclaimed, flicking his arms out to the side. “Why does everybody want to fight with me about saving their lives?!”

“Hey,” Summer was suddenly closer to him, and she latched onto his wrists so he couldn’t move his arms anymore. “It’s okay.”

Bentley scrunched his face up at her. “What?”

“You’re freaking out. It’s okay,”

Bentley pulled his wrists away from her. “I’m not freaking out.”

Summer raised her brows at him. “Then why are your hands shaking like that?”

With a furrowed brow, Bentley glanced down at his hands. He hadn’t noticed before, but they were trembling, almost violently by his sides. He told himself it was just adrenaline. It was, because he only had a few minutes to save all of his friends so they didn’t all die because of him. It was just the adrenaline that kept reminding him that one of them would have to die — it was just the adrenaline that was playing the death scenes he’d been shown over and over in his mind. It had to be.

Bentley looked up at her, and the image of her getting shot through the head surfaced in his mind. He blinked, looking away and pretending he didn’t see her blood splatter all over the walls in his subconscious.

“You have to get out,” He mumbled, his eyes drifting down to the floor. “Please.”

“Bentley,”

“Please,” He begged. “You can’t be here. You can’t stay here, you have to go or you might-” He swallowed thickly, drawing in a shaky breath. “Please.”

“Bentley,”

He mumbled numbly: “You have to leave.”

“Bentley, look at me,”

“You have to-”

“Shh,” Summer hushed him. She was suddenly touching him again, and it was his face — she was touching the side of his face. His eyes flicked up to her when he realized that. When had it gotten so hard for him to breathe? “Maybe we should both leave.”

That suggestion sent what felt like a skillfully crafted dagger of panic straight into his very soul.

“No!” He suddenly exclaimed, stepping back and pushing her hands away, to which she gave him a pointed look. “I can’t leave.”

“Bentley, you are hardly holding yourself together right now,” Summer so helpfully pointed out. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Who else will?” Bentley muttered, glancing up at her and locking eyes, brown on brown.

Summer said nothing. She just looked over at him, her brown eyes lingering on his.

“Who else will?” He repeated. “I have to. I’m not leaving.”

“I’m going where you go,” She stated simply, as though it were a well-known fact. “They’re my friends, too. And so are you.”

Bentley barely had enough inside of him to make his breathing even out again — let alone enough to keep arguing with her about it.

With a shaky inhale, he just nodded. “… okay.”

A few moments of silence passed, and Summer nodded. “Alright. What’s the plan?”

Bentley took a few deep breaths, shaking his head in an attempt to right himself. He’d never been good at the part of puppeteering where he had to separate his feelings from his job. That’s why he failed as the puppeteer the first time. The skill would’ve been ideal now — if he’d ever had it in the first place. Which he hadn’t.

He sucked in a breath, held it, then blew it out. “We’re looking for Varian and Asten. They’re… on this side of the hall,” Bentley explained softly, clearing his throat. “Then we find the elevator and meet Rockie downstairs. He’ll have all the others. We’ll leave together from there.”

Summer hummed. “And you trust him?”

“No,” Bentley answered, probably too quickly. “But I’m desperate.”

“Alright,” She replied. “Then let’s go. Whenever you’re ready.”

For a few moments, Bentley fiddled with the keycard in his hands, breathing steadily, reigning himself back in like a toddler trying to gather up an entire hurricane in their tiny arms. Now was not a good time to fall to pieces. The worst, actually.

So he breathed in, held it, and exhaled. “I’m ready.”

Thirteen.

Thirteen doors they opened without seeing a familiar face, and Bentley pointed the unfamiliar ones to the exit, Summer hovering close by at all times, like he would just spontaneously combust or something.

He was starting to slow just a bit, until he slid the fourteenth door open.

Inside was someone he recognized, although not someone he was looking for, and definitely not who he’d expected.

He stepped into the threshold of the room, Tyler’s head popping up from where it rested on his knees at Bentley’s entry. His dark eyes met Bentley’s, no longer dead or cold or angry or pissed, but just…

Afraid.

Bentley blinked at him. Tyler blinked back. Summer stayed still in the hallway. No one moved.

And then Bentley did.

He made his way across the room and tapped the keycard on the panel there, the shackles releasing Tyler’s wrists with a click and the clink of metal on metal.

Tyler looked down at his wrists, then back up at Bentley, stunned.

“There’s an exit on the main hall — right up the stairs on the far end. You should be able to see it once you take a right turn out of this one,” Bentley explained lowly, heading back for the door, toward Summer.

With a few confused blinks, Tyler pulled himself out of the floor and hesitantly made for the door, like Bentley was going to shoot him or something.

“For real?” He questioned, pausing at the threshold and glancing out into the hall. They were the second to last door in an offshoot — one of the smaller, darker halls that all connected back to the bright main one.

“Yeah,” Bentley replied. He shared faint eye contact with Summer before they walked back to the main hall. Skeptically, Tyler followed them, his eyes bouncing around suspiciously. “There.”

Bentley, once they were in the main hall, pointed down toward where the stairs were. “It’s going to come out in the lobby of the Aristotle building. You need to get off campus. Or else they might find you again. Don’t go back to your room for anything — just run, okay?”

Tyler looked down the hall in the direction of the stairs, then blinked, glancing back over at Bentley. “Okay…”

“Go ahead,” Bentley replied, heading quickly for the next door and tapping the keycard there. “Unless you want to stay here.”

“You’re… saving my life?” Tyler suddenly asked, turning to Bentley with a strange look on his face. “Why?”

“I may not be your best friend, but I don’t want you to die,” Bentley replied like it should’ve been obvious.

Tyler said nothing, but looked around again, sort of shocked, before he started jogging down the hall toward the exit.

Bentley watched him, then looked into the now-open room. A stranger.

“Wow. Tyler really thought you would leave him in there,” Summer muttered as Bentley unlocked the shackles on the kid he didn’t know, giving the boy the same quick spiel he'd given Tyler.

“Wonder if he would’ve left me,” Bentley replied blankly, closing the door back to make it less suspicious.

Blankness was good. Blankness was about the only thing he could do to keep the panic and horror off his face and out of his veins as time ticked down. As time ticked down and they still hadn’t found Asten or Varian. He had been releasing students for a phenomenally long time now. How had absolutely no one noticed? How were the alarms still not blaring in his face?

It was a good thing. It was, but still, he couldn’t even bring himself to trust the one good thing that had happened to him in the past twenty-four hours. Or forty eight hours. Or two weeks. Maybe three. He couldn’t find Asten or Varian and the longer they spent looking, the more hopelessness tangled itself around his lungs, tried to make it hard to breathe again.

“Bentley?” Summer started quietly. Her hand landed on his shoulder at the same time she spoke, and he snapped back into reality, flinching back to look at her. Tyler and the other kid were both already gone, and he was still standing in front of the closed door. Summer was just… watching him closely with her big brown eyes.

She squeezed his shoulder lightly. “Focus.”

Focus. With a quiet exhale, Bentley turned and headed into the next offshoot hallway, making for the first door he saw and tapping the keycard there.

The door slid open, and suddenly, everything inside of him seemed to come back online, jolting him into a sudden state of adrenaline-fueled shock that felt sort of like anxiety when he thought about it really hard.

Varian was there, chained to the floor and in a jumpsuit again, ghastly pale and completely unconscious. There was a puddle of what looked like vomit next to him, and his jumpsuit and hair was absolutely soaked with sweat. He was curled up with his knees tucked in, facing Bentley, but he had no reaction to the door in the slightest.

Bentley rushed over to him, crouching down by his side and resting a hand on his forehead — didn’t have a fever. Bentley reached for the machine he kept on his arm but it wasn’t there. (Why the hell did these people take it off of him?! Now he'd lost his actual one and a backup!)

“Keycard,” Summer ordered, and her hand appeared down near Bentley’s face.

He shook his head in a bid to clear his mind when he realized her hadn't unlocked Varian. He handed the card to Summer quickly, and she stalked over to the wall, unlocking Varian’s shackles with a tap on the screen.

“Varian,” Bentley started, moving the chains away. He slid one of his hands under Varian's head, the other coming to rest on his left shoulder. “Varian, can you hear me?”

Varian, in fact, could not hear him.

“Shit. I can’t carry him,” Bentley muttered, rubbing at Varian’s arms and shoulders in an attempt to wake him up. Summer opened her mouth, and a faint sound came out before-

“Well, then you’re in luck,”

Bentley whirled around, and Summer flinched when Rockie walked into the cell. He had Vera, Koa, and Valor all trailing behind him. Koa was muzzled, again, with tear streaks lining his face and bloodshot eyes. Vera had a little... thing stuck to the back of her neck (it almost looked like a suction cup?) connected to a nearly invisible tube that disappeared into the neckline of her jumpsuit. Valor’s wings were synched up tight, and he looked just as happy about it now as he had been the first time. All three of them were in matching jumpsuits, and looked hesitant, afraid, ready to bolt, ready to fight Rockie if they needed to.

Bentley blew out a sigh of relief he hadn’t even known he was holding as he looked between the three of them. (Rockie was missing someone, though... Layla?)

"Where's-" Bentley's question died in his throat when Koa and Valor both rushed into the room, crowding around Varian and touching him and saying things he couldn't hear. (Well, the one of the pair that could speak without getting shocked, that is.) Bentley merely stood up and took a step out of the chaos, watching.

He flinched when Rockie's voice came close to his left ear: "There's been a slight change of plans. You're gonna have to roll with me on this one."

Bentley looked over at him like he were the most ridiculous human being on the planet, but their near-silent interaction came to a quick end when someone drifted up on Bentley's other side. He felt a small hand grab gently at his right wrist.

Vera.

Rockie stepped forward, closer to Summer and the rest of the crowd, leaving Bentley and Vera in the back alone.

"Are you hurt?" She whispered, so softly Bentley almost didn't hear it at all.

"No," He whispered back. "Are you?"

"No,"

A few moments of quiet passed.

"This is insane," Vera continued. Bentley glanced over at her, and her dark brown eyes were trained on Varian as Valor and Koa fussed over him. "I've been in this school since I was single digits, and I..."

With a small wince, she reached up and fiddled with the thing on the back of her neck.

"Bentley," She whispered, turning toward him subtly. His eyes met hers again and he was suddenly very alarmed -- because hers were brimming with tears and he'd had no forewarning that she was about to start crying. "... Noah went to Redwood, Bentley. And he went missing in high school."

Oh...

But... hadn't Rockie said they started killing kids two years ago, when the Secret Keeper arrived? And before that, it was just a place where they took powers? And Noah had been missing for six years, so...

Would telling her that he probably didn't die there make the situation better, or worse? Even if it wasn't true, she had some closure thinking he had. Bentley didn't want to be the one giving her false hope if her brother really was dead...

He opened his mouth to say something, and in the moment, he wasn't even sure what it was going to be. It didn't matter, though -- He didn't even have time to take a breath before her hand slid into his in a death grip, and she turned her head toward him, resting her forehead against the side of his right shoulder so no one else would see her tears.

So Bentley didn't say anything.

The moment only lasted maybe five seconds. Because Valor said something that sounded final and scooped Varian off the floor at once, and Vera tore herself away from Bentley and moved a couple feet away in record time, like he had the plague.

"Come on," Rockie said to them all, moving past Bentley and glancing back into the hallway. "We have to find that elevator."

"Wait," Summer piped up, glancing around the room. "What about Asten? And Layla, and Bellamy?"

"Asten and Layla are in a separate sector of the facility," Rockie muttered, looking back at everybody and sending Bentley a subtle glance as he did so. "And Bellamy is on the way out. It's safer and it makes more sense if we get you out in two groups. That way you can be calling the police and stuff while we're working down here."

Way ahead of you, Bentley said in his head.

Well, if Chloe actually escaped, he guessed.

Summer furrowed her brows. "But-"

"No ones playing hero, no ones staying, you won't change my mind," Rockie said immediately. "We know this place best."

"We?" Valor questioned, stepping forward with the limp Varian in his arms. "Who's we?"

Rockie's eyes flicked around. "Me and Bentley. He got us out of here the first time."

"Yeah. And maybe we'd have actually gotten out of this fucking place then... if we hadn't wasted so much time breaking someone out who didn't actually need to be broken out at all," Valor hissed, and Bentley could've swore he saw Rockie physically recoil at the venom laced in his words.

He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Bentley watched in silence when his green eyes got glassy, and he looked back out at the hallway, pretending to check it for people again.

Bentley suddenly felt... bad.

"Just let me help you, okay?" Rockie questioned curtly, not really turning around. "Then you can go off and curse my name into the wind as much as you want."

With that, he left the room, giving everyone else no real choice but to follow.

Bentley hung back a little, just to exchange looks with Valor -- a sort of greeting, like a mutual, wordless acknowledgement that neither of them were seriously injured, and that that was good. When Koa walked past him, Bentley fell into step with him, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder supportively. Koa might've spoken, if he could. He reached out and grabbed onto Bentley's arm for a moment instead. Vera and Summer padded out of the room behind them.

None of them spoke as they rushed through the white halls. The completely empty, human-less, bad-guy-less white halls. Bentley still didn't get it. He'd released maybe seventy kids. Rockie had to have caused a ruckus somewhere else to get his hand on a keycard so he wasn't beating every door panel with a fire extinguisher. So how, why hadn't these people seen them? Or if they had, why weren't they killing them?

In silence, they went through the halls, and in silence, they made it to the elevator. In silence they waited on it, and rode it, and came out of it on the same dark floor where Bentley had found Rockie last time.

Rockie inhaled heavily when the elevator closed behind them, starting down the hall. "I know where Bellamy's cell is. There's another elevator at the end of this hall that goes up into the library. That's where you'll escape."

Bentley stayed quiet, watching cell door after cell door pass that Rockie paid no attention to. The hallway wasn't that long, and Bentley could see another elevator panel flashing at the other end of it.

Rockie stopped at the very last door on the right side of the hall and turned, fishing a keycard out of his hoodie pocket and holding it to Bentley.

"He's all yours," He said softly, and Bentley obliged, sliding the keycard from his fingers. "I'll get everybody else in the elevator."

Bentley nodded absentmindedly, and watched as the group all made for the elevator. Summer passed her keycard up to Rockie, two tapped it on the screen next to the elevator.

With a soft sigh, Bentley glanced down at the keycard in his own hand.

Then he tapped it on the panel next to the door.

With a few noises, it hissed open.

He stepped slowly into the solid white room, his eyes immediately starting to burn at the sight of the small figure, chained to the floor and curled up in the middle of the room, still.

He went over and unlocked the shackles. Bellamy was facing away from him, curled in the fetal position on the floor, and trembling slightly. He reacted to the chains coming off by flinching, which let Bentley know he was awake, but he never turned around to see who it was.

And Bentley was trying so hard to hold himself together.

He breathed in and out deeply. "...Bell?"

Bellamy suddenly squirmed like he'd been shot, launching himself off of the white floor so he was turned around and sitting upright in record time.

His right temple was busted, and blood had dried spilling all down the right side of his face. His lip was split, and his right eye was bloodshot, his jumpsuit having had its sleeves hacked off by what looked like scissors. His arms were full of scars that Bentley had never seen before.

Bentley just looked at him. Bellamy's big brown eyes flicked all around Bentley's frame like he were reading him, then down to his own wrists where the chains had been.

Then he put his hands over his face and started crying.

With a frown that encompassed at least twelve emotions and a few impending breakdowns, Bentley moved forward slowly, until he was only a few feet away from him.

"We're gonna get out of here, Bell," He said softly, holding out a hand toward him. "I know you're scared. No one's going to hurt you anymore."

Bellamy didn't move.

"I know I failed, over and over," Bentley muttered, his own vision going hazy with a wetness he had to wipe away. "I'm so sorry, Bellamy."

Bellamy didn't move.

And then he did.

He took three or four steps forward until he simply collided with Bentley, wrapping his arms around him in an absolute death grip with a broken, small, sad sounding: "Bentley."

It was at that very moment that an obnoxious, high pitched, repetitive wail started to sound through the facility, and red lights came on in the hallway, flashing and spinning.

"We've gotta go!" Rockie shouted from the hall.

They were coming.

tag list that KINDA works lmao

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun

@xiaonothere

@skylathescholarly @flyrobinflyy @bookwarm0-0

@custommadeazula

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