"What exactly are you trying to do?" Finn asked nervously. He didn’t want to go anywhere near the church, but deia was holding his hand so tightly, he knew there was no chance of running away.
deia didn’t even look back. "Just stay quiet and follow ."
The city was silent. Too silent. Every step they took echoed loudly through the empty streets, making the whole place feel even more eerie.
The unsettling silence made Finn glance nervously around, constantly checking if soone or sothing was watching them.
Every little noise—a loose window creaking, or water dripping onto rusted tal—made Finn jump and quickly move closer to deia.
"D-Do you think ... maybe there are ghosts here?" Finn whispered.
deia laughed softly, clearly enjoying his panic. "So tell , who do you think would win? A demon or a bunch of ghosts?"
Finn slowly moved away from her, realizing deia might be even scarier than a ghost.
Still, he gathered his courage. "C-Can you at least tell what we’re actually going to do once we reach the church?"
deia suddenly stopped and turned to face him, clearly fed up. "Fine. I’ll explain it once, so listen carefully."
Finn nodded quickly, ready for so kind of master plan.
But deia simply said, "You’re my brother. I’m your sister. That’s it."
Before he could even react, she grabbed his hand again and kept walking straight toward the church, leaving Finn speechless and more confused than ever.
"What?! What do you an by that?! I’m not your brother!"
deia shot him a sharp look over her shoulder. "Shut up, or I’ll sew your mouth shut myself."
When deia noticed how stressed Finn was getting, she imdiately softened her voice. She gently patted his head and said, "Little brother, please lower your voice ... I don’t want anyone else to know our little secret."
Little brother?! Who the hell was she calling little brother?!
Finn was eighteen! He was definitely not little!
He puffed his cheeks in frustration but kept his mouth shut. He could tell deia wasn’t in the mood to hear him complain.
As they got closer to the church, deia suddenly switched her deanor. She stopped, tilted her head up to the sky, and let her eyes fill with tears until they looked naturally red and watery.
Before Finn could even process what she was doing, deia bent down, scooped up dirt from the ground, and smudged it all over his face, making him look ssy and pitiful.
"Wha—?!"
deia quickly covered his mouth. "Shhh... little brother, why is your mouth always so noisy? Just let your big sister help you get so help from these people. All you need to do is stay quiet and stand beside ."
Finn still had no clue what she was up to, but as they reached the front of the church, it finally clicked.
deia started to sob softly, walking slowly with both arms wrapped tightly around Finn’s arm. Every now and then, she gently rubbed his hand or patted her own chest, whispering, "Don’t worry, little brother. We’ll find soone who can help you."
Finn, helpless and confused, could only nod quietly, as if finally accepting this strange new role as her little brother.
As soon as they stepped onto the first stair of the church, a small peephole on the door slid open, revealing a sharp pair of eyes glaring at them.
"If you co any closer, we’ll shoot," the old man warned coldly.
Finn imdiately took a step back, but deia, in full dramatic mode, fell to her knees, rubbing her palms together and crying as loudly as if soone had just died.
"I ... I just want to et soone who can help my little brother! Please... please, kind sir! We’ve traveled through so many places for months, but we still can’t find anyone who can cure him!"
The old man snapped back harshly. "Go away! We can’t help your brother! We don’t take in beggars like you!"
’Tch. This old man really wants to be buried sooner, doesn’t he?’
"We ... we’re not asking for food or shelter!" deia cried, crawling closer to the door.
She heard the sound of a rifle clicking into place, but the sniper didn’t pull the trigger. Maybe he actually believed her act or simply wanted to watch her performance further.
"We’re just looking for soone who can remove sothing strange from my little brother’s head!" deia banged on the door with both fists. Honestly, she would’ve kicked the whole thing down if she didn’t have to keep up the act of a desperate sister.
Tears were nowhere to be seen, but her sobs sounded heartbreakingly real. "We were separated for years! The soldiers took him from our family, and now that we’ve finally found each other again, he’s sick ... terribly sick!"
deia lowered her head, covering her face with her hands, crying even louder. If soone looked closely, they’d notice she wasn’t actually shedding a single tear.
"Soone told there’s sothing inside his brain," she continued, her voice shaking. "Sothing that turns him into the Lost if he’s too stressed, and then sohow back into a human again ... Please ... he’s suffering so much."
deia didn’t know all the details, but she rembered one of the soldiers who had temporarily turned into a Lost describing the pain.
He said it felt like dozens of invisible hands were tearing him apart, pulling him in every direction, leaving him trapped between life and death.
When he turned back into a human, the pain didn’t just disappear. It stayed with him for days, making it hard for him to sleep or even eat without trembling hands.
"Miss, you’re asking the wrong people," the old man said, his voice sounding stiff. "We’re nobody. We can’t help you or your little brother. Just go away."
Even though he sounded firm, deia noticed sothing different. His voice softened for a mont, as if her words had touched a part of him he tried hard to forget.
It was obvious. He was one of them.
One of the researchers who had experinted on children.
deia hated dealing with people like this. No matter how much they ran, no matter how much they pretended, nothing could change the fact that they were the ones who brought suffering and pain to innocent kids.
But right now, deia didn’t have much of a choice.
They were experts. They knew the chips better than anyone. Even if they acted clueless, they could still understand the research notes deia had stolen from the military base.
"I ... I heard you were researchers who worked for the military," deia said carefully, dropping the truth like a stone in still water. "So, doesn’t that make you responsible for what happened to my little brother?"
She took a deep breath, raising her voice. "Sir, you’re hiding in God’s house, using His sacred ho as your shelter, yet you won’t even admit your sins? You’d rather forget it all and pretend it never happened?!"
deia’s voice cracked as she scread, sounding like a desperate sister who was willing to do anything to protect her brother.
"Miss! How dare you speak like that?!" the old man shouted, clearly offended. "Whoever told you such lies, they’re wrong! We don’t know anything about the chip in your brother’s head!"
deia paused for a mont before answering, this ti with a colder voice. "I never said it was a chip. How did you know ... if you didn’t know anything to begin with?"
Without waiting, she stood up and leaned closer to the small hole in the door, her eyes sharp. "Sir, that chip is making my brother suffer so much. Every day and night, all I can think about is how to pull that cursed thing out of his head, but I don’t know how."
Her voice cracked slightly, adding weight to her words. "Please ... you have no idea how much pain we’ve been through because of that thing."
Her words hit the old man like a splash of freezing water.
He went quiet. Maybe it was guilt, or maybe he was just trying to find a way to push her away. Either way, deia could sense the shift in his mood.
"Who told you where to find us?" the old man finally asked, his tone now sharper, more serious. "Who told you who we are?"
"The soldier who let you and your group go," deia said carefully. "He almost lost his life for it. Don’t you think it’s ti to return the favor?"
Still, the door didn’t budge.
deia could almost feel it, like soone was watching her through a scope, ready to pull the trigger.
"How did you track us?"
The air seed colder the mont the question left his mouth.
It no longer felt like they were just being cautious. It felt like they were deciding whether to kill her instead.
"We have our ways," deia answered calmly. "It wasn’t easy to find you, but we did. Because I’m willing to do anything for my brother ..."
Her eyes stared straight at the peephole. "Even if it ans selling my own body for just a tiny piece of information."
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