Claire and the boy sat in the storehouse for sometime.
Both strained their ears as they listened in silence. Every little noise from outside caused their hearts to race. It felt like that at any moment, they would hear the telltale sound of boots approaching the door, and then the inevitable pounding when their pursuers would attempt to break in.
Those sounds never came.
"I think we're OK for now," Claire said. She shifted her weight, sitting on the edge of the crate was starting to get uncomfortable.
The boy stood up. He had regained his breath, and sweat was no longer trickling down his face and body. He looked at Claire expectantly for a moment, and then made a emulating motion of two legs walking with his fingers.
"You want to know if we should keep moving?" Claire guessed.
The boy nodded.
Claire looked around their refuge. It was extremely dusty and had a slight mouldy smell.
"It doesn't look like anyone has been here for a while, so it might be better if we stay put. Besides, with you carrying me, we tend to stick out."
The boy seemed to mull it over for a moment, then gave her a thumbs up in agreement.
"Could you do something for me?"
***
Darren started searching the warehouse for a chair or a stool.
He wished he could find a pencil and paper. It was horrible being reduced to just gestures for communication. It was bad enough that his parents turned him over to the strange man and woman when they had promised a "better life" for him, but to be then locked in a room with three girls around his age and not being able to even say "Hello" was utter torture.
He had tried his best to stay out of their way, keeping to himself when he wasn't sleeping and staring out at the ocean when he was awake. When they asked him a question, he did the best he could to communicate what he thought, but it was a struggle. After a few days, they just stopped trying for the most part. They didn't even know his name. He was just "The boy", a moniker that at 16, he wasn't really a fan of. Then again, he did refer to the three of them as "The girls" so he supposed fair was fair.
Shortly after Mand and Claire had been tossed into the room that acted as their cell, the girls bonded quickly and started dreaming up a plan for escape. Darren originally didn't believe that Mand's plan of combining their metalmancy would work, but he really didn't have much to lose. His only real problem was that he really didn't have a place to go if the plan worked.
He could hardly believe it, even with him possessing valuable metalmancy skills, his parents had pawned him off on strangers, and he wasn't sure if he could ever forgive them for that. Even if he did return home, they would probably attempt to send him right back. If his parents believed he was a burden, who was he to try and foist himself upon them?
He did have his metalmancy, so he was sure that he could probably get work fairly easily. "Yeah," he thought. "I can make it on my own."
Only, right now, he wasn't on his own. But he was OK with that. Claire was smart and observant, and Darren was sure that they could be friends if he could just get beyond the stage of being "The boy." Being her legs made him feel something that he hadn't felt in a while, he felt useful.
Searching the storeroom floor proved fruitless. He walked between row after row of what appeared to be empty crates and boxes. Everything seemed to have been placed without rhyme or reason, forming what amounted to a maze. Whatever this storeroom had be used for in its heyday, its purpose had long been forgotten.
He stopped and scratched the back of his head, looking around. He wasn't getting anywhere aimlessly wandering in the maze of crates. Time to get vertical.
He found a box that was sturdy enough for him to stand on. Placing it next to one of the larger crates, he carefully hauled himself up. He had been right, standing on the crate gave him a much better view of the storehouse.
His gaze landed on the catwalk several meters above him. He followed the structure with his eyes until he found what he was looking for. In a far corner of the building, a small room had been built out from one of the side walls. On the exterior of that room, was a ladder that led upwards.
He noted the route he would have to take to get to the room and then returned to Claire. She was as he left her, sitting on the edge of the crate.
"Find anything?" she asked.
Darren gave a thumbs down. He didn't have a way to communicate "I've found what looks like an office, hopefully there's a chair there", so he pointed up to the catwalk.
"You're going up the catwalk?"
He nodded.
"Alright be careful."
He turned, and entered the maze once again. Following the route that he had mapped in his mind, he started making his way to the room that he had dubbed "The office." It wasn't an easy task, the nonsensical layout of the crates had him squeezing through very narrow passages, or climbing over stacks of boxes. By the time he had reached the corner of the building, he was covered in dust.
He brushed himself off and looked around. The room sat the corner next to a large warehouse door that Darren supposed was the main portal for loading and unloading cargo. The room itself had a window that looked out to the storeroom floor as well as a single door that was hanging off its hinges.
"As least I don't have to bust open another lock," he thought. Between the boat and breaking into the storehouse, he had already done that twice already today.
He slid passed the hanging door and let his eyes adjust to the darkened room. In the corner was exactly what he was looking for, a simple wooden chair.
He picked it up triumphantly and returned to the storehouse floor. He was planning how he would get the chair around the various obstacles on the route back, when he heard the scream.