I was such a fool…

Ras stayed on the roof until dawn, then went back down and found his was to the quiet of the basement. The guests were still sleeping on the main floor; the only set of footsteps he heard probably belonged to Eri. She would be cooking breakfast as always, tirelessly scrambling the eggs, toasting the bread, and frying the bacon. Why did she do all this? Ras rarely ate breakfast, most of the time so he could sleep-in on days like today when he had been awake the night before, but he doubted the guests would thank Eri for all her hard work like he always tried to. They appreciated her, but did they ever let her know it? Ras made a mental note to remind them to say “thank you” more often.

And I’ll make the same mistake again if I don’t do something…

Ras slipped into sleep on his bed in the basement and didn’t wake up until midday. It was unusually quiet upstairs, the guests should have been eating lunch and goofing off and making much noise. He yawned, stretched and headed up the stairs to see what everyone was up to. He stepped through the door of the basement and into the closet that hid it. Immediately, he knew something wasn’t right. The air smelled of blood, smoke, and something he couldn’t identify. Still, it was silent. Carefully, he opened the door to reveal his home of the past year torn apart. The furniture was overturned and blackened from fire. If the structure of the house itself had been wooden it would no longer be standing. Ras could see no blood, but the fire had likely hidden it. The front door, which had been wooden, was gone; likely consumed by the fire. Nailed above where the door used to stand was a piece of parchment. A notice, no doubt, warning the townspeople not to enter and citing some pathetic explanation such as a kitchen fire which killed all residents.

I’m too late…

His mind whirled. Ras felt shock threaten to overcome him. Everything he had been keeping together was gone in an instant, gone while he slept. The guests would be taken to the capitol to be done who knows what with, and Eri… What would they do with Eri? She wasn’t one of them, one of the people they hunted. Would she be tortured? Questioned? Worse? There was nothing he could do right now; he had to run, had to hide, had to get out of this empty shell that had once meant safety.

It’s all my fault…

Ras had very few personal possessions, so it took mere minutes to gather up everything he had stashed the in the basement and stuff it in a sling he could wear on his back. He had grabbed the few clothes he had, as well as some lock picks he had collected in his youth. Lastly, he pulled an older box from under his bed. It was plain, the wood had not been polished and the workmanship was crude, but the dagger Ras pulled from inside the box was anything but plain. He himself didn’t know much about the dagger’s origin, except that his father had always kept it locked up. The handle was made of a white stone of some kind, and was decorated with bright swirls of colored glass. The blade was silver, tarnished with age, but engraved with three wolves running down the blade to the tip. It no longer had any trace of blood on it; Ras had made sure of that long ago.

Do I have any hope to make this right?

He headed to the roof. The open door was too obvious; there was no way to know if it was being watched or not. Luckily, people only looked up if there was something there to see. The roof was nearly blinding in the midday sun. It was flat and painted white to reduce heat in the summer time, but standing on top of it wasn’t easy on the eyes. His first instinct told him to go straight to the capitol, to find out what they were doing to the others and how he could get them back. But reason through that out the window. He had no food, no allies other than those already captured, and no clue what he would do once he actually got there. No, he needed a better plan.

What have I gotten myself into?

This house wasn’t the only one of its kind; a hideout for all peoples the new law deemed “a threat to society.” The trick was knowing how to find them. Most did a pretty good job of keeping themselves secret; they had to or they were at risk of being rounded up like those of Ras’s house. A voice in the back of his head started asking questions about what had caused the breech of security they had set up, but he pushed them to the back of his mind. There were more important things to worry about. The best way to find a safe house when on the run was simply to knock on a door and ask for a place to stay. The public had been warned many times over never to accept others into their homes unless they were from the government. A normal house would refuse, thinking the asking person was merely a wanderer or outsider. After all, why would someone on the run just go knocking on doors? But a safe house would always take you in, no matter whom you were.

First things first. I need food and shelter; I’ll go from there…

Standing on the roof, Ras looked around. The house faced east, and the capitol lay to the north. Safe houses tended to lie in a circle all around the capitol, taking up residence as far away from the center of the government that hunted them as the city limits would allow. That meant heading either east or west for the best chance of running into one. Unfortunately, the notice on the door of this house would alert any safe houses very close by that the government had been here, and so might be back. The nearest ones would be looking into a move, and wouldn’t want any new guests until they were settled. Ras decided he’d only start knocking once he had put at least five miles between himself and the house.

Run, and don’t look back…