The dark door

A/N: I've had this story in my head for a while, and I know where it's going but not where it starts. So I decided to start somewhere, so hopefully it isn't terribly confusing. Any critique is much appreciated.


The door was dark, warped wood which strained under the weight of the dark stones of the alley wall that surrounded it, seeming as if it might collapse at any moment. There was an eye that looked to the left scrawled clumsily with white paint that was fading and flecking away. Lilith couldn’t see a doorknob or any other way to open it. She sighed, wondering again how she had gotten there, how things could have spun so far out of her control. It had only been weeks ago that she had been planning to go to a school of journalism— or “government-approved fiction”, as her older brother, Aram, called it. She always laughed and said that she would send him highly illegal letters in pig Latin and hope that the government was as stupid as he always said that it was.

And now he was gone. Not even captured and put in jail—vanished. It still didn’t seem real. She felt like she was walking through a dream. Anyone else would have left her a cryptic letter or something, or some cleverly disguised code or clue that only she was able to work out. That was what happened in books. But her straightforward, maddening older brother had left her with a scrap of paper giving her the location of a door. She kicked the stone wall and hard, sparks of pain lancing through her ankle as her foot twisted awkwardly, accomplishing absolutely nothing.
Right. People who want to know the truth about things so that they can sneakily unsettle oppressive governments open doors, she told herself firmly, not stand outside of them being irritated and waiting for something to happen. She knocked three times, the sound echoing hollowly. She looked around furtively, making sure that no one had heard, feeling a bit ridiculous when she saw that dark alleyway was still deserted. At this hour of the morning, even the criminals had given up, she supposed.

She heard a faint scraping noise behind the door. “Password,” someone muttered casually, as if they already had a hand on the door handle and were just waiting for conformation that they knew was coming.

Her brother had apparently forgotten to mention that she would need a password, even ignoring the glaringly obvious fact that he hadn’t told her what she was supposed to be doing here. She swore.

“Look, someone sent me here.”

“Oh? Who?”

“Aram,” she answered, praying that he had known what he was doing. “Aram Corvus.”

The door creaked as it swung suddenly inward, revealing a boy close to her brother’s age. He ran a hand through his hair, grinning casually, looking as though he felt automatically entitled to anything that he wanted simply because he had graced the world with his presence. Lilith glared, already disliking him. “I know Aram,” he said, “but you probably shouldn’t throw real names around too casually in here. We called him Crow,” he added. She tried not to look confused. Called. She noticed the past tense, another small pain in the series of crippling blows that she had received in the past week. He grinned and stuck out his hand. “They call me Falcon here."
“What are you, a super-secret society of budding ornithologists?” she snapped, stepping away from him-- irritated that her brother had vanished and left her alone, irritated that this boy didn’t seem to care, irritated that she had come here expecting answers and now nothing was being explained.
The boy grinned, raising an eyebrow, shrugging casually.

“Not exactly.” He looked curious.
“Didn’t Crow tell you anything? Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m his sister,” she said, eventually.

“Get away from the door,” the boy who called himself Falcon said, abruptly, pulling it shut behind her. She hadn’t paid attention to the dim room before, too focused on the boy, and it faded into darkness. Faint grey light leaked from the crack under the door and at the sides, and the there was a rough hole in the door where she guessed that the pupil of the painted eye would be.

“I’m going to tell you because Crow talked about you, and because I trust him,” the boy finally said, and she couldn’t hear the smile in his voice now. He considered this for a moment.
"But we're going to kill you if you say anything to anyone, especially anyone important. So if you like your life more than money, you probably shouldn't say anything.
“We’re an group of people devoted to taking out the government.” He paused. “We’re going to assassinate Aurelio,” he added, and it was the first time that she had heard the dictator’s name without the prefix Lord. “Unseat some high people, and in the chaos we’re going to take the reins and seize the country for ourselves. We’re going to rebuild it from the beginning with the strength of our ideals. Of freedom.”

“Sounds impressive,” she said, dully. Aran was dead for this, this impossible dream, this delusion. She wanted to reach for the wall, to steady herself, to reassure herself that something was real, but it was too dark to trust her eyes.

"Fine," she said, running a hand through her white-blond hair in an unconscious imitation of the boy's affectation. She had already lost everything important.
"Take me to your leader. Or democratically elected council, or whatever the hell you have. I want every shred of information on what might have happened to my brother."