I sat up and started to stand. We should get going now. I made my way down the stairs and to my room, where Frank was going through his bag. I could still hear the faint chords of Ray's songthrough the wall. "Did you listen?" I asked him, jerking my head in the direction of the wall.
"Yea, it's a pretty dark song, I don't think I've ever heard Ray write something so… sad, that's the only word I can think of really." Frank replied, looking at the wall.
"Yea. We should probably start to get going now, I think everyone's in their rooms, and even if they hear us leave, there's nothing they can do about it." I said.
"I think my ray gun may need fixing though." Frank said as he turned it around in his hands.
"What happened to it?"
"A Scarecrow was looking at it when I retrieved my stuff, it may have disabled it or something." He said and opened the battery compartment at the back. "See, no batteries." He showed me where the batteries should be, empty.
"We have spare ray guns." I said.
"Yea, but I like this one, it's green. I don't like the white ones, this one is special." He replied.
"I know." I said. I picked up my bag off the floor in the corner and slung it over my shoulder and then out the other arm through. "I'm gonna go tell Ray that we're leaving."
I opened the door as quietly as I could and silently walked the few metres over to Ray's room. I opened the door just as quietly and looked at Ray who was sitting on the floor, leaning against his bed strumming his guitar, he wasn't even singing anymore, just strumming. "We're thinking of leaving about now." I said quietly to him. He stopped strumming and just looked up at me.
"Do you miss your brother, Gerard?" He asked me quietly.
I nodded. "I don't want to talk about it right now." I said back.
"I miss him." Ray said.
"I know. We all do." That was all I said and Ray started to get his stuff together. I just stood there and watched as he took some of Mikey's stuff that had been left behind before, and packed it into his bag. He put his guitar in its case and then stood there for a second just looking around the room. "Let's go" He said leaving the room quietly. I took one last look, wondering what he had seen, and then followed him out just as quietly. Frank was already waiting by the car and he got in the back when he saw us coming. I got in the driver's seat and Ray took shotgun.
I started the car and just like that, we were gone. I stuck my head out of the window for a second, looking at the faint silhouette of the building. That's when I noticed the door was lit up and I could see a figure standing there. I wondered who it was for a moment before I reminded myself that it doesn't matter and I pulled my head back in and joined in Frank and Ray's conversation.
***
"I can take over now." Ray said to me. The car stopped and we climbed past each other, switching seats. The car started moving again. I could see the outline of Battery City, we were very close, only about a kilometre away now, in few minutes we would be on the road that loops around the city's outskirts. It would take a while to go right around to the north-east sector because of the city's size, but we should be there by tomorrow night. From there we were going to hang around on the fringe of the city's outskirts and make our way in in the morning. Hopefully they wouldn't expect us that early in the morning.