I did as he ordered and forced my legs to get me to stop just in front of him.
“The man who died last night... He said he knew you.”
Impossible. I watched Ryan carefully. Was he trying to trick me? I racked my brain for an answer before deciding that there would be no harm in risking it. “You're lying.”
He gave me a short smile. “Then why did he give me this?” He lifted his hand and let go of a small silver heart-shaped pendant that hung from a chain around his fingers. He kept his full attention on me the entire time, trying to gauge my reaction, almost as if he were about to teach me a lesson.
I wasn't sure what he had expected me to say. “It's not mine.”
“So then you won't mind holding it?”
Should I?
I watched the small trinket rotate in front of my face and I held out my hand, palm facing up. I stretched my arm out and watched the delicate heart dangle just above the center of my glove, my eyes only turning to him when he spoke.
“You're sure that there's nothing you'd like to tell me?” He grinned anxiously and I tried not to look into it.
Even if there was, what would it matter now?
I brought my focus back to the floating piece of silver just as Ryan let go. It fell into my hand and the chain attached to it coiled around like a snake in an instant.
Nothing.
I looked back up at Ryan. “Thank you?”
He furrowed his brow and immediately fought against a new onslaught of words but held them back, his confusion ultimately melting away to anger and annoyance. “We're done here.”
“You sure?”
He walked back behind his desk and glared up at me. “Don't you have shit to clean?”
I balled a fist around my new piece of jewelry and watched him flip through a stack of papers, confused, but it wasn’t enough to keep me there. Even a turd was better company than him. I left as soon as I got the chance.
Jeremy and the others were already gone by the time I got outside. I found myself walking through the morning sun without any idea where I was going. I was surrounded by a fence and people that I didn’t know, completely by myself and without any idea of what to do. I couldn’t help but think that dying in the middle of nowhere would have been exactly the same.
I stopped and looked down at my outstretched hand to see the silver heart stare back with just as much lifelessness as it had the first time, though now it looked incredibly smooth to the touch. Curious, I bit the tip of my other glove and pulled it off, throwing the necklace onto the flesh of my exposed palm and waited for a moment. I poked the pendant and could feel the cool metal begin to seep the warmth away from my skin, but nothing else happened.
Figures...
I looked away and shook my head. I shouldn't have let Ryan's craziness get to me.
Then it began to burn.
I gazed down to see a silent blue flame completely engulf my hand and lick its way up my arm.
That... can't be right.
The thought barely crossed my mind just as a searing headache crashed itself through my skull. I tried screaming while the flames twisted up and over every square inch of my body, but the sound never made it past my paralyzed nerves. My legs gave out and I dropped down onto my knees, only able to struggle in agony as I felt a thin glowing bar dipped in molten hot metal drive itself past my eyes. The sensation effortlessly progressed deeper towards the back of my skull, every inch given leading to a new feeling, one of absence and unknown familiarity.
I wasn’t in my own body anymore.
Everything stopped. It was as if the sun in all its intensity had been extinguished, throwing me into a complete and utter darkness with the last thoughts of my mind suddenly absent but lingering on edge—unattainable, yet strikingly familiar—the world a lost cause off the tip of my tongue.
I opened my eyes, but they weren’t mine anymore. They were
hers.
I felt what she felt. I moved as she did. It wasn't until we were together that we both forgot what it was like to be so alone.
The cries of men dying ceased to exist. The sensation of hundreds of humans fighting for their lives lost all form, leaving in its place a hollow shell of distant surroundings that yearned to be filled. The clash of metal and blood lust from a span of fifty men below me, while once all encompassing, now echoed off into areas not seen, but I did see the few that managed to get inside.
They moved as one, bursting through the closed doors without so much as a pause before two arrows drove themselves into the throats of the guards that stood in their way. I felt their surprise, felt their anguish, felt their alarm at not being able to cry out in pain, yet the group moved on before the bodies had time to reach the ground. They quickly eliminated any form of resistance as they hoped to reach me in time. The long flight of stairs labored their breathing, but the steady stream of fresh corpses that blocked them before only strengthened their resolve to face their fears head on.
I felt them the whole way, each mind unique and backed by a name that had once meant something. I didn’t even bother to watch them breach the doors and rush into my room with their weapons drawn and locked onto my heart, ready to be released at the first hint of movement if need be.
But they hesitated.
With a flick of my wrist, I knocked two against the wall and redirected the now useless sticks that had flown at me. Another tried rushing at me with his weapon raised, but it was all he could do as a shard of ice as thick as his forearm met his chest, slowing his heart and halting his breathing as he dropped to the ground. The rest stood helpless. I could have done more, but I only turned and focused on the task at hand.
They could be spared.
Yet I suddenly found my mind closed, fully immersed in an alien world with complete absence of thought and feeling, only able to look with a dull sense of surprise into a pair of fierce blue eyes filled with as much remorse as they were hate, inches from my own.
My hand reached down and grasped the edge of a blade in front of my chest, but the rest kept going unhindered and continued out my other side. It wouldn’t budge, though it wouldn’t have to. I was sure I wouldn't get another breath. I sputtered, almost with a grateful smile. “You promised.”
The familiar pair of blue eyes remained motionless with no hint of a response. Finally, their owner answered with a hoarse voice. “I’m sorry.”
The eyes never left me, but it didn’t matter. Now I began to smile.
She
began to smile, something that I knew would put him on edge despite just stabbing his childhood friend and lover through the heart. I began to slip away as her last breath had past her lips: soft, quite, a whisper in the dark. The words chilled me to the bone. “You’re too late.”
I knew I was back when I woke up. I automatically pushed against the hand on my forehead until I realized it belonged to Martha standing above me. The familiar face did little to slow the pounding in my chest and I checked to make sure it was still intact. I meant to say something, but couldn’t quite figure out how.
She used the opening. “Are you okay?”
I sat up and caught my head in between my hands. It felt like lead and throbbed with a dull ache, a sensation a million times more enjoyable than whatever I had just put myself through. I kept my face hidden and made no effort to come up with an answer. How could I have been okay after that? At the very least, I was relieved to hear my own muffled voice. “What happened?”
She hesitated and I could tell that she didn’t know either. “Amanda found you on the ground. I wasn’t sure what to give you or if anything would have even helped. Has this ever happened to you before?”
I slowly turned my head to gaze through the cracks of my fingers and watched Amanda stare back at me, wide eyed, holding onto a fistful of Martha’s shirt. It was the second time that the little girl had potentially saved my life. Either that, or she was incredibly detrimental to my state of well-being.
“No.” I took a shaky breath and let it go into the palm of my hands. If someone had asked, I could have said that I had just used them to kill people in ways that I had never thought possible. “No, that’s never happened before.”
“I thought maybe you might have tripped in the dark and hit your head...”
She reached up and I pushed her hand away from my hair and stared into her worried face, the familiar lines tracing themselves around her eyes and back up onto the bridge of her forehead.
Wasn’t it still morning?
I stumbled up and shoved my head through the flap of Martha’s tent to see the purple sky following a sun that had just crested below the horizon, but that didn’t make any sense. The things I saw, the things I
felt
only lasted a few minutes at best.
I turned back and meant to ask where Jeremy and the others were, but I already knew. His group should have been miles away from the camp by now. I felt a sharp pang of jealousy shoot up through my chest and I pictured them settling down for the night as free men, laughing and hitting each other in good spirits. At least someone had made it.
“I think you dropped this...”
I peered down to see Amanda step away from Martha and hold her hand up. Just on top, resting peaceful and inanimately, the familiar heart-shaped necklace caught light from a gap over my shoulder. It beckoned for my touch, but I was too afraid. I was scared of what would happen if it took control again.
I kept my distance. If Ryan or any of the others had seen what had happened to me...
No.
I couldn't afford to think like that. I was still alive. If I spent every waking moment second guessing myself, then there would be no point in keeping it that way. But it would be too risky to keep the necklace on hand in case I accidentally touched it. I needed more time to figure out where it had come from and how it worked. I needed to find out what had happened.
I closed Amanda's hand, careful not to touch what was inside. “Keep it. Keep it safe for me, okay?”
She peered down, confused for a moment, then stuck the necklace to her chest. A high honor, no doubt. “Okay.”
Martha didn't care either way. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
Fuck no.
I nodded. “I just need some water.” I walked out before she had a chance to argue. The truth was I had absolutely no clue if I was okay. I’d never experienced a dream before where I could tell what other people were thinking. I’d never felt someone else’s pain outside of my own body. It was the only way I could describe it, but even those words were wrong. It couldn't have been just a dream. It couldn't have.
I got back to my tent by the time night rolled in. I had to step over the open M.R.E.s and water bottles that were left from earlier before I could get to my cot. I figured the trash that was left behind was proof that I at least had not been delusional all day long, though now it was also a subtle reminder that I was alone and the room suddenly seemed empty. It made me wonder when the next best chance would come around for me to escape, if any at all.
I took a seat. By myself, the images still fresh in my mind began to take over. In my dream, in my new
memories
, I had killed both effortlessly and definitively. There had been no hesitation, no restraint, only complete and utter ruthlessness without a single touch and input of my own accord, yet one facet continued to stick out among the rest. I had not been alone. I had not been the one to kill. I knew it as intrinsically as the breath in my lungs kept me alive. I had watched someone else do it. I had felt
her
do it.
Who would ever believe that?
I gave up, frustrated, and had to readjust my seat. Something was poking me in the butt. I reached into my back pocket and was stupefied to see a small silver lighter in the palm of my hand, until I recognized it as Murphy’s. I remembered Nick had taken it. He must have dropped it on me in Ryan’s tent and just felt me up for good measure. I stared at its smooth, metallic casing. It was my next best chance to make it out. But without the others, I needed to come up with a different plan. A simple distraction wouldn't work anymore.
Hey, look at this cool, dangerous fire, not the crazy girl that's about to get raped.
Did I mention she's crazy?
At the very least, I would have to demote that one to Plan B.
The sound of gunfire brought me back. I shook at the sudden percussion that cut through the camp and nearly fell off my cot. I held my breath, nervous that I would miss whatever would come next, unsure if I had just made it up entirely. Then it started up again, this time livid in bursts that seemed much closer, as if they came from just outside the surrounding fence.
I jumped up. I could hear men starting to yell at each other across the entire camp. The walls around me were completely made of soft cloth. They held none of the sound back. So what would bullets do?
I ran to leave just as one of Ryan's men walked in through the entrance with a rifle in one hand and a nearly empty bottle in the other. He looked like he had crawled through miles of dirt just to get to me, but I didn’t recognize him. Not until I noticed his bandaged hand.
“Jessssica...” He lifted the bottle at me and smiled, the stench of alcohol falling off of him like a waterfall.
I had barely opened my mouth before the shooting in the camp started to thicken. I flinched and automatically lowered my head. Ryan's men must have started returning fire at whatever was attacking them. It all seemed to be getting closer and I couldn't see anything. I needed to get away
“Hey,” I pointed a shaky hand. “W-we have to—”
“DON'T LIE!” The man took a step closer and I took two back. He lifted his bottle again, almost as a cautionary gesture, and his demeanor changed in an instant. “It’s okay, it's okay. The cute ones always lie.”
What?
Nothing he said, looked, or smelled like neared anything I thought of as okay.
He took another step and knocked my trash over. “You by yourself, Jesssica?” He cut me off again before I could answer. “I’ll keep you company. People like uss, we gotta ssstick together.”
I couldn't believe how lost he was. Could he even hear what was going on outside or was he so far gone that he didn't care anymore?
“HEY.” I waved a hand in front of his face, completely expecting the soft walls around us to explode at any moment in intrepid anticipation. “WE have to GO. BEFORE we get SHOT.”
He smiled and put a finger to his lips, blowing out a steady stream of air and spit towards my face. “Shhhhh... come on, I won’t tell. It’ll be our little secret.” He tossed his bottle and rifle to the side and grabbed my hand.
I pushed him off. “Get the hell off of me.”
He grabbed me again, his face now contorted and hurt. “I wasn’t asking.”
I hit him again and he held on. I tried to break free, but he was too strong. I pushed at his chest and screamed for help and he effortlessly threw me down onto my cot.
He wrapped a beefy hand around my neck to shut me up. “Don’t do anything stupid.” He waited for me to move again, but I didn’t. His words had hit me harder than he could have ever had.
I didn't fight back. I let him crawl on top of me. I let him lift up my shirt and run his outstretched hand across my stomach. I let him grab and unbuckle my belt, the stench of gasoline completely enveloping my body, but I didn’t resist. I needed to be able to move both my arms.
Terrified, I pulled on his collar and dragged him closer to me.
He smiled and leaned in, enjoying the turn of events, but froze as soon as the smell hit him. I didn’t think he recognized it at first, then he looked down to confirm the suspicion. He’d been burning as I held the lit lighter in my other hand up against his belly. I was amazed at how quickly his jacket caught a flame.
“YOU BITCH!” He threw me onto the ground and I watched him struggle to strip his jacket off.
I got back up, heart pounding, and pushed against his back as hard as I could. He fell over the cot and into the wall, pulling down the rest of the tent with him as he went. The soft felt immediately came down over my head and I stuck my hands out to try and find a way in total darkness.
I dived towards an opening. I stumbled outside and turned around just to see the orange glow of the flame brighten as it licked across the fabric and the fumbling shape underneath. I jumped back when his head popped through. He crawled out of a corner half naked as the entire pile of tinder started to go up in flames. I tried to run away when someone grabbed me from behind.
“Where the hell do you think you're going?” said Ryan.
I immediately recognized his voice. I tried to break free, but he pulled his arm against my throat and into his chest, choking me. Any air that managed to make it out was strangled.
He pointed a pistol at the man on the ground. “Get up!”
“Yess ssir.” The words barely left his lips before they erupted in a shower of blood and skin. I watched, dumbstruck, as another explosion pierced his chest in a mist of red. His legs automatically crumpled beneath him and he fell back into the flames.
I could hear the gunfire ring out across the camp and into the dark. It had taken me a few moments to realize that someone else had shot him. By the time I did, it was too late. I wouldn’t have been able to look away or wipe the scene from my memory.
Ryan reacted for the both of us and spun me around as a human shield, gun pointing into the unknown as he struggled to see who had taken the shot. He fired his gun into the night, blindly, and it occurred to me that I would be on the receiving end if anyone else had the same idea. Fortunately, he tried a different tactic.
“We have women and children! Just put your guns down! We can talk about this.” He kept his gun up and watched, both of us holding our breath until someone's voice broke through the static of the distant firefight.
“I wanna talk to Tess.”
We spun around to meet the source and a figure slowly started moving towards us through the smoke. Ryan lifted his hand up to take the shot.
And I recognized who it was.
I grabbed the metal spike from my back pocket and jammed it into Ryan as hard as I could. I could hear a meaty
thud
as it easily broke his skin like a piece of ham.
He yelled out and dropped down in pain, letting me go.
“Jeremy!” I ran up to him and threw my hands around his neck. It had never felt so good to see someone that I recognized, but he quickly refocused and brought his rifle back up.
“Drop it, Ryan!”
He obeyed and chucked his pistol away, bending over his crooked leg with a groan, the metal anchor sticking out at an awkward angle.
Jeremy looked down at me. “Are you okay?”
I opened my mouth just as Scott ran past us and drove his fist into Ryan's head, knocking him over onto his side. “You son of a bitch!” Nick quickly joined in, both of them adamant in delivering the pain. Nothing else was as important anymore. Scott grabbed the pistol off the ground and whipped it across Ryan's face. They hit him again and again, the physical assault completely demanding as they took turns holding him up, cursing him out and beating him back down.
“Guys!” Jeremy took a step forward, but it was pointless. They were too far gone.
Scott handed the gun off to Nick and grabbed Ryan by the back of the head to watch blood run down across his eyes. He flashed a pocket knife in front of his face. “Say hi to Evelyn for me, asshole.” He pushed it up against his throat.
“Stop!” I held my hand out. I tried to get closer, but Jeremy kept me back by my other arm. My eyes were starting to run. Everything was happening too quickly. I needed it to stop.
Scott turned to look at me and Ryan’s head wobbled, barely conscious, streams of red running down onto the blade pressed against the veins in his neck.
I gazed at Ryan and I saw what he was. I saw what he could do, but it wasn't enough. I looked at him and all I could think about was how
she
had killed. All those people had died and I was there with her to be able to feel them go through with it all: the agony, the despair, the fear of the unknown on the precipice between life and death. The sensations riled up inside of me as though they were flushed through my veins.