by Lane, Styna
I slid down to the cold floor, cradling my knees against my chest. I felt Lakin’s hand on my shoulder, but my vision tunneled in on William’s face as I rocked in place. He took a break from his shouts of violent despair to revel in my anguish, bloody teeth peeking through his lips as he sneered at my pain.
“You monster,” I whispered.
“I may be a monster, Angela, but you are doing a fine job of following in my footsteps,” William said.
“I will never be like you,” I said, eyes hot and blurry with angry tears.
“No? What about Mr. Gray?”
My breath caught in my chest as I stared with wide eyes. Lakin looked at me with confusion, but I ignored his gaze.
“Oh, yes. The cameras got the whole thing.”
“What’s he talking about, Angie?” Lakin asked, as I glared daggers at the old man across the room.
“Yes, what am I talking about, Angela? You really shouldn’t keep secrets from the people you love.”
“What do you know about love?” I called, half-laughing through my tears.
“Angie!” Lakin shouted, demanding my attention.
I finally shifted my gaze to him, staring into the eyes of mist-layered forests.
“I let a man die, when I could have saved him,” I said coldly, glancing back at the grinning-William.
“What?” Lakin breathed, unbelieving of my words.
“He didn’t want my help.” I tried to justify my actions, but I knew there was no excuse. I hadn’t been sure before, but I knew now; I was a murderer.
“Aww,” William said through a bloody, fake pout, utterly delighted by the hurt on Lakin’s face.
“Shut up,” I growled, bounding to my feet.
“Or what? You’ll beat me up? Electrocute me? Turn me into a Violet?” he spat. “I have nothing left for you to take, Angela.”
A drop of water fell from my fingertip, echoing a muffled thud across the floor. Another drop, and then another. At first, William stared at my palms with confusion, but a purple glare in his eyes spread a wildfire of panic through him. I stared, cold and hard, as his face contorted in gasping agony, a steady stream of water flowing from my palms. His skin began to shrivel, his entire body shrinking in on itself as I stole the essence of his life.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Pull the Trigger
“Stop,” a familiar voice cried from behind me.
My heart sank into my stomach, the water ceasing its journey from my hands as I turned to the doorway. Out through the shadows, Eric pushed Nadia ahead of him. He had found William’s gun on the floor, and was holding it to her back. His eyes were dark with a type of fear that made his face nearly unrecognizable, and his entire being looked diseased with hate. William had plagued him.
Lakin tried to step in front of me protectively, but I shoved him aside. I felt my insides tumble from the way Eric looked at me, like I was a bug meant to be squashed. Any sort of love he’d once felt for me had been eradicated, William had made sure of that. The boy, who had been my best friend not long ago, hated me fully and completely, and he hated everything that was like me.
“What… marvelous… timing… you have…” William gasped through pained breaths, skin nearly cracking from dehydration.
Eric’s hand shook as he raised the gun in my direction, keeping a firm grip on Nadia’s shoulder, taking extra care not to touch her skin. His eyes flickered to Lakin, and then to the ring I had forgotten to take off. It was almost as if I could feel whatever was left of his heart crumbling into shards of ice.
“We don’t really need her, do we?” he asked, turning his face to William but keeping his eyes locked on mine.
“Eric,” I whispered, taking a step forward.
“Don’t,” he said. “Just… don’t.”
“I can’t… see… why… we would,” William wheezed.
“Eric, listen to me,” I pled, wishing now, more than ever, that turning back time was one of gifts of the Elementums. If we could just go back… “Eddie—”
“Don’t you dare speak my father’s name,” he cut me off, pulling back on the hammer of the gun.
“No, listen, Eric! His death wasn’t my fault,” I shouted. “William killed him!”
Eric shook his head, eyes filled with betrayal as he scoffed. “No more lies, Angie.”
It happened so quickly; Lakin jumping forward, knocking me to the ground; the click of the trigger; Nadia’s scream; the gust of wind; the deafening bang. I didn’t even know what order it all happened in—it felt like it happened all at once, and it felt like it lasted through the end of time. The eternity of those jumbled seconds decided the fate for every life in that room.
I pushed myself to my elbows, lungs reeling, trying to replace the air that had been forced from them. It felt as if my insides had been gouged out and replaced with darkness. I felt hollow. And as my eyes landed on the heap that was Lakin and Nadia, I understood why.
“Lakin,” I whispered, weakly heaving myself to my hands and knees, using all that was left of my strength to drag myself over to them.
I felt a fraction of relief as he slowly turned toward me from his place over Nadia. Relief, because he was still alive. Fractured, because the hollowness inside of me, inside both of us, inside all of our kind, had still been caused by a death.
Lakin and I had felt the loss of our kind through Lily’s recap of our history, but I never thought we would feel the pain directly. I was young, and naïve, and I thought we were indestructible. The idea that we would lose one of our generation seemed impossible. But there we sat, next to Nadia’s unmoving body, a puddle of warm crimson soaking her shirt and pooling out around her. Indestructible, yet her life had been taken by nothing more than a bullet and a broken heart.
“Angie, no,” Lakin whispered, as I reached for the gun that rested next to Nadia’s head.
My eyes searched the room for Eric, but he was nowhere to be found. He had fled out of fear… panic… self-preservation, maybe. But he wasn’t who I intended to aim the barrel at.
“One… down…” William gasped, sneering through his bloody teeth.
I paced a few times across the room, glancing back at Nadia’s face, drained of color and warmth. Something inside me knew that I was making a mistake; a nagging feeling in the center of the hollowness told me to walk away. But I didn’t listen. I stretched out my shaking arm, staring at William’s face over the barrel.
“You’re not going… to shoot me… Angela,” he panted knowingly, eyes gleaming even on the brink of death.
“No?” I said. I had never shot a gun before, but it didn’t seem too difficult.
“Of course… not. Your kind… would never—”
“Would never what? Torture someone for revenge? Let a man die on the cold floor? You’re right. My kind would never do that,” I said coolly, arm slowly becoming steadier with my words. “But as you so attentively pointed out, William, I’m doing a fine job of following in your footsteps. And you wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.”
“You’re about… to start a war. And you standing here… with a gun at my head… proves that we’ve already… won. A being of… peace… about to kill… out of spite,” William began, breath becoming more pained with each word. “You will… inevitably destroy yourself… as you are about to… destroy… me. And you will take… the rest of your kind… down… with you.”
“Angie,” Lakin whispered from the floor, “let’s go. He’s going to die, anyway.”
I shook my head at the attempt to stop me from committing a definite murder. It wasn’t like not saving Mr. Gray, after all. There was no gray area. I would be killing a living being out of vengeance.
“Take Nadia’s body, and leave,” I said. Lakin began to protest, but I spoke louder. “Take her to Lily. Go.”
Lakin stared at me for a moment, hurt. Finally, he scooped up Nadia’s body, his arms immediately drenched in red, and left. I didn’t know if he looked back. I kept my eyes trained on William
’s.
“Send away… your boyfriend… so he doesn’t… have to see you… at your weakest?” William questioned. I knew he would have been laughing, had he been strong enough to do so. “Afraid he… won’t love you… after this?”
“Weakest? This isn’t my weakest,” I assured. “This is my strongest.”
I lowered the gun, holding my breath as I made my way for the door. I silently begged for the strength not to put the monster down. Every muscle in my body was telling me to turn and pull the trigger, but that nagging feeling within the hollowness kept my feet moving.
“You are… a coward… Angela Dawson,” William spat.
I stopped, staring desperately at the door a couple feet away. Just a couple more steps. Just a couple more steps, Angie. I turned, and looked William in the eyes.
“You want me to shoot you, so you don’t have to spend what few moments are left of your life in agony. You’re afraid of what it will feel like to die the excruciating death you deserve,” I said, tossing the gun to the floor as I pushed my feet those last couple steps. “I’m not the coward.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Glow
I followed the patchy trail of blood back down to the tenth floor, ignoring the choking rasps that initially rang from William’s office. I didn’t know if they’d ceased because I had gotten out of ear-shot, or if they’d ceased because the body they were coming from had finally given up. Whatever the reason, the silence had lifted the smallest bit of weight from the sinking emptiness inside of me.
‘You did the right thing,’ Al’s voice resonated weakly in my mind.
‘I’ll still be responsible for his death,’ I thought, face emotionless as I closed in on the apartment across from mine. A slightly comforting warmth spread over me at hearing Al’s voice again. If felt like a lifetime since I’d last heard him inside my head.
‘At some point, we will all be responsible for someone’s death. Many don’t realize it, or they ignore it, or deny it. The acknowledgement of your actions will make you stronger, and you will need that strength for what is to come.’
‘What is to come?’ I thought, but I was met by foggy, mossy eyes as I rounded the door before Al could answer.
Lakin gazed at me for a long moment, looking me over, searching for an answer to his unasked question. Nadia’s blood was beginning to dry on his hands and arms, cracking in red-brown paths that led to nowhere.
“You didn’t do it,” he finally whispered, raising a blood-stained hand to my cheek before embracing me in a relieved hug.
“Would you think less of me if I had?” I asked, replaying William’s words in my head.
“No,” he said, furrowing his brows as he pushed back to look at my face, “but you would have thought less of yourself.”
Lakin’s words of insight took me a bit by surprise. I suddenly felt very guilty for having thought there wasn’t anything special about him. He had asked me to stop harming William, not because he cared for the monster’s life, and not because it would skew his feelings for me, but because he didn’t want me to blame myself. The guilt would have inevitably grown so dense—and maybe it still would—that I wouldn’t have been able to stand it. Lakin didn’t want me to put myself through that. Leaning my forehead against his, a warm tear ran down my cheek as I remembered how much I loved him even before we had bonded; before we knew that we were stuck with each other, whether we wanted it or not. And I was so thankful that we did want it. I was so thankful that he wanted me.
I didn’t know how they had managed to wake Al up, but he was leaning weakly against the wall, holding a hushed conversation with Lily as they consistently glanced in Joseph’s direction. Lakin had laid Nadia’s body on the table where we’d found Al, and her brother hovered over her, staring down at her still face.
Joseph had already lost one of his fathers, and he had left the other one behind. Now, he’d lost the sister he would never get to meet, which could only weigh on the hollowness we all felt. A weight so crushing, it held down the emotion one might expect to see from a person in that particular situation. His face was as stiff and rigid as the day he had walked away from his home.
“We have to go,” Lily spoke rapidly. I only caught the tail end of the white light emanating from her eyes. “The guards will be returning, soon.”
Jason, Mattie, and Patrick, who had been sitting awkwardly on the sofa, rose to their feet, prepared to hide us from view as we made our way back to the van.
“What about her?” Jason asked softly, nodding toward Nadia.
“We’re taking her with us,” Joseph said sternly, lifting the body into his arms, Nadia’s head dangling limply over his shoulder.
Lily nodded comfortingly, and we slowly started our trek upward. I didn’t want to think that it would be the last time I’d see The Facility. Not because I hoped I would return, but because every time I had thought that in the past, I had been regretfully and horribly mistaken. I gave up on hoping everything would go smoothly. In fact, after losing one of our own, I began to expect nothing more than a perilous end.
Lily and I helped support Al, making the stairs seem incredibly similar to Mount Everest. My knees buckled for a moment under the weight, but Lakin was quick to grab my arm. I smiled at him, hoping he wouldn’t noticed the tears that were building as we passed the third floor. Nobody looked in William’s office, but from the corner of my eye I could see the old man’s body still tied up in the chair, head hanging down over his chest.
Lakin squeezed his hand around mine, and pulled. I hadn’t even realized that I’d come to a full stop, staring at the wall ahead as Lily and Al waited by my side. William had told me I was starting a war. As I gazed at the faces around me, I hoped that he was referring to a metaphorical war inside myself. The thought of subjecting those I loved to more pain twisted my insides until it was almost unbearable.
As we reached the darkness of the top floor, a sliver of light beaming in from the door overhead, we paired up with Jason, Mattie, and Patrick for our trip to the van. Joseph didn’t even seem to notice Mattie’s hand on his shoulder as he carried his sister’s body. He followed us, staring blankly ahead, jaw twitching as the feelings tried to force their way out.
“Aren’t we going to give Abigail the keys?” Al asked, after we’d parked the van at the old woman’s house and began our hike back to the Eden.
Lily stopped in her tracks, closing her eyes tightly before responding. “She’s gone.”
Al opened his mouth, as if he were about to say something, but he held his silence as Lily continued to lead us along our path. She must have been much closer to Abigail than I’d realized.
The pond to our left had begun to thaw, tiny pools of water gleaming along the surface in the dwindling sunlight. We remained sheltered from view, but the forest appeared to be clear of guards. I already knew Eric had run off to tell them of what happened inside The Facility. With their leader being dead, I wondered who they would turn to. Maybe they would forfeit their fight against us.
The walk along the dark tunnel seemed longer than ever before. Each stride toward the light of the Eden was one step closer to my brother’s searing pain. I couldn’t protect him from the hurt he was about to feel—no one could. And, sure enough, as we emerged from our stone surroundings, Bryant waited on the steps of Lily’s house, head in his hands, as Lyla rested her head on his shoulder. I didn’t need to have Al’s gift to know what he was thinking, hoping. Every soul in the Eden knew that we had lost someone. And the only thought running through Bryant’s mind was: ‘Not Nadia.’
Bodies were cluttered along the path between the houses; talking, crying, mourning the loss of someone they didn’t even know. All of our kind walked toward us, blocking out the view of my brother as we made our way to meet them. Joseph protectively hugged Nadia’s body against his own, as the hands of weeping strangers reached for her.
“It’s okay,” Lily whispered in Joseph’s ear.
One-by-one, our kind rested th
eir hands on Nadia’s body. As each person stepped away, a fading white print was left in that place their hand had been.
“What—” I began quietly.
“They’re paying their respects,” Al said, still propping himself up on my side. “We’ve never lost an Elementum from a human body. They’re dealing with it in the only way they know how.”
Though I didn’t understand the ritual, only a fool would have been incapable of admiring the peculiar beauty. It was so moving that it cracked Joseph’s hard exterior just enough to let a few tears leak through. By the time Lyla and Bryant had made their way through the crowd, Nadia’s entire body was glowing a dim white. The light reflected in my brother’s eyes, intertwining with his sorrow.
Bodies circled around, until only my generation was left in the middle. They gave us enough space that we didn’t feel crowded, but it didn’t even come close to being alone, which we all wished we could have been at that time.
Joseph gently lowered Nadia’s body to the ground, and we watched with pain stabbing at the hollowness inside, as Bryant collapsed over her. He brushed a strand of hair from her face as he whispered words that were only meant for her to hear. Joseph clung to Lyla, sobbing, breaking down in a way that I could have never imagined from him. Lakin and I stood with hands clasped tightly, as if letting go of each other would have meant letting go of life.
Bryant finally looked up at us, eyes red and puffy. No words came from his mouth, but he was asking, begging, not to be alone. We all lowered ourselves around him, embracing him, crying with him, wishing we could take the pain away.
When it felt like our tears had run out, all eyes fell on Nadia. The glowing handprints had faded, but the distortion of the sunset through our melting sky illuminated her in a way that made her seem like she was not of the Earth. A warmth in my hand inspired me to place a palm on her arm. The others followed, and within moments, she was glowing again, brighter than ever, as if the light of life itself were emanating from within her.
