When I had nothing left to distract me, I approached her. At first, her eyes appeared white with a small black bead for the pupils; they looked like something you saw in horror movies, when the main actresses friend turned into something that wanted to kill them.
Don’t be thinking creepy crap like that; you will end up hiding in a corner, scared of your own shadow.
I took my own advice and continued towards her. At least I had a sword if she did turn into a zombie. I nearly bellowed with laughter but managed to keep it at bay, only emitting a short snort.
As I got closer, I saw that her eyes were a mixture of greys and browns, like tarnished silver. Seeing them helped ease the creepy tingle running over my scalp. Maybe I hadn’t taken my advice after all. And there was the laughter again, begging to bubble out. Maybe I’d gone completely insane. Maybe my surroundings were a product of my insanity. If that were the case, insanity sucked! Why couldn’t I have created a seaside resort, maybe a five-star hotel with no human remains?
I stood in front of her and reached my hand out, ready to snap it back if she tried to bite me. I poked her chest. ‘Huh!’ I turned my back on her. I hadn’t to feel her, and I needed a moment to digest the reality that she was solid, or at least solid to me, and what it meant. ‘Not a ghost, then?’ A small part of me wanted her to say yes.
She shook her head.
‘Well—’ I sighed ‘—that sucks. If I must go stark raving mad, you’d think I could conjure up someone I knew. No offence.’
She continued watching me from the grave marker. ‘I am not imagined.’
I chuckled. ‘Isn’t that what an imagined person would say?’
The woman closed her eyes and sighed, like a mother who has explained the rules hundreds of times, only to catch her child with their fingers in the cookie jar again.
I chuckled again, though it died out under her direct stare. I scowled. ‘Great, I can see that you’re going to be a barrel of laughs.’
‘Child, you need to escape this prison.’ Not condescending at all.
I rolled my eyes. ‘This will be no fun if you keep stating the obvious.’
She shook her head with mild frustration. ‘You need to fight your way out.’
This time I did laughed. ‘Fight who?’ I gestured to the world around me. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, it is a deserted wasteland.’ I gave her a narrow stare. ‘Unless you want to fight me.’ I looked her up and down, taking in her slight frame and puny arms. ‘No offence, but it wouldn’t be hard to take you down.’
She scowled, though an amused smile tugged the corners of her lips. ‘You need to fight your way back through the memories.’
I stared at her stupefied. ‘Through the memories?’ What?
‘Cleas’s mind, and that of others you have a connection with. You need to control them, fight your way through them until you reach the other side.’
‘Do I get a free cruise if I win?’
Her face tightened with irritation. With her face all squished together like that, she looked a little like a new-born baby. I laughed again, that dangerous sound that promised to carry me away to whatever came next.
‘Be serious.’ She sighed and relaxed her features a fraction. ‘Now is the time for you to be strong. There is so much more you need to do.’
I studied her for a moment, wondering if my metal pellets would cause damage or pass right through, confirming that she was a spirit. Then again, it’d touched solid flesh when I poked her, at least when felt like solid flesh. Considering the whole world was a construct of my mind, the idea of what was solid was relative.
I frowned at her, considering all possibilities for how she was there. I still couldn’t come up with anything better than a ghost that I could touch or craziness. Then again, I hadn’t given up on the whole zombie theory. I shivered; if I thought about it, that well and truly put me in the scrambled brain category. ‘I don’t think so.’ I turned my back on her, a cold shudder running down my spine at the thought of exploring Cleas’s mind again. The atrocities he had committed continued to haunt me, and I knew there was so much more evil in him.
The woman gripped my arm, halting me. I looked down at it—how dare she touch me!—until she removed it.
She followed me to the chair but remained stood. ‘Please hear me.’
I slumped onto the cracked leather seat facing Cleas’s grave marker. The apparition remained quiet for so long, I itched with unease. I slipped from the chair and focused on a car door from the pile of scrap I had salvaged, moving it to the unfinished part of the wall. Keeping one hand pressed against it to keep it steady, I searched for the coil of wire. It rose from the ground to my hands. The woman’s gaze remained on me as I wrapped the wire through the empty window and secured the door in place.
When she spoke, I jumped out of my skin. She’d remained quiet for so long, I’d almost forgotten she was there.
‘Why a wall?’ She turned on the spot, surveying my handiwork.
I coiled the remaining wire up and dropped it the ground. ‘Why not? It’s not like there is much for entertainment around here.’
I returned to the chair. Maybe she was up for some interesting conversation now. God knows I needed it. When she didn’t speak, I picked up the carving I spent hours working on. Wood was a rare sight in the wasteland, and I had been lucky to find an oak log with minimal singe marks. Using my dagger, I had started with the idea of a horse only to change to an owl when I realised how bad my abilities were; thin horse legs would have been impossible.
‘I understand that,’ she said. ‘But in a place where there are no enemies, why prepare as if there are?’
‘That might not be true.’ I glanced at her and focused back on my carving. ‘If you’re here, then there might be others.’
Her lips quirked into a smile, the same one my sister used to give me when I said something stupid. ‘I appeared in your protected space. If there were others, then it would stand to reason that they could do the same as me.’
Using the dagger, I pointed to the gap in the wall. ‘I haven’t finished yet.’
She moved to stand in front of me. I sliced shavings off the undecipherable carving. Next time I imagined someone, they had better be a decent conversationalist.
The apparition remained silent for so long, I looked up to see if she had gone. She watched me, her eyes drawn in mild irritation. It appeared I wasn’t the only one disappointed with the company.
With a sigh, I dropped the wood to the chair. I kept the dagger in my hand but rested my arm on my leg. ‘So, what is it you want?’
‘For you to escape from here.’
‘Why?’
She blinked at me as if my words confused her.
I leaned closer. ‘Let’s presume that you aren’t a part of my twisted mind, and that you aren’t a ghost.’ I looked to her for confirmation, still not convinced that she wasn’t. She nodded and I gave her a narrow stare. Was she nodding because she was agreeing with me, or because she was one of those things?
‘I am neither,’ she said.
I tensed. ‘Are you reading my mind?’
She shook her head and I relaxed a little.
‘So answer me this,’ I continued. ‘Ignoring the fact that we aren’t bonded, which should make your presence here impossible, why do you, a complete stranger, care whether I get out?’
She sighed as if not sure how to proceed. ‘I have my reasons.’ When I didn’t respond, she added, ‘And they are not for you to know now.’ Her words held no malice nor anger. If anything, for a moment, she appeared lost.
I sat watching her as she watched me back, both sizing the other up. ‘What are you?’ I couldn’t see or sense any shi. It didn’t help preclude her as a Siis as I couldn’t see it in myself. There was no shi in the Wastelands.
‘You need to fight your way out of here.’ She looked up, whipping her head around, her eyes wide and skittish as if enemies surrounded us. I gripped my knife, my muscles reacting to her anxiety.
She moved closer before leaning towards me. ‘Trust me, child. You need to leave.’
She glanced over my shoulder and scanned the area before she focused on me again, the intensity in her gaze making me wish I hadn’t cornered myself on the chair. I stared back at her, refusing to be intimidated, waiting for her to expand. ‘You have to get out,’ she said with a sigh, ‘because you need to kill my brother.’
I stared at the woman as if she had just grown another head. ‘Now I know I'm nuts.’ I slipped across the seat to get away and skirted around her, putting distance and my box of homemade toys between us. She seemed so real, but I had to be crazy. Why would a real person invade my mind to ask I commit such an act? No, it couldn’t possibly be real. But for the first time in a long time, I felt sane.
‘Get a grip, Ana.’ I turned away from the woman. I wouldn’t be controlled by my fear, regardless of how realistic the new apparitions were. ‘Only crazy people think they are sane, and logically, this is just another figment of your imagination.’ I glanced back at the woman who continued to watch me with those silver eyes. I buried my face in my hands. ‘Even if it seems so damn real.’ For all my thoughts of wanting to lose myself in insanity, now that the moment had arrived, stark fear twisted inside of me. I didn’t want to lose myself.
I murmured to myself, giving a desperately needed pep talk, until it occurred to me that my voiced words were another sign of insanity. If I ever did get out of the Wastelands, they were going to have to lock me up on Ward Fourteen, pump me full of drugs and spend a decade picking apart the crazy that now rode me.
I shuddered again. After Nathan tried to kill me, I’d spent a few nights of the mental health ward. I would never forget the level of desperation I’d felt there. Many patients had been like me, people who needed some help to get back on track. Then there had been the people that might never be saved. I would be one of them, cackling with laughter as I rocked back and forth, my eyes wild as I looked upon something no one else could see.
I viewed the woman and felt a small part of me die inside. As I continued to study her, I recognised what it was I had lost; it was hope. Hope that I would ever escape the nightmare I’d survived for so long. Hope that Adam would somehow break into my subconscious and lead me to awareness. My hope died at her words for they could not be real.
I sank to the floor, drawing my knees up to my chest. I waited for tears to fall so that I could mourn my loss, but my eyes remained dry. I must have been closer to accepting my fate that I had thought because my grief soon passed. I trailed my fingertips along a small strip of sharp metal, hanging by a scrap of cloth from the makeshift wall. I now understood my calmness. I had decided to end my own life. It seemed only natural that, if I killed myself in my mind, my body would also die. If it didn’t work and I was stuck in the Wastelands forever—
No! I couldn’t think like that. I couldn’t dare to image a lifetime of this.
Even as I pushed the thoughts from my mind, I needed to acknowledge the real reason I hadn’t killed myself so far. It wasn’t risk for the child as it would be long born by now, or that I wanted to be back with the ones I loved as they were fast becoming a faded memory, almost dreamlike in quality. It was the fear that it wouldn’t work, that I wouldn’t be able to take my own life. I couldn’t lose that crutch; it was the only thing fighting the insanity.
I clenched my fists, quelling the rising chaos. ‘Then get a grip.’
I faced the woman as I stood, my back straighter than it had been in some time. I met her gaze, staring into her as much as she did me. ‘Tell me what it is you want.’ She was a figment of my own imagination, I was sure, but maybe she was the part of me that knew how to escape my prison.
She looked around again, tense. Great. She a crappy conversationalist and jumpy.
I chuckled, my thoughts dark with my reality. ‘As you said, there is nothing here to hide from.’
She shook her head in frustration. ‘There are things worse than your mind could ever conjure up.’
I stared, my gaze fixed on her. ‘I doubt that.’
She stopped scanning the area to study me, a slight frown marring an otherwise smooth forehead. After a moment of scrutinising me, she dipped her head to me. ‘I apologise. You are correct, you have suffered greatly in this war.’ She sighed, meeting my own gaze directly. ‘And, if you cannot escape here soon, you will lose so much more.’
‘I would have thought my mind would have more to say.’
The woman whipped her head around. When she turned back, her eyes were wide with fear. ‘I must go before I am detected.’ She stumbled forwards and gripped my shoulders, pushing me against the back of the seat. Her eyes burned into me. ‘You have to fight your way through the memories, learn to control them.’ She leant closer until her breath danced across my face. ‘Stop Cleas if you wish, but you need to go after Vakros. My brother is the one you will kill.’
With that, she left. No fading out, or poof of sparkles. One second she hovered over me, the next I stared at empty space. What the hell?
I couldn’t tear my gaze away from where she’d recently stood, my brain more alive than it had been since I’d given up on finding an escape. Was it possible that she was real?
Part of me argued no, that she was a twisted part of my mind that wanted me to become lost in the madness. But another part of me couldn’t accept that. If I had jumped straight into crazy and was imaging people, wouldn’t the experience have been different? Could the Icelandic looking woman have come from my mind? There was something familiar about her, like a forgotten dream from my childhood, but I couldn’t place her anywhere. And what of the cryptic message about Vakros? The leader of the Others wasn’t even on my list of current threats. If I merely taunted myself to swim into Cleas’s mind, wouldn’t the warning have been about him?
When the conflict in my head reached no conclusion, I paced the confines of my camp, running her sentences over in my head. She wanted me to kill Vakros. Fine. It wasn’t at the top of my to-do list, but I had heard enough about that particular Siis to know that he would be a dangerous enemy. But what of the comment of her brother. Was Vakros her brother or had she switched to a different topic? Did Vakros even have a sister?
If I wanted the answer to that, I would need to delve back into the memories now crammed into my brain. I hugged my waist, cringing. That task was not on my to-do list. But if I wanted out, I needed to try.
I tried to recall one of Cleas’s memories, when he had raged to Cortell about Vakros. As I got closer to remembering, I felt the tug of the chaos. If I wanted to know the answer, I would have to dive back in. But would I come out again?
The questions gained momentum. If the woman hadn’t been a figment of my imagination, then how the hell had she gotten into my mind when no one else had managed it? And if she was real, why did a stranger care about my welfare? Could Vakros be her brother? If he was, they why did she want him killed? Why did she see him as a bigger threat than Cleas? And, even if I managed to get back to reality, what did she think I could do against one of the most powerful people in the world?
After a while, I realised that it boiled down to one important question, that the rest could wait for later as they were all dependant on that one answer. Had the woman be real or not?
If she was, then it was unlikely that she would take the trouble to invade my mind to cause me harm. After all, I had been stuck in the Wastelands for years and wasn’t about to cause trouble in the real world.
Unless I got out.
I caught sight of my suicide blade hanging on the wall and stopped pacing. I was wrong. That wasn’t the question I should ask myself. I needed to decide whether I would go down without a fight.
I ran my hands through my hair, already regretting my decision. ‘It looks like I'm going swimming.’
***
The memories came thick and fast, and each time I found myself in the wasteland again, I was sure that, when the next memory hit, I would forever cease to exist.
I returned to the wasteland several times before I noticed the camp was gone. I had no time to consider what that meant before I ceased to exist once more. I became Cleas, Adam, Gabriel, and even Eris at times, but only when I landed back amongst the rumble of the wasteland, did I become me once more.
I tried to make sense of everything I experienced, but I never had long before the next memory sucked me in, memories of places and people I knew so well when in there, but I struggled to recall once I returned to me again. I remembered bits, though, snippets of information that no one in the real world would ever tell me, information that would help me fight in the war to come.
As time passed, three things became apparent. As much as I loved Adam, there were many hurdles to cross before we could be together. Eris had more to answer for than I would have imagined. And most importantly, Cleas had to die, quickly, and in the most painful way imaginable.
I tried to focus on Cleas’s plans, but each time I tried to concentrate, another memory sucked me in and, for a time, I ceased to exist. It made it impossible to follow through on plans. I eventually stopped fighting and allowed each memory to grip me without resistance, and once I did, it all changed.
I sailed through the sea of minds and memories, riding the waves as I searched for something, anything that could help me escape. I couldn’t return to the wasteland that had become my prison and sanctuary.
I jumped as Eris’s voice boomed around the air. ‘I am not doing it anymore!’
Adam sighed and my heart warmed hearing his tired words. ‘You are the one who instigated talks.’
Eris growled. ‘These are not talks, they are a delay tactic meant to keep Ana here.’ She snarled, angrier than I’d ever heard. I wouldn’t want to be the person causing that rage. ‘What can these machines do that we can’t?’
Machines? Of course, I was likely hooked up to the usual monitoring equipment. Then why, if I could hear them talking, didn’t I hear the beep.
Noble Lies Page 23
