by Emma Vikes
Now all I had to do was look for the tree that I engraved the letters on.
And then there it was, in between the ravine and the river. A small and crooked FD engraved on the wood. I let out a small sigh of relief when I saw it and trudged my way there. I fell on my knees, my hands immediately digging. That drive could change everything.
Nausea kicked me in the gut after nearly two hours of digging around in the heat. I’d already taken off my shirt. I’d ignored every sound the forest had whispered to me, refusing to let the haunting fear of my attackers stop me from the task at hand. At some point, I think that my mind was playing tricks on me when my fingers grasped a small object.
My heart hammered in my chest as I pulled it out of the ground. My hands were caked with dirt and mud but the unmistakable black object was in my hand. “Oh, fuck, thank god.”
I was shaking by the time I got up, from exhaustion and hunger and dehydration. It took me two hours to find the drive and maybe an hour and a half finding the place. As I made my way back, I was bumping into trees and tripping on roots but my hand held on tight to the drive. There was nothing as important to me at that moment as that drive.
By the time that I reached the end of the woods, the sun was beginning to set. I wanted to lie down right on the sidewalk. I would have if my life wasn’t in severe danger. But before I even got to the bus stop, I heard the click of a gun.
I didn’t need to turn around to know someone was aiming it at me. It felt as if I had been injected with a massive dose of adrenaline. I pocketed the drive and turned around, my body responding in the same way that it did when Jasmine and I were attacked in her house. My leg swept around and I took the attacker by surprise.
Recovering fast, he reacted quickly. He took a jab and hit me with the back of the gun so fast that I didn’t even get a chance to take a good look at him before everything went black. The last thing I remembered was thinking that Jasmine was going to kill herself when she would find the motel room empty.
Chapter 13
Wes
I stared long and hard at the ‘meal’ provided for us. It wasn’t much different from the food given to prisoners in jail. “I’m pretty sure something is moving in it, Ross.”
Beside me, Ross sighed and lowered down his bowl. He nudged me on the shoulder and gave me a hard look. He was getting annoyed by all the complaints he had been hearing from me all day. “Don’t give me that look. They’re treating us like prisoners when we’re one of them!”
Ross had to shush me because I said it too loud. It didn’t matter though. In the dingy, old abandoned house that we all ‘lived’ in, everyone minded their own business. There wasn’t even a glance cast our way. Still, Ross wanted to be cautious. The last thing we needed was to make enemies with people who were meant to be our allies.
“Shut up, Kian.” Ross hissed at me just as everyone else abruptly stood upright.
I’d been with this group for two days and I already knew what this meant. We had to stand to attention because the big boss was here. The head of this drug cartel. For someone who had tons of money, he could’ve bought a better place for his men. And better food for us to eat. I guessed some people were just that greedy.
I gasped, sitting up awake on the bed of the motel. Sweat dripped all over my face; my heart was racing wildly. It was dark in the motel room and I couldn’t see properly.
“Thank god you finally woke up. I thought I’d have to wait for a few more days to interrogate you, John Doe.”
John Doe. Was I in the hospital again? Where was Jasmine?
The streetlight’s soft glow passed through the thin curtains. A person stepped into the light and the familiar neatly cut black hair and blue eyes were enough to give him away. “Paul.”
He had a brown leather jacket on and I knew his badge was in there somewhere. Cops never left the house without their badge on them. They would shove it in front of anyone’s face if they had the chance. I knew that. I used to do it.
The sudden intrusion of that single thought made my eyes widen and I look at Paul. A terrible crash of my memories came flooding in, piecing themselves back together, sending a sharp blow to my chest and leaving me breathless. “Where’s Jasmine?”
“I should ask you the same question. I found you dazed, walking out of the woods. A call had come through that someone had seen a crazy person digging around with his hands. They said the person looked like the John Doe escapee from the hospital. I was on my way back to Norwynne and was the closest to that area.”
My eyebrows furrowed and I looked at him in suspicion, remembering how Jasmine was so keen on meeting someone earlier today. “Why were you in that area?”
Paul looked at me calmly. “Because Jasmine wanted to talk to me. There were things she needed to clarify and information she needed to give out.”
My heart sank. Jasmine might have turned me in. Paul cleared his throat and I looked at him again. “You were rushing to get out. You looked half-crazed and I didn’t recognize you with your hair that color so I aimed my gun at you. You instantly fought back so I hit you with the back of my gun and you fell down, unconscious. I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”
The dirt caked under my nails suddenly weighed them down. What he said explained the throbbing in my head where he must’ve hit me. I swallowed, trying to regain my balance and explain to him why I was there. I inhaled sharply and then looked at Paul evenly as I fished out the flash drive I’d stashed in my pocket. “I was looking for this. I remembered I hid it in the woods. It was the first solid memory I had of my life, Paul. I took the risk of going there to find it.”
He took the flash drive from me and stared at it and then back at me. There was a question clear in his eyes but he wouldn’t voice it out. “I’ll get my laptop from the car. Wait here and don’t try anything funny, John Doe.”
“My name is Wes,” I said calmly, making him stop by the door. He shook his head and sighed before heading outside. I waited for him to come back, thinking about the dream I woke up to.
Or memory.
Ross.
The name sounded so familiar and so chilling. The mere thought of the name sent goosebumps down my arms.
Paul came back a moment later and placed the laptop on the small table. I got out of the bed and dragged the other chair next to him as he opened the laptop and put the drive in it, waiting for the content to load.
‘Kian Drive’ popped up on the screen and Paul clicked on it. My heart was hammering in my chest when I read the name Kian. Paul clicked open a folder that had the letter ‘K’ titled to it. Thumbnails of me filled the screen. Pictures of me with girls that I didn’t recognize. Me surrounded by a large group of people who had the same striking eyes as mine.
“So, you were never a blonde,” Paul commented as he clicked on a picture to enlarge it. It was of a family of brunette’s – the shade almost identical to the shade Jasmine had dyed mine. I was in the middle of two older people who were most likely my parents. Beside them stood two girls, twins, and another guy had an arm looped around one twin, looking almost identical to me, only older.
My heart soared. My family. I had a family. But why weren’t they looking for me?
Paul clicked on the next button repeatedly. There were so many pictures of me with people. He passed over one with a familiar looking guy. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Stop. Back it up a little. There…stop there.”
Ross.
The sight of him triggered another memory.
“All of you will be assigned partners. They will be your partner in every mission. You are assigned together, expected to work together. You are one unit. No one leaves the field without the other. Understood?”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
I turned to the guy standing beside me. He was tall and lanky and had black hair and soft brown eyes. “Hi. I’m Kian West.”
He glanced at my hand for a brief moment before shaking it. “Ross Kinsley.”
“Nice to meet you, partn
er.”
We had been partners. We had gone to the same academy. I stared at the picture of both of us in uniform. Our arms slung around each other’s, huge goofy smiles on our faces. He was the guy that had a recurring appearance in my fragmented memories and I whispered his name. “Ross Kinsley.”
Beside me, Paul looked grim and I couldn’t decipher why. So far, he hadn’t commented on anything that we saw in the hard drive.
“What’s wrong?”
Paul stared at the picture long and hard before answering me. “He was a CIA agent. The station’s been contacted by them. They said that they were looking for the guy who killed Ross Kinsley. I was in a rush to get out because I had to do something else outside of work, but the last bit I heard that he was killed by his partner.”
Ross was my partner.
Suddenly, the possibility weighed me down and I stared at the picture of Ross and me in shock, disbelief coursing through my veins. The cold fear I felt at the possibility of what I might have done was haunting and I stumbled out of my seat. Paul caught me before I fell to the ground and he looked at me, surprised by my reaction.
“Wes,” Paul said my ‘name’ slowly, his eyebrows furrowed as the gears in his head turned, “were you his partner?”
The memories opened like a floodgate, the question triggering everything. Every memory that I had with Ross. Every training session, every gym workout that we both had attended, every night out and every girl that we had dated and every breakup we had gone through.
Everything was overwhelming and I backed away from Paul, my back hitting against the bed as the surge of memories became too painful, the familiar crippling pain holding me victim all over again.
Chapter 14
Wes
Despite the adrenaline surging in my veins, the pain that my body was going through was overwhelming. Maybe what everyone meant about death was true, that escaping it was impossible. Humans will never have the strength or power or even intelligence to outrun it, no matter how advanced technology could become throughout the years that will soon follow. Since I was nothing but a mere human being, the chances of me escaping my own harrowing death were slim.
Death is inescapable. Sorrow could drive you to madness. It is a perspective that sheds your light.
My father used to repeat those words to me over and over whenever he told me stories about the time he served. Dad wouldn’t have stopped if not for the near-death experience that left him with a bionic leg that was nothing close to as good as the real thing.
But this wasn’t the time to think about Dad. He was most likely lounging on his Barcalounger, watching football. My current predicament at the moment, given my physical state, made it harder for me to get to the escape route I had stashed in the woods in case the enemy figured out that I wasn’t the ally they deemed me to be.
If only things had gone according to plan, I wouldn’t be running for my life and seeking out reinforcement, with the information that would flip the entire mission around. If only we had known that there was a traitor in our midst, that there was a mole that would give this entire operation away and put everyone’s at stake, all for the sake of extra cash.
“West!”
The mention of my name caught me off guard and made me stumble on a root, causing me to fall down on the cold ground. I tried to crawl into hiding, into the bushes or behind the trees, to gain a mere moment to regain some of the energy I lost from running and escaping their clutches. But my body screamed at him to stop trying, that it was already too late to lose them.
It was too late.
Death was coming.
The traitor hovered over me and the only thing that I could do was watch as the person I used to think was my best friend loomed over me, hair as dark as the night sky. “West.”
I hated that it felt as if we were still comrades, as if we were friends, when the other guy was nothing but a traitor. I should strike and kill. If only I had the energy to do so. “Are you here to finish what your men couldn’t do, Kinsley?”
Ross Kinsley’s lips pursed to a thin line. Ross crouched in front of me, dark eyes glimmered with the greed that none of us had ever noticed. “I’m sorry, Kian.”
I hated how much I trusted him out of everyone that was with us in this whole operation. “Do you honestly think that ‘sorry’ could cover up the damage that you’ve just done, Ross?”
Ross looked away as if he couldn’t look at Kian, as if this whole thing was killing him. “You have to understand, Kian. I’ve got kids to put through school and eventually college. My entire family needs my support. Working with you guys pays well but not enough. Not enough to pay off my mother’s debts.”
I knew what their financial situation was, that he was already raising his two kids while we were still in the academy, how much the pay of our job was important to him. But to die by your partner’s hand was the worst betrayal imaginable and I knew that could be my fate.
“So, you think being a part of the human trafficking business would help?” I asked him, my eyes narrowing in anger as I tried to get up, ignoring the sharp shooting pain in my rib. They’d beaten me up black and bloody until I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was tied in rope in the middle of the dark bodega, dead bodies scattered around me. Everyone was dead.
Except for Ross and me.
“We would’ve kept you alive if you hadn’t tried to escape, Kian,” Ross said, the irritation clear in his voice. “You ruined my plan.”
“And what was your plan, Ross? You thought you could convince me to join you? That we could come up to Agent Damiles and tell them that they figured us out and killed the rest of our team, that we were the only survivors?”
The corner of Ross’ lips twitched into a sardonic smile and it was as if he transformed into a different person in front of me. Even when Ross spoke, it sounded like he was someone else. “You know me too well, dude. But so much for keeping you alive. I’ve grown fond of you.”
He had been this way before, back when we were training in the academy. There were moments that the soft-hearted lanky man disappeared and a riskier and tougher version materialized. It was the version of Ross that I liked training with best because he wasn’t afraid of spilling blood,
I never realized how much of a monster that version of Ross was.
Ross abruptly stood up and placed a hand on his head, his eyes squeezed shut like he was in pain. “You’ve had your fun. That’s enough.” For a moment, I wondered if Ross was still talking to me but he leaned his back against the tree, his hands still on his head as if he was trying to squeeze it until it exploded between them. “You’re going to screw this up for everyone, Ross.”
Ross squeezed his eyes shut in pain. He was murmuring, arguing with himself. “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it! That’s enough.”
I stared at him in shock and watched as he backed against a tree, his hands on his head like he was squeezing it so he could get himself together. “You’re going to screw everything up, Ross.”
My eyes widened as the fragments suddenly pieced together. The number of times I’d seen Ross suffer a headache, the moments I caught him talking to himself, how Ross always sobered up from the pain the headaches caused him but acted differently each time as if he was a different person. It was as though he had a drug addiction or suffered from a hangover, but Ross rarely drank nor was he the kind of guy who would do drugs.
If only I had paid attention to Psychology class more. But Ross always did. He was the star student in the academy, always the best at the academics while I was the best on the field. We balanced each other. We were trained to have each other’s back. But Ross was fighting something else and I couldn’t do anything to help him.
He could’ve saved himself from this ordeal if he had known.
“Ross?” I called his name and the sound of my voice jolted Ross back to reality. Except I didn’t know which version of Ross had snapped back in place.
Dark eyes stared back at me and Ross tilted his head to t
he side, the sardonic smirk still on his face. “Ross isn’t here, right now.”
I regained enough energy to tackle him to the muddy ground and get a hold of the knife I knew Ross had tucked along his leg. I didn’t hesitate to slash at his chest, his face, anything that the knife could pierce. Ross tried to protect himself and despite all the stabbing and slashing on my part, he still managed to punch me enough to knock me off of him.
Ross struggled to get up. He knelt in front of me, tried to get up from the ground, and pulled out his gun. Six bullets rang through the night. Six bullets were enough to kill me the same as the multiple stabs I’d inflicted on Ross was enough to drag him down to death, too.
Both of us fell on the ground, red blood seeping out of each of us from where I stabbed him and where he had shot me. I stared at the dark sky. People said that when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. That wasn’t happening for me. To be honest, it felt oddly tranquil, as if the vast expanse of the night sky would swallow Ross and me whole.
Briefly, I wondered what the person who found our bodies think? What story would they come up with? Humans always believed the story they found most interesting.
I turned my head to the side and saw that Ross had his eyes closed. I’d seen him asleep so many times during nights where we were supposed to stay watch. How could someone who looked that peaceful be this violent? Our blood mixed together, the red bright despite the darkness. If only the color didn’t mean that life was being sucked from us, it could’ve been beautiful. Maybe it was. Maybe death had a beauty that no one ever understood.
I woke up gasping. Fragments of memories were itching at the edge of my brain. We were dying. But I had survived.
I wasn’t sure if Ross had, too.