The other me stood there, not doing anything to stop him as he held the knife just so, now applying enough pressure to draw just one drop of blood. It slid down my pale flesh, leaving a trail of bright crimson behind in its wake. There was no trace of fear in my own green eyes that stared back at me. Nero smirked at the terror on my face, his rage causing the corner of his mouth to twitch ever so slightly.
I raised my hand in a beseeching gesture, knowing it wouldn’t matter to him that I was terrified. “Please, Nero, don’t do this. Put the knife down.”
“You did it to save yourself, Mila. You can’t deny that,” he said through gritted teeth, his anger evident in the way he spoke even though he face was only hinting at the level of his rage.
My head shook. “No, I did it to save all of us. You know that. You know I’d never do anything if it weren’t to protect those that I love.” I took a step toward him, causing him to press the blade into my doppelganger’s throat even harder than before a couple more drops of my blood flowing to stain the already ruined scrubs I was in. My heart raced even though I knew this was a dream, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of reality that poured from the very essence of it. “Nero, please.”
He reached out with his hand, and it was like all the oxygen left the room. My lungs screamed and burned as the air was forced out of them, causing me to fall to the ground in a heap, unable to do anything to stop what I was certain was about to happen. A gasp was all the noise I could produce as the air filtered out of me, now leaving me a dumb thing that could barely even move from the lack of lifesaving oxygen.
Inhaling loudly, as if all the air that had left my lungs entered his, Cato’s body reached out to me, his eyes focused on me. But there wasn’t any anger there. There was terror, pure and unadulterated terror as I stared into those eyes as I suffocated. They were dead, empty of what he had been.
“Mila,” Cato cried, his voice raspy and hoarse with death just on the fringes of his awareness. That was what my power did. If I wanted only to move things, then that was amazing, but it was a destructive force if I aimed to kill.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run, but I was locked in my place on the floor because I couldn’t breathe. Nero smiled, evil leaching out of his pores to blanket me on the ground, covering me in its hot filth. With one swift motion, he ran the blade across my throat, my blood pouring out of me in warm droves like a dam having been opened up for my life to pour out of me and onto the white floor around me, marring its perfection. I attempted to push myself away from the puddle that continued to grow, stretching out toward me as Cato’s own essence pushed away from him as he moved toward me, stretching out like reaching hands. It was as if the floor had turned to quicksand, sucking me down as my hands pushed at it in a feeble attempt to save myself from whatever they had planned for me. As it reached up to swallow me whole, my blood turned into reaching bodies and hands, pushing me down even further into it as Cato’s blood did the opposite. Its darkness was reaching out in an attempt to save me from myself and everyone else, but was failing.
There was a snap, and air forced itself into my lungs as if the air had been let back into the room. I pulled in a deep breath and screamed as the growing pit of nothingness overwhelmed me, taking me down into the depths of my own despair and fear, and then everything went dark.
Within seconds I was gasping for air, sitting on the hard ground surrounded by only darkness and unable to see, but I knew I wasn’t in the tent. I was still dreaming. Had to be. I rose to my feet, turning into the darkness in an attempt to see anything at all, but all I saw were small white pinpricks in my vision as my eyes tried to process the completeness of the dark around me. Laughter, maniacal, floated to me through the black as a light began to form in the distance. It started off as a small point of light, growing until it looked like a doorway, inviting and beckoning to me as I tried to make out what surrounded me, seeing only nothing despite the light that shone on me frightening away the shadows. Recognition hit me as the voice wafted toward me, causing my heart to race even faster. Emerson King was the one whispering to me from those shadows, beckoning to me to come be his. To give him my power so I could get rid of it and he could enact his plan of domination. So I would be the newest addition to his room full of empty bodies being kept alive by cold machines.
“No,” I screamed into the darkness beyond toward King, who was waiting there for me, taking a step backward toward the light that was so welcoming and inviting. The dark was cold and unyielding, but the light was warm and comforting on my back. The laughter came again, and I turned toward the light, hearing a familiar voice speak my name in a soft whisper. A voice I hadn’t heard since I was a small child.
“Dad?” The word came out in a rush of breath, and I took a step toward the light, reaching out toward it as I neared it. Each step brought me closer and closer, even if it felt like only mere inches. My white dress scraped the floor, and I could now see that it was splattered with the blood that had brought me to this place.
“Mila, baby, you can make it,” he whispered again. It was a voice I hadn’t heard since I was a small child and it brought a tear to my eye for it to sing its sweet song again, even if it was all inside my head.
“I’m coming, Dad,” I sobbed as I reached the doorway of light, placing a hand on the threshold and then stepping over it hesitantly. I knew that the darkness could play games with you, taking the guise of something or someone you loved and twisted it to inflict pain on you. And it would. Even if you knew it wasn’t real.
The sun blinded me for a few seconds, but, as I blinked past it, the sight before me took my breath away. My feet met fresh, green grass and I was surrounded by an open blue sky with not a single cloud to mar its perfect, pale blue beauty. There was a single tree in the not too far distance, a single figure standing underneath it waiting for me to come near. His hands were reaching out to me, and I gladly went, picking up my pace to a run as my heart sang at seeing my father again. His burial had even had a closed casket, and I had wanted so badly to open it, to see him one last time before he was interred back to Mother Nature even though I knew the casket was empty, but my mother had stopped me, taking me outside and explaining to me what death meant. What his absence in that coffin meant. I didn’t want to believe her then, and I still didn’t. She had said death was the end of all of what that person was, that their existence was over in every way. That there was nothing left of them to keep you company when you were alone.
When I reached him my smile only grew, and he wrapped me in his arms, his body warmed by the sun and he smelled like fresh cut grass and lemons just like he used to. He had also worked within the government, but he had been employed with plants all day, working as a botanist in the government nurseries and he would always come home smelling like damp earth and fresh grass. He smoothed my hair and held onto me, making soothing sounds as I sobbed into his broad chest and, when I pulled back from him, his hazel eyes filled with tears. He pushed my wet hair away from my face as the breeze blew around us, causing his short cropped brown hair to move just slightly as mine whipped around us.
“You can do this, sweetheart. You just have to believe you can,” he encouraged. “You can take that bastard down. Don’t let him scare you away. You keep fighting, baby girl. Just keep fighting.”
His strong jaw clenched as he saw something behind me, his eyes becoming angry and dark within seconds. I turned to see the darkness creeping into our sanctuary, making its way quickly to where we stood under the large tree with long, reaching fingers. Within that darkness I saw the menacing form of Emerson King walking toward us, pulling a gun from a holster on his hip that had been hidden by his suit jacket before. The same gun he had used to make his threat within the compound.
“Now, you have to go, darling. I need you to go and be strong and save the world.” Tears filled his eyes as he said the words, one escaping and cascading down his cheek. I wanted
to wipe it away and to stay there with him, but he was forcing me away as I struggled.
Without another word, he turned me toward the far off distance where there was no horizon in sight, and I slipped slightly on the grass, my feet nearly giving way beneath me. He righted me and let go, turning to King as he neared him. I watched as King pointed the gun at my father, barely inches from his tanned skin, and aimed.
“No,” I cried, hoping to bring King’s attention to me so he would leave my father alone. I wanted to save him even though I knew it was far too late. The wind whipped around me with my anger and rage, silver clouds rolling in as the sky darkened with the emotion. Thunder rolled and lightning struck in the distance as the rain began to pour down on us, and all I heard as the thunder sounded again was one word.
“Run,” my father cried, and then King fired.
Chapter
EIGHT
I awoke with a start, screams of pure terror and sorrow spilling out into the air. I couldn’t control my emotions, and I wanted desperately to reel them in, but it was too late. They rang out in the air along with my screams with no way to pull them back into myself. Ryder awoke beside me, sitting bolt upright as the ground began to shake beneath us, the state of my mind causing me to lose control. My father. My poor father who was the light of my life at four years old was murdered, and that was one reason why the casket had been closed at his funeral. One gunshot to the head had obliterated him beyond recognition even if there was something for us to bury. Was it my father that somehow reached beyond death to show this to me, or was it, Cato? I had a feeling I’d never get the answer.
The tent swayed around us as I sobbed and drew the sleeping bag around my body, pulling my knees up to my chest and covering my ears with my hands to drown out the sounds of the shouts from the others as the ground quaked beneath their feet. They only reminded me of Cato’s screams as he died at my hands. I had killed him, and I was paying the price, even though Cato was still trying to save me at every turn. Not even my father saw me as the killer I thought I was and neither did anyone else but Nero, and he used that against me to betray all of us.
I tried to draw in a deep breath, bring myself down before my unbridled power killed someone, but even more panic set in when the breath wouldn’t come. When my lungs and heart squeezed so tight with alarm and trepidation at the sight of Nero with the knife slitting my throat, and King aiming a gun at my father and pulling the trigger. The shouts were nearing our tiny abode, even more penetrating the air as I heard a tree fall in the wake of my fear and my rage. I had to stop this, but I didn’t know how. Before I killed someone else that I loved. Before I ended them all.
“Mila,” I heard Ryder’s voice through my fingers. “Mila, come on. You’ve got to calm down.”
I couldn’t look at him. I had squeezed my eyes shut so tight all I saw was nothingness. The same nothingness that had come to greet me in my nightmares. His warm hands gripped my forearms softly, trying to be a restoring force, but causing my heart to skip a beat, the ground lurching beneath us again. I was a destructive force to everything and everyone I knew, and this only proved it. I felt every emotion leaving my body, but knew that I would have to pull them deep down inside of myself to stop this from damaging the only world I had left. I heard the door zip open from the outside, and my mother shout something I could barely hear past the noise of the quake I caused. One of Ryder’s hands left me for just a second and then returned, warm and almost comforting if it weren’t for the anxiety that gripped my heart. Or the sorrow that was blackening it even more than it already had been.
“Open your eyes, my love. Open them,” Ryder said as my body began to rock itself back and forth. “Show me those beautiful eyes, Mila. Come on.” He pushed my sweaty hair away from my face, and I opened them, only seeing the beautiful muted green of his in the dim light of the tent, which we hadn’t turned off before falling asleep. He smiled as the ground continued to shake around us, causing small wrinkles to form around his eyes as he did so. The light in that smile didn’t reach them as love and terror filled them. There were more shouts in the threshold of the tent, but I couldn’t pay attention to them now. I had to focus.
“There she is,” Ryder whispered lovingly, the warmth finally spreading to replace the horror.
Tears sprang from my eyes as I admitted, “I can’t stop it. I can’t.” I shook my head, watching as his smile turned into a look of determined sincerity. The power within me was too strong. It had taken over and was pouring out into my surroundings without me to control it.
“You can, and I’ll help you.”
I shook my head again, and he placed his hands on mine that were still over my ears, not doing anything to drown out any of the noise even though I couldn’t hear out of my right ear. The left one wasn’t ringing anymore, but was being assaulted by the shaking ground and the screams. Ryder gently removed them from my ears and placed them on his chest just like he had earlier, directly over his frantically beating heart. And he was still stark nude, but he didn’t seem to care. He had said all of his modesty left when he joined the military. I guess he had been telling the truth after all.
“You feel that?”
I nodded.
“I’m here. This is real, not whatever you saw. This,” he squeezed my hands, “is real.”
My breath came in panicked pulls, causing my vision to swim as my chest constricted and expanded over and over again.
His gaze bore into mine. “You can do this.” He nodded his head as if he truly believed it.
I didn’t, but he wanted me to. “You have way too much faith in me,” I halfheartedly joked as the Earth shifted again, jerking all of us nearly to the point of falling to the ground.
“See? There you go. Doing better already. Now,” his eyes focused on my face, “take a deep breath in through your mouth and hold it until I tell you to let it out. Focus on that instead of what you’re feeling. Got it?”
I nodded. “Got it.” I had never dealt with anxiety this heavy before, so I would let him guide me along the way.
“Alright, deep breath in. Slowly.”
I followed his instructions, pulling air into my lungs until it burned as slowly as I could.
“Now hold it,” he instructed, his voice stern, but still soft.
I did and within seconds I felt my heart begin to slow, and the Earth beneath us began to stop its shaking, silence filling the noise in slight even trickles.
“Now, let it out just like that.”
I pushed the air out of my lungs, and the ground stilled beneath us, the silence deafening as even the crickets stopped their singing their song. The only sound was the breathing of those around me, each person wide-eyed and scared at the display of power caused by my inability to hold onto my emotions. But there was a reason behind that. Noah’s eyes traveled to Ryder’s form in front of me, taking in the expanse of nude flesh and covered his eyes in a joking manner.
“Good God, man. Cover up before we all go blind.” He laughed, and the others followed suit, but that didn’t matter to Ryder. He didn’t even look back at them or acknowledge the joke.
His face was still as serious as it had been as he studied me, my shoulders relaxing and my body sagging against his strength. He sat down and took me into his arms as I rested my head on in the crook of his neck, breathing in the smell of musk and forest.
“If you don’t like it you can get out,” Ryder snapped, his vocal chords vibrating against my forehead. It was a welcome sensation that seemed to help center me and calm my breathing even more.
Fatigue slipped across my mind and my body. The power it had taken to cause the entire Earth to quake was immense, dragging me deep into exhaustion, but there were still questions burning in my mind now, and I was only filled with the anger instead of the terror of what I had seen. Then a thought came to me. My mother knew about the death o
f my father. Knew what had happened to him, deciding to hide it from her daughters. Well, I was about to put a stop to all of the secrets. I was finished with being lied to, especially by the one person I was supposed to trust with anything. That clearly wasn’t the case here. And the change I had seen in her was just a fraction of who she truly was beneath the surface.
My head shot up from his shoulder, and I stared at my mother, letting the rage fill me again, but this time keeping a stronger hold on my power. I felt it well inside my belly, but I forced it back with my sheer force of will.
“No, what I saw was real, and I am sick of being lied to. We are all going to have a talk before we go any further,” I demanded.
My mother’s eyes met mine, and she quickly looked away as she saw that I knew the truth.
“King may have been able to triangulate our position because of this. We need to start moving, and we need to get to it now,” Famke said from behind my mother.
I could barely see her over my mom’s shoulder, but she was there, staring past Ryder and at me in disbelief that I would even suggest staying here another minute.
“She’s right, Mila. It can wait until we are safe at headquarters,” my mother agreed.
The Pursuit (The Permutation Archives Book 2) Page 8