by Quil Carter
I looked down at him blankly. “I know,” I said simply. “It’s our job to protect each other, isn’t it?” Then my eyes found Garrett’s. “Pick up Ellis and carry her to the vehicle you drove here with.”
Garrett obediently leaned down and began to gather my sister, and as Nero groaned and pleaded in a low voice, I grabbed the collar of his black leather jacket and began to drag him towards the open basement door. The bright outside was a stark contrast to the musty darkness of the cold basement, my eyes squinted when I pulled Nero into daylight and towards his idling Humvee.
I loaded Nero into the back, and Garrett did the same with Ellis. “Do up your seatbelt,” I said to Garrett when I got into the driver’s seat. Then I looked into the rear-view mirror. “It would do you both good not to die. You’ve received your punishment, and are forgiven. You know how this family operates. To die would be unnecessary.”
Both Nero and Ellis gave me glassy, disconnected looks, but there was enough consciousness in them to allow confusion to show through.
“Elish…” Nero mumbled. “You do know we’re going to die, right?”
I nodded, the truck now pulling out of the precinct parking lot. “You are going to die today, yes.” Then I turned to Garrett in the passenger seat. “Call Perish and tell him to meet me outside the lab.”
Garrett, a glistening string of drool dripping from the patch of facial hair on his chin, obediently picked up the remote phone. While I silently drove towards the lab, Nero and Ellis’s laboured breathing behind me, he spoke in an emotionless tone to Perish. I could hear Perish on the other end, his cheerful drawl that reflected none of the heavy atmosphere in this truck. Garrett hung up soon after, and the silence returned.
I pulled the truck into the laboratory parking lot and was greeted by Perish. The born immortal scientist was wearing a new white lab coat and blue jeans, a smile on his face in tuned with the happy tone I’d just heard on the phone. Perish even had his short black hair brushed back, and his usual prickly facial hair was freshly shaven.
He walked to me as I stepped out, but paused when he looked into the back and saw Nero and Ellis slumped over each other. Their gazes were still glassy, their breathing rasps, and once my nose was looking for it, I realized that the inside of the truck smelled heavily of blood.
“You know the truth then?” he asked. He opened the door to the backseats and began to pull Nero out. He stopped for a moment when he realized the extend of their injuries, then continued, the shock as fleeting as a lightning strike.
“Yes,” I said. I turned to Garrett. “Follow me with Ellis.” I got out and helped Perish sling Nero over his back; then, with Garrett trailing behind with our sister, I walked to the entrance to Perish’s lab.
“Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?” Perish asked, his eyes shining with an inquisitive glint.
I looked at my brothers and my sister, Nero and Ellis leaving drops of crimson blood behind them like a breadcrumb trail. Then my eyes went to Garrett, standing with Ellis in his arms, snot and drool dripping down his face, and his own light green eyes disconnected and glassy.
And I said simply:
“Yes.”
CHAPTER 67
Hysteria knew no true form until the moment Silas laid eyes on the five of us.
“ELISH!” I heard him scream, then the sounds of him pounding his fists against the glass window. A glass window that was bullet proof, with the frames reinforced for even the most desperate of captives. Perish loved his human experiments, and the room the king was in, had been the one designed to keep them safely contained.
“NO! NO!” he sobbed. The pounding continued, the screaming intensified, desperate shrieks that I had never heard come from the king. “ELISH, PLEASE! I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll do whatever you want. Golden boy, please, please don’t take them from me.”
I didn’t look at Silas as we walked past him and into the surgery room. I stared forward, my brain a whirling current that barely had the capacity to keep me from putting one foot in front of the other. There were no conscious thoughts, no flickers of reason, and for sure, no shreds of compassion for this hysterical king.
I wanted him to suffer.
I knew he had no hand in Finn’s death. My mind was functioning enough for me to accept that, but there was still a long list of terrible things he’d done to me, and with the names of his victims, their faces, flashing in my head, I held no empathy for him.
This is for murdering Cristo.
Silas screamed when Perish stepped into the surgery room and out of Silas’s sight, my brother unmoving but still breathing.
This is for torturing me. Belittling me. Making me feel like I was worthless. For driving me to try and kill myself again and again.
And for what you’re about to make me do once my siblings are safe.
Another wail of despair was released when Garrett stepped into the room with Ellis. Both Nero and Ellis were pale, blood soaked into their clothing and drying on their greying skin.
This is for taking my virginity through rape. This is for trying to rape Finn. For laughing when Julian ripped out my heart.
This is for not killing Julian.
This… this is for everything Silas Dekker.
For everything.
I loved you.
I fucking loved you.
“Elish? Who’s first?” Perish asked beside me. I was standing in the middle of the surgery room. I could see a small sliver of window which meant Silas could only see a slight glimpse of the room I was in. Perhaps he could only see Nero’s leg? I didn’t know.
“Nero,” I said. “He’s worse off.” I walked to the surgery room’s metal door, and put my hand on the handle.
“ELISH! PLEASE!”
I looked up, and saw Silas with both of his hands on the window. His face was twisted in incomprehensible grief.
No, the grief was comprehensible.
I’d experienced it many times before.
“It doesn’t feel good, does it?” I said to him. I walked to the window, tears rolling down the face of a man drowning slowly in his own misery. “To lose the ones you love?”
Silas stared back, his expression both pleading and hopeless. “I’m sorry,” he cried quietly. “Don’t hurt them because of me. Punish me, not them. Lock me away, put me in concrete… just don’t hurt them.”
Our eyes locked. There was no smirk, no head shaking back and forth with taunting words at the ready. I was deep in mania, so deep I’d never experienced such a void of emotion, such a barren wasteland of long dead senses and feelings.
Never before had the damage been so bad. I was truly insane in that moment. Insane enough that this day would still terrify me six decades later. A day that I lost control of myself, completely.
“Oh, Silas,” I said to him. “I am punishing you.”
And I turned and walked away from him.
“NO!” he screamed. The pounding on the windows continued, relentless hammer throws that would’ve shattered anything that wasn’t specially designed to hold abuse. “ELISH! NOT THEM, PLEASE. NOT THEM.”
“ELISH!”
I walked into the surgery room and closed the door.
“Do you need his brain matter?” I asked Perish, Silas’s pleading screams muffled but still audible.
He shook his head. “You didn’t see the blood on the back of his head? I drilled him while you were gone. I knew what you were going to do. I’ll dispatch him later.” He turned with a syringe in his hand and a wan smile on his face. “Ready?”
I nodded, and picked up a bundle of blue scrubs that had been set out for me. “Show me what you did.”
I’d always had a nagging feeling that it was something simple. Sky would’ve figured this out with only the tools available in the years before the Fallocaust. I may never know how Sky unravelled this secret, but as I stared at the still bodies of my clinically dead siblings, I was thankful for the mad scientist.
And while my ey
es slowly went over Garrett, Nero, and Ellis, all three of them lying on the cold bloodstained floor with their bodies hot to the touch, I felt a calmness sweep me, a solidarity, a feeling of… a door shutting that had been opened for a long time. There was a conclusion now, to a story I didn’t even realize I’d been writing.
The psychotic anger was gone, the crazed insanity that had me laughing like a psycho and doing horrible things to my siblings, had disappeared while I’d performed this miracle of science on them. I was back from the brink, but in no way had I returned to normal.
I was calm, a jarring calm reminiscent of serene music that follows the end of an action-packed movie.
My credits were rolling – and I was thankful of that fact.
I was tired.
“I’m going to see Mantis,” Perish said behind me, exhaustion heavy in his voice. “He was scared when I last saw him.” My arm was nudged and Perish handed me a syringe full of pink liquid. “Silas needs to be dispatched. The brain matter I extracted from him needs to regenerate. I’ll give you the honours.”
I nodded and turned to him, and to Perish’s surprise, I embraced him. “Thank you. For everything… thank you.”
Perish hugged me back, a sad smile on his face. “I don’t know our future,” he said to me. “But I’m used to that. Thank you though, for giving me this taste of sanity. However long it will be for.” And with no more words spoken, he turned and walked out of the surgery room.
I followed him, but while he carried on down the white narrow hallway towards his separate apartment, I stopped at the door of the room I had put Silas in, a room that was now quiet.
I opened the door and walked in, and my eyes downturned to see Silas curled up in a ball, his tear-stained eyes staring forward in catatonic horror. He didn’t move; he didn’t look up at me. Silas stared at the wall in the same frozen state of despair that I had seen on him many times.
“Get up and come with me,” I said to him quietly.
Silas’s face scrunched up, he shook his head and whimpered.
“Get up, Silas,” I said again.
Another shake of his head.
I leaned down and slipped one arm under his legs, and another under the crook of his arm, and I picked him up. Silas began to cry quietly then, but he didn’t struggle.
However, when I left the room he’d been locked in, and walked into the surgery room, Silas took one look at my brothers and my sister, obviously dead and surrounded by their own blood, and let out a wailing scream.
“NO! NO!” Silas cried. He kicked himself out of my grasp and fell to the floor. He kneeled in front of Nero, and his hands went to his hair. “Oh god no! NO! ELISH! WHY!?” Silas began to sob again, screams of pain lacing each distraught wail.
I kneeled down beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Touch him,” I said to Silas. My tone was deadpan, not a single feeling breaking the surface; not even Silas’s emotional cries could breach it. “Put your hand on his arm.”
Silas’s sobs died on the air. He stared down at Nero with a despaired look and his hands slipped from his blond hair.
Then, with hesitation heavy in his movements, he reached out towards Nero’s arm.
And before he even touched Nero’s skin, his fingers retracted.
His eyes widened, the irises flickering back and forth in confusion.
“No…” he whispered in disbelief. “It can’t be…”
Silas then rested a hand on Nero’s shoulder, and with another sob, he burst into tears and threw his arms around my resurrecting brother.
I patted his back, and as he hugged Nero, then reached out and touched Garrett’s arm, followed by Ellis’s leg. Silas continued to cry, just as intense as he was before, but this time, from happiness.
I memorized his face. I memorized this moment, and I rose and turned towards the door.
“Why, Elish?” I heard him whimper behind me.
I paused, my eyes closed.
They stung; I had to squeeze them tight to contain the tears.
“I didn’t want you to be alone,” I whispered. “I know you’re scared of being alone.”
He sniffed, his chest shaking. “Are you immortal too?”
I shook my head. “No, love.”
“I’ll get P-Perish to do it tonight,” he said, his tone wobbling.
I shook my head again. “No, love.”
A hand touched my arm. I turned and saw Silas standing in front of me, worry and grief and so many other emotions fighting for dominance on his face. “Why?” he whispered.
I reached out and touched his cheek. “There is no coming back from this,” I said to him quietly. “I don’t have it in me to deal with the fallout from what has happened. What I’ve found out, and what I’ve done.”
“What?” Silas said as I turned and walked towards the door. “Elish… I forgive you. I forgive you just… just come home. Baby, just come home.”
I continued walking. “Elish? Where are you going?” he cried, panic was beginning to rise in his tone. “I… I don’t want you leaving right now. I’m scared.” He grabbed my arm, both of us now in the white hallway. I could see the entrance to outside, the red light was calling for me. “What are you going to do?”
I kept walking, but he grabbed me again. “NO!” he screamed, panicked. “Stay! STAY! STAY HERE! EL-”
I turned and sunk the needle into his neck and pressed down on the plunger. Silas cried when he realized what I’d done and tried to push me away.
I wrapped my arms around his chest and squeezed him to me. I held Silas, so tightly did I hold him, and as his cries and his struggling weakened, tears dripped down my cheeks.
“I’m in love with you,” I whispered. “And I know it won’t be reciprocated, and if it was, we would destroy each other. Just… just be happy you have my siblings, and let me sleep. Please, Master, let me sleep.”
“E-Elish…” he said weakly. “Elish…”
And he was gone.
I picked him up. I carried him to my resurrecting brothers and sister and laid him down beside Ellis, then with one last look at my family, I left them.
I got into Nero’s Humvee, and I drove to Alegria, tears sticking to my eyelashes. I wiped my eyes, I tried to make myself steel, and carried on towards the looming beacon that touched the pale blue sky.
And while I drove, I looked at the city around me. I really looked at it. I saw the men, women, and children walking down the sidewalks, some smiling, others who seemed to have no expression at all, yet I knew their minds were alive with thought, with plans, with questions, answers, love, hate. Every person I passed had their own separate stories in the middle of being written, their own hopes and dreams, their own fears. How overwhelming it is to realize you are only a background character in so many people’s lives.
My gaze then turned from the people walking to their destinations, and focused on the beauty of the world that surrounded me. Every living thing around me was here because of Silas. The maple trees that housed squirrels and birds, the flowers that Jack always had to admire when we went for our walks, the grass beneath my feet when I would play in the park when I was a child. I took it for granted, but it was truly a miracle that we still survived in this bubble of life. One trip to the greywastes helped reinforce that fact.
The world was beautiful, and tomorrow… tomorrow the sun would still rise.
But not on me.
I parked the truck and entered Alegria. I stepped into the elevator, and pressed the button for my floor.
There was someone I wished to have near me today. Someone I was quite looking forward to seeing.
But when I opened the door to my apartment, it wasn’t that person I saw. Instead when I stepped foot on the grey carpet, I saw Julian with an armload of canned food, a desperate glint in his eyes.
His head jerked towards the door, and the cans dropped from his grasp, falling to the floor with a series of low thunks.
“Elish!” he cried. I saw bruises on his face,
ones that took me right back to our time together as teenagers. Always sporting a bandage on his head, shadowed bruises on his hairline, or darkening his cheeks like gothic rouge. He said it was his father, but then I learned the truth.
I stared at him, expecting in the far reaches of my mind to feel an explosion of homicidal anger. But there was none. My consciousness was standing in an empty room, one so quiet and void that even the slightest noises sounded like thundercracks.
And here my consciousness looked around with confusion. Where was the hate? Where was the psychotic rage that had me shooting my brother and sister? Beating Silas half to death? There was nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Julian walked quickly to me, tears filling his eyes with every hasty step. “Where were you?” he cried. He was in a state of panic; it was radiating off of him like heat waves. “Where were you?”
He needs to know where I was, because my answer will determine if I know the truth. He has to know what I know, to tailor-make the lies and manipulations he’s going to spoon-feed me.
“I was at the Skytech lab,” I said. I walked inside and saw suitcases askew on the dining room table. There were two of them, one full of both his and my clothes, one he was stuffing with food and other survival provisions. I even saw several guns. “I was hoping if this latest theory worked out… Silas won’t alter me.” I can lie too, Julian. Look at me lie too.
You certainly have taught me well, Jules. Look at how easily I see through your act.
I saw the split second of relief before he hid it.
He doesn’t know, I knew Julian was thinking. Oh, thank god, he doesn’t know what I did.
“Baby, we’re leaving Skyfall,” Julian said. He put his hands on both sides of my face and looked up at me. There was more than just panic in his eyes, I saw unhinged desperation. Like me, he was dancing along the razor’s edge of mania, except he hadn’t slipped and fallen into the cavern of delirium like I had. “We’re not going to let Silas alter you. I’ve already packed. We can take the Falconer as far as it’ll go and hide it… I already withdrew enough money to last us for years.”