by A. Anders
“Ford, you’re a hero. You did the right thing.”
Lying there holding that beautiful Rose in my arms, it was like the darkness had lifted its bat-like wings and had flown away. I was free.
My tears continued longer than I would like to admit, but when they stopped a new feeling came over me. Her. Rose. The one who had released me from that dark spell. I wanted her. No. I needed her.
Like the air, I needed her. Like the sun and the world and the universe, I needed her. When my dry eyes next met hers, I found something unexplainable in them. Her eyes were telling me that she needed me, too.
I kissed her, but nothing like I had kissed her before. Our souls touched. Through our lips, I entered her, and she entered me. I could hear her heartbeat. When I slipped my hand onto the red hot flesh of her naked waist, the heat I felt stripped me of who I was and made both of us her.
I peeled off her shirt and her naked breast was next. Round and firm, I squeezed. She moaned. I pulled off my shirt and pressed my bare chest on hers. I locked our bodies together. She whipped her head back for breath.
Stripped of our cares and then our clothes, my hard manhood explored her. It slipped back and forth. In a moment that felt euphoric and like it would never end, I entered her truly, making us one.
“Ahhh!” she screamed, yearning for more.
Slowly rocking my hips back, I slid all of me into her. I could feel every part of her. Every ridge. Every curve. I could feel the end of her and her swollen beginning. All at once, holding onto me like a warm, perfect glove, every part of her quivered.
Holding her head in my hand like a sainted child, I felt her whip herself from side to side. Neither of us had much longer. Her grip had cut into my back. My manhood had pierced her. Then with a rush that threatened our consciousness, we exploded in a chorus of moans.
I blacked out and so did she. I knew because I saw her in the ether. Together, we embraced and watched the fireworks. It was timed to screams that sounded like our own.
When the fireworks ended and the show was through, we held each other’s ethereal hands, looked into each other’s eyes, and then let go. We returned to our bodies as quickly as we had left them. All that was left of what had been us were these two meat slabs, one of which still penetrated the other.
I tried not to think that this could be our one moment, our first and last time together, but the thought slithered through my mind any way. As it entered, the part of me that remained in her, shrunk out. We were again who we had been. The glory that had been us was no more.
I released Rose’s warm body enough to find her bliss-filled eyes. She looked back at me and smiled. It was a bittersweet smile, though. As I stared at her, a tear rolled out. I reached up and brushed it with the back of my finger.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, seeing her face melt into sadness.
“Bob’s dead,” she declared, before wiping her eyes.
Her words surprised me. I wasn’t sure if I should let her go or hold her tighter. But she let me know by loosening my grip, rolling over, and spooning into me.
I held her as I was supposed to. It was what she wanted. I would do anything she needed me to do. All she had to do was ask.
What she said, though, consumed my thoughts for the rest of the night. How did she know that Bob had died? No red light had warned us.
Then sometime during the fleeting minutes of darkness, it hit me. Thorin had been right. Rose had been at the bottom of what was happening to us all along.
My heart sank thinking about it. Knowing this changed everything. I was going to have to make a choice: save my men as I had sworn to do or protect my girl.
Chapter 11
As the sun rose behind us, I was reminded of a saying we had in the military: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” That never felt truer than it did today.
I felt lighter. My secret had festered in the darkness, but by shining a light on it, it had lost its power over me.
I felt stronger. Ready. I was whole, and like any new convert, I was an evangelist for what had saved me.
I had no doubt that I needed to make a decision. Now, like with Josh, I couldn’t save everyone. And whatever I decided could haunt me. It might tear me apart, crippling me like before.
The night before, Rose had saved me. After that, she had convinced me that she was at the center of everything that was happening to us.
Rose clearly had secrets. She had the ability to make people believe that they knew her better than they did, but what did any of us really know about her?
I thought that I probably knew the most. I knew that even with everything going on, she had the ability to look past herself, see exactly what I needed, and then give it to me. So I knew the depths of her compassion.
I also knew that she had a hole in her. Rose had dark thoughts that she constantly struggled with. Through that the darkness, she had come to the island believing she could find someone who could love her. So I knew the heights of her courage.
I turned to Rose. Her naked body glowed in the golden morning light. She was both angelic and strong. She was an amazing woman, and I decided it was my turn to do the saving.
I kissed her bare shoulder. She took a slow breath, rousing awake.
“Morning,” I said, prompting her to open her eyes.
I examined her soft face, wondering about her secrets. What did she know? And how could she sleep knowing it?
“Morning,” she said, groggily.
“We have to talk.”
Her eyes squinted as if drawing me into focus. “What about?”
“About you and how you knew that Bob was dead.”
I could tell that she had slept comfortably because my reminder jolted her. She lay frozen as everything rushed back to her. When the burden of all of it again appeared on her face, she spoke.
“I don’t know what it is, but I feel a connection to all of you. I didn’t notice it at first. But the fewer of you there are, the stronger the connection gets. Now, I can almost hear your heartbeats.”
“Is it the chip?” I asked.
She looked at me, saying nothing.
“Did you do this to us?” I asked, trying not sound accusing.
“No. I didn’t. Is that what everyone thinks?”
“It’s hard to know what to think,” I admitted.
Rose reached up and stroked my hair. “Do you believe that I did this?”
“If you did, it wasn’t on purpose,” I said, immediately regretting it.
She withdrew her hand and rolled away. Still naked, she lay on her back, staring into the cloudy morning sky. I joined her. For the first time since I got to the island, it looked like it would rain.
Still lost in the clouds, Rose began again. “I could tell that you didn’t know anything about me when you met me. But has anyone told you yet?”
She was talking about the fact that everyone else knew her. Even Kurt, the kindergarten teacher, had recognized her from somewhere. I had just assumed that, like Brad, she was game-show famous.
“I only know what you told me,” I admitted.
She responded with silence. I couldn’t imagine what she felt she had to hide from me, considering what I had shared with her.
“I got chipped when I was eighteen. Fresh out of high school. A recruiter had come to my school, telling us about all of the money we’d make as a product tester. And how, as a pretty girl, they’d pay me even more.” Rose laughed sarcastically. “At eighteen, that type of money seemed like a fortune. It was more than my entire family made. So I let them chip me. All I had to do was live my life while their researchers watched everything I said and did.
“It wasn’t hard work, and the money was already good. But on top of my salary, I would get bonuses. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t bother to ask. It was just all free money.
“It didn’t take long before things went really bad with my family. They didn’t like what I was doing. They thought it was porn or something. And then after a
huge fight, they made me choose between them and my job.
“I ended up moving into my own place. I had never even seen somewhere so nice. I had gotten everything I had ever dreamed of, and I didn’t have to do anything for it. So I did what any twenty-year old would do; I slept all day and partied all night with my chipped friends.
“It was then that the bonus checks really started rolling in. There were so many of them that I had to ask what they were for. The company told me that I got one whenever I inspired a new product that made it to market.
“So, great! Somebody found me inspiring, and I got free money for it. Everybody wins, right?”
Rose stopped talking. I looked at her, wondering if she had finished. She lay still. Her mouth hung open as if frozen mid-speech. I reached over and touched her. Her eye moistened and a tear traced a path to her ear.
I wasn’t sure what was going on. With her still not moving, I rolled onto my elbows for a better look.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said aggressively. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
I didn’t understand what was going on. Helpless, all I could think to do was hold her. I did, and she cried more.
“Do you know what it’s like to know that people are watching every embarrassing, gross, humiliating experience you have and to know that you could never hide any of it? To be watched every second of every day. To know that they were judging you, making fun of you, jacking off to you? And to know that you could never escape them?
“The bonus checks were larger when I partied. So I would party until I couldn’t remember that there were people in my head. But then I would sober up and the memories would come back.
“Eventually, I started dating an anti-chipper. The company didn’t like it, but I didn’t care. I loved him. We would go out, and I would pay for everything while he ranted about how evil my company was and how horrible I was for doing what I was doing.
“But I knew that he didn’t mean it against me. In fact, whenever he spoke, he wasn’t even really talking to me. He was talking to them. I was just his camera.
“Oh, and he would never touch me,” Rose scoffed. “To him, anyone who did what I did was corporate trash. And I felt like a trash. So I liked to hear him say it. It made what I felt on the inside match how I thought people saw me. It gave me a strange satisfaction.
“And then one day when I desperately needed to hear him say it, I asked him if he could ever love me. I had expected him to say that he already did love me. I thought that was why he said those aweful things to me. But instead he said that he could never love me as long as my chip was on.
“Well, I really needed him to love me. At least, I needed someone to love me. So I marched into my company’s headquarters and demanded that they shut off my chip. And they did.
“I was so happy after that. I was free. I knew that now, he could love me and we could finally be together like how I dreamed we could be.
“I rushed to him and told him what I had done. But as soon as I did, I could see the spark in his eyes fade. I was his camera. Without that, all I was to him was used up trash.”
The tears again rolled down her cheeks. This time, she quickly wiped them away. Her pain washed through me in waves. I wanted to pull her tight and promise to fix everything for her, but I couldn’t. What she needed was the sunlight. So I rubbed her arm gently and listened.
“What happened after that?” I asked, prompting her to continue.
“Nothing. I couldn’t find a job. I was twenty-six years old, and I didn’t know how to do anything but be a camera. I never saved anything. The money came in so easily that I thought it would last forever. And when it stopped… ” She shrugged her shoulders. “What else could I do? I mean…” She stopped and looked away. “There was nothing else I knew how to do.
“For eight years, people had paid to watch me have sex. What was the difference between being paid by guys in lab coats and being paid by some guy behind a computer? At least this way, I could shut the camera off whenever I wanted.
“So that’s what I did. I was good at it, and it wasn’t just about sex. They would watch me live my life. I would look into the mirror and make videos where I talked to them.
“I told them about myself and my thoughts. They posted comments cheering me up when I was sad. They cared about me more than anyone else ever did. I just didn’t know them.
“And, so what if they also watched me have sex? It really felt like they all loved me. At least someone loved me. And do you know how it feels to be loved by millions of people after being loved by no one? It’s amazing.
“You just have to keep believing that it’s real. That’s all. But after a while, I couldn’t. Not for another second. I was as alone as I had always been.
“And then one day, a miracle happened. I got an email saying that I was personally invited to participate in a game show where I would be guaranteed to find love.”
Rose’s eyes darted, as she tried not to become emotional again.
“I was such a fool.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I mean, what did I think? That someone would come here and be able to see me and love me? No. Instead, they used the chip in my head to kill people. Why would someone do that to me, Ford? Huh?”
I didn’t know the answer.
“Why had I believed that someone could ever see me? I’m nothing. I’m what people look through to see what they want to see. I’m the camera,” she said with a sniff.
“‘You can’t love something that isn’t there.’ That’s what my boyfriend would say to me. And he was right. I don’t even exist. I’m nothing. I’m invisible,” she concluded, wiping the endless tears from her eyes.
I paused, staring at her. I reached up and gently brushed her chin with the side of my hand. She turned her face and looked at me. She was vulnerable and beautiful and damaged and wonderful. Looking at her made my heart hurt.
“I see you,” I said softly. “I can see you.”
It was then that she revealed herself to me for the first time. She let go of her hardened façade and cried. She showed me her anger, her joys, and her fears. She showed me her pain. Most of all, she showed me her capacity to love. She threw her arms around me, and I promised her that I would hold on to her for as long as she needed me.
When Rose let go, it was to sit up. “What if we don’t go back?” she whispered. “I’m choosing you. I can tell them, or whoever has to know. I’ll tell them.”
I looked away, and she shifted to look into my eyes.
“We could just escape somewhere. We could disappear, and they’ll never know.”
My brow furrowed as I stared back. I knew that if she suddenly got up and walked away, I would follow her. I would follow her anywhere she wanted to go. But I didn’t want her to ask me for this promise. I couldn’t leave my men to die alone again.
She lowered her eyes and spoke softly. “If they find out that I’ve chosen you, they’ll try to kill me. I know they’ve talked about it.”
I considered what she had said. She was right. If they thought that it was the only way they could stay alive, they would kill her. They couldn’t know about us.
“I’ll protect you, no matter what. But we’ll have to keep everything a secret.”
Rose paused and looked down. She didn’t hide her pain. “I can’t watch them all die, Ford. I can’t.”
“If we can get to the compound, then you won’t have to.”
“But I can’t help how I feel about them. I can’t control it.”
“Then you have to remind yourself how much you need them. The eliminations aren’t at exact intervals. Remember Carl? That happened hours after Victor. You have some control. Just remind yourself that we need all of them if we’re gonna make it to the compound.
“If we get attached again, I’ll need Gray’s help. Brad is the medicine man. You know that. Thorin is the only one who knows how to remove the chips.
“And when we get to the compound there could be doz
ens of people. I’ll need all of their help if we need to fight our way in. We need all of them. Stay focused on that.”
Rose wasn’t convinced, but what I said gave her hope. She hadn’t told me much about her experiences with the chip, but what I said seemed to make sense to her. Maybe she had a reason to believe my suggestion would work.
We both got dressed and headed back toward last night’s camp. It was later than I would have liked, but perhaps now that Rose knew how important everyone was, the lost time wouldn’t matter.
We walked in silence. I wanted to take her hand, but I didn’t. It was already bad enough that I had spent the night with her. I didn’t want to tip anyone off about what exactly went on. I wasn’t Brad.
It was then that I remembered Bob. He had seemed stable when we left. Had Rose’s chip killed him, or had it been something else? Or, could Rose be wrong? Was he still alive?
Thinking about finding another dead man, my chest clenched. I had sworn to myself to get them all to the compound, but here was yet another failure. I had to keep reminding myself that if we hurried and Rose could control the chip, he would be the last one.
“We should hurr…”
Bang! I flinched back when I heard the gunshot. It was instinct. Rose squealed. I moved to catch her, but she fell. “Rose!” I screamed.
I threw myself to the ground next to her. She held the side of her face. She looked stunned.
“Are you hit?” I whispered, touching her.
She looked at me scared.
“Let me see,” I demanded.
She removed her hand from her ear. The cartilage on the edge of her lobe was torn. It resembled an earring being ripped out. It wasn’t bad.
Rose looked at her palm. Finding only a light smear of blood, her tense body loosened.
“You’re fine,” I whispered holding a finger to my lips to silence her.
I had no doubt who had taken the shot. I looked around, seeing nothing but trees. “Goddammit, Gray! What did you do?”
For a moment, all I got back was silence. Then Gray yelled back, “Did I get her?”
“Yeah. You got her, Gray. She’s dead.”