Waters of Lethe, Book 2

43. Don't Fear the Reaper

We arrived back in Toronto early the next morning. And Scott was waiting for us.

Before we even stepped off the plane I could see his blonde hair illuminated by the lights on the runway. He stood by a van that waited to bring us all back to the home he created for us.

It took everything in me to keep a straight face, to keep calm and relaxed like nothing had happened. Like I hadn't seen Jai, hadn't recovered my memories and hadn't remembered that, in reality, I wanted to kill Scott in about a hundred different ways. I wanted to take a hedge trimmer and cut off all of his limbs. I wanted to let him know how the people he'd kidnapped would feel when they, too, remembered just how they got here. 

I would die to kill Scott.

I walked with Piper behind everyone else as we walked across the pavement to where Scott was waiting, the air cool. I resisted the urge to take Piper's hand, resisted telling her everything would be okay. Scott's eyes were on me, so I had to keep neutral. No fear, no happiness. No reason to be afraid of Scott, no reason to praise him. I was simply there because he provided me and the others safety. Safety from the people who were like Scott, who wanted to manipulate us.

He regarded us all as we approached, looked over the people that Alex, Deebo, and Ming carried. I knew that Scott intended to trick us into doing his dirty work for him, the work that he couldn't righteously do himself. He intended to create an empire out of us. If what Nico told us in Dubai was the truth, part of Scott's plan was to help in speeding up evolution, though I didn't know why. What was the point?

God, I had a headache.

"You all look tired," Scott said quietly as he looked at the people we'd brought back. He picked up one of the hands belonging to the boy that Alex had laid into the back of the van and examined it. "Good," was all he said. Then he turned to me, his mouth in a hard, angry line. As soon as I saw it, it changed into something like me. Neutral. It was a message.

"Let's get you all back, huh? You guys can get some sleep while we start tests on these new kids."

I almost, almost lost it. Tests my ass.

While getting in, Scott told us that Natali was in stable condition and was in a secure, private location while she was being treated. She'd be sent back in a day or two. I silently thanked God. Although this was a stressful mission, it could have been so much more worse. 

I did a comparison in my head of the good versus the bad things that happened over the last day. Natali was hurt, sure, but she wasn't dead. I counted that as a good thing. I'd seen Jai, who helped me remember who I was, who I really was, and who I wanted to be. He helped me remember how I was currently in this predicament and why I didn't exactly trust Scott, which was the fuel I needed so desperately to ignite a plan to get out of and away from here. My memories were the fuel I needed to do what I had to do. 

I could only come up with a few terrible things that could be compared to the good. Although Natali was alive, she was hurt, and hurt bad. The wounds she'd suffered could heal in days, maybe a week, but the emotional wounds would last a while. 

Another bad thing that would no doubt haunt me: I'd killed another man, which added on to the total I'd begun to build back in Dubai when we were raiding Scott and Nico's safehouse.

Several bad things spouted from me killing another human. Number one, I didn't use a gun. I didn't use a knife. I used my bare hands, squeezing his neck, pushing in on his esophagus until I heard the cartilage crack under the pressure, heard his fragile, human bones shatter from the strength of my hands. My hands, pale and not that big to begin with, that used to help heal. Number two, Jai had seen me kill the man. Then he told me that he knew I could do it without his help, that I didn't need him. Was that supposed to be a pep talk? I wished he were here now, so that I could slap him and tell him that he was wrong as hell. I needed him to fuel my fire more than I needed Scott to fuel it.