Limitless

Chapter 10 - Unedited

Double update
Easter special ;)

"I have news!" 

Isla looks like she just stepped out of a scene of 'Legally Blonde". Her face mask is a shade of pink with her pyjamas in the same colour. A fluffy headband restricts her hair from coming into her face, and it's also - yes, you guessed correctly - pink.

Her face immediately lights up and she ushers me inside. "Wait! Let me get the snacks!" She squeals and leaves to go to the kitchen.

You can barely see the white walls behind her posters of Ariana Grade, Lady Gaga, a K-Pop group that I've never seen - must be a new addition - along with a few artists that I don't know. Coming close to her obsession of music, dozens of makeups brushes and equipment are on the vanity bedside her wardrobe.

"I'm here!" She suddenly bursts in the room, her face mask gradually melting off her face. "Gimme 2 seconds!" Then she's disappears into her bathroom. A minute later, two bowls of popcorn have appeared in front of me and that damned face mask is nowhere to be found.

"Okay... so should I start with the good news or the bad news?" 

Her face falls. "You said you had tea."

"No." I narrow my eyes at her. "I said I had news Isla."

"Bad news, first." She sighs. I'm not usually one to be the bearer of bad news so I think she knows this won't necessarily make her happy. 

"I won't be training at the academy anymore." The popcorn she was just about to eat goes back into her bowl and her shoulders sag. No more academy means less time of seeing each other. 

"That means the good news is -" 

"Yes, we all got promoted." The 19 have graduated the academy. We now rank, 'Specialists', which means we have a few more months of training, elsewhere, before we go out into the field.

 "I'm happy for you." She looks up at me, her eyes forming tears with her mouth looped into a sad smile. 

I pull her into a hug as she sniffles, "I promise I'll try to visit you a lot often." My bowl tips over as the snack spill onto the bed and I ignore it.

"Alright." She backs away, trying to wipe her eyes discretely even though she knows I'm looking at her.

I'm glad Water decided to share the news with us privately. We were told half an hour ago - all of us summoned into his office. We knew something was serious the moment we were told that we could be at ease, that he wanted to address us as his students - not his soldiers. He told us of how proud he was of each and every single one of us and then proceeded to break the news.

I made it a priority to let Isla know first. I can't imagine news like this landing in her ears if it didn't come from me. I can tell she's sad about it, I am too, but it was a long time coming and I'm glad the moment I've been waiting for is finally here. The fact that we aren't in the same rank works to our advantage - we see each other often but not every day.

Still it's a big change - for both of us.

"So, where have you been?"

I haven't come out of my room since the day we were with Jakub and Xander. My bed has been my source of refuge. When my room was filtered with sunlight, I spent most of the day beneath my blanket, making peace with the darkness that threatened to consume me whole, both internally and externally. During the nights, I got tired of the bed and sat in an empty bathtub bawling my eyes out in the darkness.

Guilt, so overwhelming and unbearable, was the only emotion that set itself into me at first. It threatened to eat me alive if I didn't confess my sins. The guilt manifested into a voice that repeatedly reminded me of what I had done. It forced me to come to terms with the fact that I had removed unwilling souls from this Earth and betrayed someone I considered to be, somewhat, a friend.