Waters of Lethe, Book 2

51. Beat

"Why do you keep giving me these stink faces?" Scott asked Jai. He still sat by Jai, making them only two feet apart.

Jai didn't answer. He looked between the guy typing on the computer and Scott, but kept his eyes from me. I couldn't tell why, but maybe it was a tactic he was using to keep the conversation between them.

Scott shook his head. "Do I need to get the gun again?" Then Scott jumped up quickly, which startled me. "Do I need to get the fucking gun again? What is it, Jai?" he asked as he picked the gun up from the counter and walked toward Jai again. "What? You think I won't actually use this?" he asked.

Beat, beat, beat went my heart. No, no, no.

Scott pulled the gun up, and I closed my eyes tightly. As tight as they'd ever been closed before. And then I heard the shot.

I opened my eyes and Jai was alive, his chest heaving, eyes wide as he looked at Scott. The assistant that was preparing the program was not alive, however. He lay face down on the ground in a pool of his own blood, dark red on bright white.

Then Scott swung the gun over to me again. Beat, beat, beat went my heart. I didn't know if Scott was bluffing again, but if I had to guess on whether or not he was bluffing, I'd have guessed no. I didn't want to end up like Mr. White-Now-Red Coat on the ground. So, again, I had a loaded gun pointed in my direction.

Unlike last time, I now focused my sight on Jai, who was still wide eyed and pale faced. I knew what the last thing I wanted to see before I died was.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Scott walk to the dead man on the floor. Still holding the gun on me, he bent down to roll the man onto his back. He got blood on his hand in the process, but didn't make an effort to clean it off before standing up and walking over to me.

I had to break my gaze from Jai so that I could see what the hell Scott was doing now. Now, he was beside me, his mouth in a hard line. He bent slightly and roughly wrapped his bloody hand around the bottom of my face so that he cupped my chin and gripped my cheek bones. Then he squeezed his hand and shook my head from side to side, making me face Jai. As I looked at Jai, silently pleading for him to look away, I felt Scott's other arm press against my shoulder, felt the barrel of the gun against my head again.

"I'll do it. Lethe, I'll do it," Jai breathed. "Just don't..."

Scott ignored him and spoke. His hot breath slammed against my ear, making me sick. "You think I need you two? Hell," he said, nodding at the dead guy on the floor, "Greg thought I needed him, too. I have other monkeys who know how to run the program. And you two? I'm gaining more and more of you each and every week. Quality over quantity doesn't apply here, my children. You see, you two are only a little more advanced than the others I have. As you know, El, Alex, Deebo, and Ming are on your level already. Don't think you're too special."

I had to correct him. I didn't know why, but I had to. I moved my jaw against Scott's grasp so I could speak. "Then why did I overcome the program in such a short time? Why didn't they?"

He tapped the barrel of the gun against my head in thought. "Hmm. Good question. Actually, that's another reason I should just waste you right here..." I felt the barrel press harder against my head. "Can't have rebels like you running around ruining everything when I have so many other stable doormats."

"Ruining what?" I asked as quick as I could, still staring at Jai's horror-stricken face.

"God's plan, of course."

"Go to hell," I growled at him. 

"I'll do it. You need both of us, right, Scott?" Jai asked, talking fast. "We definitely wouldn't be a set back to your plan—"

Scott brought the gun off my head and pointed it in the air, like he was pointing a finger in the air, to correct Jai. "God's plan."

Jai continued. "Right. We definitely—"

"Say it," Scott insisted, replacing the gun to my head.

Jai huffed. I could tell he didn't want to agree with Scott's nonsense, but we were kind of in a pickle. "God's plan."

Scott took in Jai's words, then pursed his lips and nodded, pleased. "And you?" he asked me.

I paused for a moment, thinking about how much I liked Scott's gun when it wasn't pressed all snugly and warm against my temple.

"She'll do it," Jai insisted, his voice urgent.

Scott never broke his gaze from me. "I want to hear you agree."

"Do you really need me to agree? I mean, you'll do it anyway—"

"ELLIE!" Jai all but yelled, which made me jump in my chair. Not because he yelled, but because he said my whole name.

"Fine! Yes, I'll do it!"

Scott considered our words for a moment, then nodded his head once in a victory that he only needed for his confidence. He didn't need our consents to do anything.

"Good," he began as he stood. He walked back to the counter and, again, put the gun down. "We'll start with you two and then move on to the rest."

"You're redoing everyone?" I asked.

"Of course. Well, only back to a certain time period. We've come to the conclusion that we need to erase everyone's minds back to where things began to get a little tricky." He looked at Jai, "Where your image and name started to come up. Where thoughts of us being evil were brought up. Where thoughts of trickery on our part were brought up. Where thoughts of escaping this place started to come up. We'll be like one big happy odd family again!"

I shot a distressed look at Jai, who wore the same look. If we wanted to live, which I knew that, despite our faked indifference to dying, we both wanted to, we had to comply. 

"Kevin!" Scott yelled to another assistant, though he was twenty feet away from him. "Remove Greg, would you? Put a towel down or something. We'll get started on the guy. He won't take long." Scott turned to me. "I want you to see Jai when I get finished with him. This is going to be so fun!"

There wasn't much of a fight after that. We were all pretty much on the same page. Scott was God, we were his dolls. But we had faith. Faith that we could overcome what we were about to be put through.

Beat, beat, beat went my heart. There was nothing I could do but sit back and watch as they knocked Jai out and began running the program, pulling up various parts of his brain: his frontal lobe, his temporal lobes, throwing hateful traits in that would make him despise me all over again, despise the world. All I could do was pray that he'd remember me soon after this was all over with.

Beat, beat, beat went my heart.