The Shatters: The Silence Chronicles

Chapter Twenty-Three: Dreamer

And that's how things usually happen around here. Arianna Collins, the crazy girl, frightening enough even to scare the people who fight me. Scaring my fellow prisoners around me. Even scaring Finn, at times. When I threw that glass and it shattered against the window, pieces flying back the other way from the impact, he got scared. He's trying to hide it, but he's terrified.

His smile drops and he puts his thumbprint in the bathroom spot. A chunk of the wall slides away, revealing my washroom. He coldly tells me to get in and locks the door behind me.

I shower quickly and change into the fresh pair of identical white clothes laid out. I always feel sorry for Finn after something like this happens. Finn isn't trying to be mean; he's just doing his job. Then I feel bad for feeling bad, because I remember that I'm supposed to hate him.

Supposed to.

As soon as I'm finished in the bathroom, I knock on the wall. In a moment, the door slides open again, and I reenter my main room. Finn seals the bathroom behind me again, and the door slides so perfectly closed that I'd swear it wasn't even there.

Finn takes the tray back stiffly, not saying a word to me, and types something into the thumbprint panel that emerges from the one that is supposed to open the window. There's a faint beep, and I know that he sent for maintenance to clean up the broken glass.

"Listen, Finn," I start, but he brushes past me. "I'm sorry I did that. You weren't trying to be mean."

He turned around and glared at me for a second. "No, Arianna, I'm sorry," he starts. "I'm sorry that you're cooped up in a cell. I'm sorry that you don't even remember that Alec is your brother--or believe him, for that matter. I'm sorry that you don't remember me, and what I had to do to you, because if you did, you'd hate me, and you deserve to hate me." By now his voice has risen, and he's almost yelling. "I'm sorry that you didn't choose anyone on your sixteenth birthday, because now you're going to die in four years. I'm sorry that your mind is being forced into a weapon by your own--"

He stops there, and looks back down again, silent after his outburst.

"My own what?" I question. Then I pause. "Do I...know Mauve? I mean, personally? Or--did I?"

"She's going to kill me," is all that comes out of his mouth, barely a whisper. His eyes seem haunted. "She's going to kill me. She's going to kill me for saying that."

Then he hurries with the tray to the front of the room. Before he opens the window, he stops and turns to me again, her eyes shiny. "I know that you're going to get out of here, okay? I'm not supposed to say it, but I know that they're going to come for you, whether it's sooner or later."

"Who?" I ask quietly.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, as if speaking again will kill him. Maybe, if Mauve is listening in through some hidden mic or camera, it will.

"The Silence League."

And then he's out of the room, leaving me stunned.

****

After the last fighting session this evening, it's eleven pm, and I curl up into a ball on my mattress, and instantly the lights in my room fade to a black, and the window blackens as well so I can't see the lights from the other orbs of the others still fighting. I mull over Finn's words in my head. All along, I've been thinking he's on the side of the ones he's working for. But after that, unless it was a trick, I have the impression that maybe he could even be against Mauve, just like me.

It also means that Alec really is my brother, which says that Mauve was probably lying about him being insane. Not that I'm surprised. And Finn said that I deserve to hate him for something he did to me. What could he have possibly done that's that bad? I mean, whoever stuck me in here was really the bad one. He couldn't have done much worse, right?