Blank Slate | ONC2023

Chapter Thirteen: Kill Only When Necessary (It's Not Necessary)

I can't feel my hands. Winter screams inside of me, piling snow and ice down my arms as fast as a deranged blizzard piles up snowdrifts and it hungrily sucks at my warmth. My chest heaves with each breath, unable to keep up with my pounding heart.

The Parasite in me bites at my skin, my arms, my bones with frost, whittling down my strength. I refuse to let go. I can't let go. If I do, this building is done for—I am done for.

Citizen pushes to the front of the heroes and sweeps his gaze around the room, eyes landing on me last. They are smoldering coals full of steel and something else I don't care to tease out. When he speaks, his voice is calm—the calm before the storm. "Do you really think you can blank this building? It is a lot larger than the first one."

A sneer peels my lips back and I glare at him with all my strength. "I'm an eleven thanks to that. Don't try me." Desperation and wild, dangerous spite mixed with tears seep into my voice, shaking the ends of my words and carving them into sharp, stinging barbs.

A ripple of surprise runs through the heroes, hardening their expressions and bristling their postures. Citizen, however, does not react. He narrows his eyes, the corners of his mouth tilting down.

Before he can speak, David emerges. His eyes widen with a look that twists a knife deep into my gut. He sees now. He sees that I tricked him. That I lied to him for months. That I was never really his friend. Not all the way. He sees that now, and it seeps into him like poison, closing off his expression.

"You were...never Denizen, were you." It isn't a question. It is a statement, a realization, and it turns my lungs into acid.

Everything unhinged and deranged and bitter swells into the winter inside of me, filling my throat with sour laughter, reckless desperation, and hopeless fear. "No," I spit, the scratchy tingle of tears prickling the backs of my eyes. "It was a lie. Just like everything else."

David recoils as if I just spat in his face, a wall closing over his eyes and his eyebrows slicing downward across his face. He clenches and unclenches his hands, voice rough and burdened as he speaks. "Even your memory loss?"

Fire burns in my mouth, setting the static in my head ablaze. "No." I wish. Then...maybe all of this wouldn't have happened. Maybe I wouldn't be here. Maybe I wouldn't be about to die. "That...that is the only truth."

He falls silent, shoulders stiff. "I...can't believe it. All this time..." His eyes narrow into slits and he snaps his gaze up, fixing me with fierce defiance. He jerks his hand downwards. "No. That can't be the only truth. We were friends—"

The knife drives deeper into my cut, severing the last string of self-control. The static explodes, fire clashing with ice and stabbing me with shattering pain. It tears through my mouth, bursting out nearly at the volume of a scream. "SHUT UP!"

My power leaks through my fingers and the wall shudders and groans. David's eyes widen and he jerks forwards, mouth opening in a shout. I almost don't care. So what if this building falls? I'll be dead anyway. But he would die with me. Do I want that? I—I don't—

"ELIAS, STOP!"

The words sting like a whip and I jerk my hands away from the wall. The full blast of the winter wind streaks through the air instead of the wall and the furniture around me collapses into rubble. My legs can barely hold me up so I fall back against the wall, flicking my gaze to Citizen. He...shouldn't know that.

Ice rages inside of me, biting and stabbing and clawing, and I shake with the effort of keeping it from spraying everywhere. I swallow back tears, my voice as shaky as my limbs. "What did you just call me?"