Still breathing | Original story

Chapter Thirty one: Remember

Word count: 2682

I wanted to scream, I wanted to run. Inside my head, I was doing all those things and more. But my body wasn't complying, my bones were super glued together.
Eventually, I willed myself to move backwards, never once looking away from the eyes that I once thought were so beautiful. The ones that I knew wanted me dead, wanted to see my blood running out of my corpse as my face drained of all colour and life.
He licked his lips, the ones that had kissed me. The ones that were now laced with poison, every word deadly.
"Don't worry," his voice was so low and smooth that I wanted to believe him, wanted to trust him. "That was before. Before I knew how brilliant you were." He grabbed my hand and I didn't have the strength to move away.
We stared into each other's eyes for a moment, just reading each other's emotions. I couldn't tell what mine were, mine were rampaging around. Changing from love to anger to sadness to confusion. Changing as the seconds ticked by.
"How?" My hands moved away from his, the warmth disappeared instantly. "How did you do this?"
"It was easy," he told me, a smirk on his face, his cheeks pink and full of life. "Have you ever heard of Nanoparticles?"
I nodded. I had heard of them I just didn't have a clue what they were or what they were even for. There hadn't been much research on them when I looked in the revision book for the science exam I never actually took, not enough time to collect solid data. The information barely fit a full A4 sheet of paper.
"They're very easy to manipulate, to mess with." He took at pause and breathed in deeply before continuing, "you see people don't understand them, but they allow them to live alongside them. They're sort of like those random ingredients chucked into drinks, you don't know what they are but if they're on something you want you don't care.
My father created miniature robots. They were so unbelievably tiny but, once inside the body, they slowly destroy cells. The person dies but they leave a part of the brain active, the instinctual part. The part that tells you to eat. Them "zombies" are merely a product of putting the robots into the Nanoparticles. Consumers did all the other work."
It was clever and simple. But don't they have all them regulations? Maybe his dad was a scientist and pretended they were fine and caused no effects.
"Do you- do you choose the parts that die? Can you brainwash them? Keep in the part that talks?" I asked him, remembering "R".
"Possibly, others were working on that..." Archie scrunched his eyebrows together.
I tried to forget it, tried to divert the conversation. Run away from the subject like I used to run away from everything.
"How do you know so much about me?" I was surprised I got the words out. I was surprised I had any words inside me to let out, I felt hollow.
"Jack." The one name made my skin boil. "I told him to get with Ella to get closer to you, see how strong you truly were. People were always saying how amazing you were, how you could survive anything. I wanted to see it for myself." He leaned forward and placed his chin delicately on his intertwined fingers, elbows bent. Before giving me a massive smirk. "I needed to know what I was up against."
Why? What did he expect me to be? Some girl that had a black belt in karate and would kick his ass, or did he expect me to be some girl that only exercises when she gets up to make a cup of tea? As I stood there, I wished I'd swapped that tea for karate lessons. I wished I had participated in the classes like my dad had wanted me to.
"What I found was... unexpected, to say the least," I stayed quiet as he spoke, "that's when the plan changed to killing you. You weren't like the rumours, you seemed to be just like any other awkward teenage girl. He was supposed to keep you in the house that day, he was also meant to spike your drink so you stayed asleep. He failed both tasks because he loved Ella, apparently. I think he was just too weak personally, and then he ditched you. I wasn't happy because I thought you wouldn't survive on your own, man, was I wrong. If anything, it built up character. You changed in ways I could never have imagined."
He was the reason I was left all alone? The reason I nearly died so many times? And does that mean the reason my coffee tasted weird was because Jack had put some form of Rohypnol into the mug? Probably not enough, he must've messed up the ratios or something. That's the only reason I could think of, Jack would not pass up the opportunity to leave me for dead so easily.
"I knew I couldn't kill you then," he continued, "I took a liking to you, wanted you here with me."
"Which is why you came after me?" I questioned.
"No," he spoke very slowly, calculating my reactions. "It was why I sent Caleb to you."
"You sent Caleb?" I whispered, feeling my body stiffen. That's why he had warned me when Jack came, he had known Jack. It had all been one elaborate plan to get me here.
"And then Caleb messed up, he tried to keep us from getting to you. He nearly got you both killed because I couldn't track you, that was never part of the plan. But, once I found you, it did allow me to swoop in and become the hero. I must admit it worked out well." He was smirking again. I wanted to smack him, scream at him, throw him into a pit of the very things he created.
"Worked out well? For who, Archie!?" He didn't reply, he just kept staring at me, letting the information seep into my brain. I bit my lip, I thought of Caleb. How scared he had been in this world, how nice he was to me and I to him. "I don't believe that Caleb would ever do something like that, that an innocent little boy would take orders from you."
"He had no choice, Jack made it quite clear that he had to if he wanted to see his parents again."
"But isn't Kevin his dad?"
"No, that was just a cover story." My mouth dropped open, the more Archie talked the worse he seemed to be. He rolled his eyes at me. "Oh, don't give me that look. I'm not that bad. His parents were already dead; an immunity of the virus had gone wrong during testing. The same testing your mother was involved in."
The words rang in my head, was I hearing him right?
"You tested my mum! Are you the reason she's dead...?"The reason I never saw her in the hospital. It made sense, why I never got to see her there. Why I never got to talk to her. She was being tested on, she was dying, she was dead. Dad had covered for her, why had dad let her do it? And it didn't explain why she went to Manchester?
"So right yet so wrong." Archie tutted and shook his head. I stared at him in confusion. "Oh, have you not figured it off by now? You really did lose your memory aye? Still, I thought you were smarter than this. I didn't test on your mother, your father did."
"My... my dad?" I let the words seep into the air. "No! My parents are dead, Ella is dead, you got them killed! Not my dad, he would never, he could never-" I felt the familiar burning in the back of my eyes but tears didn't appear.
"Don't blame others for them being weak. Besides, why would I lie?" He said the words slowly and with emphasis.