Chapter [09]
❝ and now her promise was going to break me ❞
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Ben
A part of me knew they would be more than eager to have me alive.The other part of me, the dark part that killed Ben Parish in cold sleep and gave life to Zombie, whispered thoughts I didn't want to hear in my head.
The two bulky men dragged me into the house and up the porch steps.My feet drag across the ground painfully but the internal pain I'm feeling overpowers even that.I wanted to die.I wanted a whizzing bullet to plant itself right into my chest rather than to be breathing and alive and be tortured by The Others.I've seen what they can do, what they will do to me.Ringer broke her promise.We had an unspoken one, but a promise nonetheless to save each other.
I don't say a word as they carry me into the house,dark and foreboding.I see two more of them in the living room,weapons in the ready.It feels good to know that I'm somehow a threat to them,even in this state.I almost smirk despite myself in this situation.A clear sign screaming that I've lost my mind.
They take me upstairs, where I'm thrown into the middle of a master bedroom transformed into something more fitting in this hostage situation I'm in.The bright light illuminates everything.A doctor with a mask obscuring his features is standing beside a computer,tapping away at the keyboard.It took us decades to reach the revolution of the Internet and technology.How long have they been here with us? I see a hospital bed,complete with solid restraints to hold a person still to the bed.I see a heart monitor, unplugged and lifeless in a corner,radiating is menace.I see threatening sharp metal tools on a table which I've only seen on the television.But what catches my eye most of all are the screens of the wide plasma televisions lining the far end of the wall.Graphic images of people, of soldiers in their uniforms, screaming their heads off.Their eyes are wide and bloodshot, the wounds and bruises on their faces are both fresh and old.They're in different stages of insanity.And all of them are strapped to a bed,strung up to a heart monitor.Alive,but better off dead.
I will myself not to panic.But I cannot avoid the inevitable for long.Anxiety blooms inside the core of my chest and I break into a cold sweat.Something tells me everyone in that room tremendously enjoys my reaction and rising panic.
The two men from earlier pick me up off the floor with cold hard expressions on their faces.I struggle and try to break free from their grasps.I keep on fighting with all the strength that I have until one of them yields a gun.I fight harder, jeering at him to pull the trigger.
"You won't do it.You're too much of a coward to kill me," I force a laugh to escape my lips and the one with the gun turns red at the ears,his eyes blazing with fury.
"I bet you were so ugly your mom tried to push you back in her vagina when she saw you," I continue, adding a mixture of saliva and spit which missed his face and drooled down his chin. "Do aliens give birth? Do they even have vaginas?" Come on,anytime now buddy.
The man's fist connects with my cheek and a burst of pain brings stars to my eyes.I am shoved to the floor before I hear the doctor and the other man calm Redhead down, whispering words into his ears.The doctor whispers something which makes Redhead smile in satisfaction as his eyes narrow in on mine.
The adrenaline drains out of my body and pools shamelessly on the floor along with my will to fight and to live.If the pain wasn't that bad before,they would certainly turn my torture up a notch because of that stunt I just pulled.
They strap me to the bed, pulling the restraints taut around my wrists and ankles that I pray I die from poor blood circulation.The aliens haven't breathed a word to me since I've been with them apart from the few words exchanged between each other.I'm starting to wonder if they can communicate telepathically.Or maybe they don't have to be told what to do because they've done it a million times to a million people.I turn my head enough to watch the monitor again.I know I shouldn't scare myself but I can't help it.
The screen furthest to the right is buzzing with more activity than the others.Men and women in uniform march into the room and swarm around the patient in the bed.They unhook the heart monitor and let the tube dangle free,swinging back and forth like a pendulum.Their fingers work to free the restraints.A part of me is relieved, thinking that they'll free me too after whatever they plan to do with me.That's when one of them throws a white sheet over the patient and carries the dead body out of the room.The empty bedsheets are crinkled and stained with blood.The hope in me dies instantly and I look away.I'm going to die here.
They say before you die, your life flashes before your eyes.The only thing flashing before my eyes is the face of my parents and Sissy.I'm reliving the nightmare of running away from my sister instead of saving her.Her screams echo in my hollow skull.My life doesn't flash before my eyes, my mistakes do.
Then the picture revolves and I see Cassie.Her warm brown eyes, her fluttering eyelashes, the Cupid's bow of her pink lips.I regret not having the balls to get to know her sooner in high school.I was that much of a pussy.Cassie.. I want to see Cassie.My heart aches to reach her.Every part of me is on fire.
The doctor adjusts a blinding white light over me to sear my eyes and I recoil from it.
"What are you going to do to me?" I ask, although I know it's useless.They won't give me the answer I want to hear.
"Something painful," Alien Doctor says, his voice hoarse and rough.There's a mischievous glint in his eyes that makes me sick in the pit of my stomach.The thing inside him enjoys this, enjoys torturing me.
"Am I going to die?"
Alien Doctor doesn't acknowledge my question.He goes back to tapping on his computer before wheeling the heart machine to the side of my bed.He hooks me up on it along with several other devices.I'm afraid I'm going to blow up.
"You won't win you know," I say, my voice dripping with anger.
Alien Doctor's eyes dart momentarily and lock with mine,like he's piercing right through my soul.
"Oh but we already have," he says, flicking his finger on a syringe filled with blue liquid in his hand before turning back to face me.I can't believe I'm having a conversation with an alien.Who knew right?
"What makes you think the rest of us are going down without a fight? We're fighting.We have a reason to.We have something you don't," I say,my eyes float away from him and focus on the white ceiling.
"Enlighten me," Alien Doctor is smiling beneath his mask, I can feel him mocking me, mocking the human race for being so, so stupid.
"We have hope.And sometimes, against all odds,against all logic,we still hope." Now that I say it, it sounds stupid coming out of my mouth but the words feel like a security blanket as it wraps itself around my body.Hope.A promise that everything would get better in the end.
The doctor laughs loudly, accompanied by the two men who captured me.Their laughs sound strangely hollow in my head.
"You better keep on hoping then,Parish.Hope that right now a bullet will pierce your sad heart and kill you before you feel this kind of pain." He flicks a switch somewhere and a loud rumble comes from the alien looking machine connected to my veins through numerous tubes.An intensifying pain grabs hold of me, everything in me is burning like fire.This pain is nothing I've ever felt before.I squeeze my eyes shut and moan loudly, sweat dripping like tears down my forehead.The pain intensifies and I can't think straight.I trash against the restraints, to no avail.I see nothing else, I hear nothing else, I feel nothing else but pain.
Ringer broke her promise, and now her promise was going to break me.
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Against Hope
Teen Fiction||The 5th Wave Series|| She was brave and strong and broken all at once. He was everything he didn't want to be. Cassie Sullivan and Ben Parish have made it out of Wright-Patterson in the last condition they ever expected-alive. The world is on the...
