BREATH . OF . LIFE . ~ { ReGenisis Chronicles Book I }

Chapter Five [Part 3/3]: Power and the Freedom of Choice

I set the knife down and pulled from the bag my ripped up clothes. I stared at them, feeling a stinging ice sensation of cold blade to my skin. Wincing, I told myself it wasn't real. It was behind me. I had to just not think.

 I stripped Rin's dress off over my head, my hair clinging to it in static like I wished I could. Then I held my breath so that I could ignore the stench of my own dried blood and pulled on my teal sweater dress. The slashes through the material were mostly diagonal and covered very little of the skin beneath. Then I pulled on the ripped up black leggings, my eyes fixed on the clean, cut-less white skin shining through the gaps.

I'd lost my jacket when the three men had first caught up with me. I'd let it be yanked from my back to get away. Without the bra that had been hacked through the middle with one of the knife strikes, I felt rather exposed in the rags of my death scene. I could smell my death, the mustiness that comes with decay locked in the fibres. Dirt and soggy leaves joining it.

I lifted the penknife back up and clamped my arms over my chest to cover some of the showing skin. I couldn't move off the floor. I was trapped there.

          * * *

I couldn't count the time between entering the room to get changed and the moment the door swung open slowly. Rin was stood there, searching in at me. She approached like any human to a timid animal. Hand outstretched. "Come on,"

My gaze locked on her face, my eyes dim. My legs were numb beneath me where I'd been knelt on them so long. The muscles in my arms stuck firm like statue. I fought the heaviness to lift my hand and rest it in her air like palm. She closed her delicate, strong fingers over mine and swiftly drew me up to my feet. The pins and needles started straight away, making my knees shake and buckle.

Rin let me cling to her as she took me from the room. The good thing about having ReGenisis serum in your system, the pins and needles don't last as long and by the time we'd crossed the threshold of the door I was only leant into her because I was silently pleading in my mind not to have to think about where I was going next.

She stopped us walking as we passed the kitchen. Griffin was stood, waiting anxiously in its doorway. Rin parted herself from me and let me cross the short distance between myself and him. I guess I'd already resigned myself to never seeing him again.

His hand brushed my neck where a little red mark remained from being injected, then rested it against my cheek for a moment as he leant forward and kissed my forehead. The warm electric feeling warped through me. A flash of slowly coming round from death crossed my mind, the same feeling had greeted me then.

When he stepped back I stared up at him, in as much awe as I had been yesterday. Two thrums in the hallway matched pitches, desperately trying to keep up with each other and both aching.

"We may never meet again." I could barely choke out the words.

The corner of his lip slowly tipped up on one side as he fought my defeatist viewpoint with a glint in his dark eyes. "I wouldn't say never. Who knows what paths life will take us down."

"Miss Andersen," Rin's voice carried from the top of the stairs at the other end of the hall. I glanced over at her and then back at Griffin. As I moved away from him, I felt my heart slip away from me. A sinking feeling I hadn't had the pain of experiencing before.

I followed Rin anyway, down the stairs and out the front door of the gateway.

                  * * *

The sun had just gone down. A frost was setting in, making any of the damp outside sparkle under pale white lamp lights. That projection of light stung my eyes to begin with as they adjusted to the harshness. My body was shivering, my skin covered in goosebumps. I was facing down my adrenalin and losing, glancing about in the worry that someone would see me in these ripped up clothes.