90 DEADLY DAYS (WEEKLY UPDATES RETURNING THIS DECEMBER)

Chapter 22

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Chapter 22

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Needle-pricking sensations travel from the tracker into veins, creeping to the part of my neck just beneath my head. Pain explodes underneath my brain, flashing dizzying crimson stains before my eyes. Invasive blackness scuttles after the prickles, erasing the ebony color from my skin and replacing it with pitch black. Up to my chin is a deathly raven tone. I do not know anything but horror churning inside.

Someone howls.

Is it me?

I claw at my arms, my chest. The prickling thrives like a parasite. The tracker morphs to green. Green like go. My howling changes to deafening screams and my throat shreds, rending itself.

Pain stabs me suddenly in the wrist.

A needle stab from the tracker—I swear it's an IV injection—thrusts me forward. I try to stand still and find myself, but I'm propelled towards the horizon. Sudden anger surges through, adrenaline forces the rest of me to come alive. I'm livid. Crazed.

This is not me.

Where is me?

I teeter-totter on weak legs. Strangely enough, the shredded one no longer torments me. With every step the pain lessens until it is forgotten, even though I still see the crusted blood, the beast's teeth gouges. My loose rib stops clattering against the one beneath it. The permanent wince subsides. I now grit my teeth in rage and soar through jungle.

The cloud promising disintegration slowly loses me and my natural color returns.

I am alive. Remarkably.

Rage overtakes my excitement. I can't wrestle against it and am instead plunged into hysterical fury. It's as if my will isn't my own, as if I am being controlled. Teeth gnashing, emotions wild, I shred through floppy branches and burr lined bushes. The cloud is a distant roar—an ominous threat.

I head for the past terrain, pausing only when something tells me to drink. It isn't a voice that delivers the demand and my body isn't forcibly compelled to sip—rather, it's a thought that informs me, a thought I would swear was mine if I didn't know Xaro so well.

They are dragging me along. The torture ends on their terms.

There is no free will.

I make it through today, tomorrow I will die. This is how I begin to think. Survival rips my humanity, tearing it off my heart.

Xaro will soon be me and I will be Xaro.

Before Xaro removes the final pieces that remain, I want to say one truth.

All I want to say is that they don't really care about us.

All I want to say is that they've never really cared about us.

The traitorous thought brings infuriating pains to my brain's frontal lobe. I cry, clutching my skull that feels as if it is trying to rip itself free.

My lips move robotically. "Good bye Phoenix."

These are my last words.

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When I finally rescind myself to sleep and exhaustion, a voice slips into my thoughts. Robotic and breathy it is. I'm in haze. Perhaps it's an illusion. But it is as clear as the sun on a cloudless morning.

"My dear, fall into it. Don't fight. You are useful. Don't reject their beckoning. You belong to us."

"Yes'm." I'm not thinking.