All Your Fates (Currently editing/updating)

Chapter 34: Into The Fire ~ Carrie Cutforth

DAVID’s POV

My body was on autopilot as we crossed the field in betwixt the chaos of war. No, autopilot is wrong…animal instinct would be more like it. My body haunted through rolling hills through the brambles like a cat hunting field mice, and I found I am just as cruel; breaking necks and slashing flesh with my bayonet like a kitty tears into a rodent with claws. My soul has never had so little command of an existence I’ve visited before. This was survival mode.

Is this my true nature? I wondered. Who I am at the primal level? I remembered the murderous alter of myself a few world’s back and shudder, while continuing to move across the plain in crouches and violent charges.

It was pitch dark and everything around me was black and blood. My hands were slick with it as we, what’s left of the small commando team and Atticus, closed in on a grove up ahead. We dove around a large hedge as bullets whistled past our ears. Atticus shone a light on the ground and hit upon a metal bar hinged on top of a cement block in a clearing of dirt. A soldier swung the hatch open, and the team spilled down a metal staircase leading underground.

I thought of Pepper and the baby as the hatch was shut above, now locked out of our safe zone. But there had been no way to safely bring them across. She was ready for her fate on her own terms in her own home…or so she insisted as she had pushed me out the door to lead the small band of men into the fire.

I took stock of the underground bunker, which was little more than a cement block hewn out to make room for more weaponry. The few of us left were a mess caked in blood and mud. But we had made it.  As my body drained of adrenalin I began to feel more in command of steering the ship. Atticus led me through a dark passage while the soldiers slumped in silent reverie. 

In silence Atticus led me to a green metal door guarded by a woman in uniform. She swung open the door and we walked in.

Where Emma was sitting in a grilled cage.

Emma's POV

Even though I was far underground encased in a cement weapons tomb, I could hear the bombs scorching the sky and rattling the dirt above. At least they kept me awake. Sleeping was…a threat of treachery I could not allow myself to give into. 

Sleep, pacing, anything habitual, rhythmic. Even breathing just so could make me lose grip…

After he comes back, then I’ll sleep. After he explains everything to me so I can begin to make sense… 

So I can let go.

I rolled from the metal cot I had been lying on and sat on the cement floor cross-legged. At least my prison was uncomfortable enough to combat drowsiness.

I sat still, afraid of leaning back and forward into any kind of discernible pattern. If I thought of him, and all we've been through together, I could keep hold of this reality. Empty meditation was a danger. The past in this world an anchor I was tethered to.

My thoughts quickly turned to his hands as they had sat upon my thigh, my skirt hiking up in the mud. The fierceness of his eyes. His heady scent of cinnamon and cedar. His rough palm gripping my face and burying my head deeper into the ditch, covering every stitch of me with the camouflage of his uniform as the voices of Gabriel's squadron echoed past us. His member still inside of me, slowly shrinking as we both pushed into the earth in fear of discovery.

Then the look of shame on his face when he reunited with his wife and child… the ones he had neglected to mention the entire time we traversed the western enclave with only our wits and instincts for survival. And other instincts too.

My mind needed to fetch back that moment, like a dog returning with a memory in its mouth. Intense phenomenological experiences, the tactile imprints bleeding into my neurological synapses was what sticks my soul to these cells.

But the body betrays. It was tired. So tired. 

Sometimes I would see the walls moving in my exhaustive delirium. Like time and space was bending, buckling, crippling under a strong weight. Sometimes I thought I heard the groans of the collapse of time, but I dismiss this as the manic symptoms of lack of REM sleep.

I could not tell you how long I had been holed up in this cell. Perhaps days, maybe only hours. It'd been so long since I'd closed my eyes.

What is he doing right now, I wondered. Likely leading guerrilla forces for a counter attack. He must come here at some point. And then, I will demand answers.

Which wasn't fair of me, since I can surely guess. And it's not safe for me to be on the loose when at any time I can readily shift from this mortal coil, and then she, the Emma of this world, will rein terror on them all.

He's conflicted, I understand. I was both his lover and mortal enemy. You can't kill the host without murdering the parasite along for the ride. He would arrive soon. I would let go and allow the execution to go forward with no protest, signalling the destruction of my sole means of returning to him. I must accept it was over. I must accept this was her fate, and go back to my world in search of mine.

Of all the worlds…

I should have stayed in Latin America. I should have never sought him again. I should never have travelled from my world...

He must come here, now that the final skirmish had started. I was his only bargaining chip.

He will come and kill me if it comes to that. Even if I haven't "left the building". 

A soldier to the end.

But not before I insisted he said the words he was too cowardly to admit even to himself.

A door opens, and I looked at the one who had come to release my body to the worms.

David.

// 

 A/N

Hey guys, sorry if you catch any grammar issues...I've been writing a lot in present tense lately and trying to keep going back to past tense has been harder than i thought cause I keep slipping back into present, will edit again later  ~C