Imagine

Chapter 15: Alone

I looked over to the old woman wide-eyed. Her eyes were tearing up as she collapsed down to the floor on her knees. "Oh please sir," she croaked out between tears, "please I haven't got much time left, my sentence is almost over and I'd like to be able to see my daughter just one last time before I go!" The old woman was coughing in between sobs, blood covering the dirt she begged on.

The guard looked down at her with a disgusted look, "you stupid peasant! How dare you kneel before me asking for this illogical request!" He pushed her away and spit in her face, "you don't deserve to be in the presence of our savior, Eiji the Great." He whips around and throws the yellow tag at me, "you will take her place. Hopefully, a second stage like yourself will show more respect to our leader."

I picked up the tag and grabbed the last crate to go on the airlift. I looked over to see Sam right behind me, his bat nowhere in sight. When the airlift doors closed, he pushed me into my chamber to sleep for the night. Surprisingly we all had our little rooms with metal walls. The room was small with a weird fluffier type of mat in the corner next to a table with rations on it that were already cooked.

I turned around to see Sam close the door and lean his forehead against it. The second the door closed, I lifted my dress to see a big purple smudge the size of two heads combined. I gasped in pain and horror as I fell onto the fluffy mat, not being able to sit up anymore. Sam rushed over to me, kneeling.

He reached out to help me but from instinct I flinched, he looked up at me with a worried look on his face, "Azami...I-I'm sorry, I didn't want to hurt you I swear!" His hands began to shake as he held his face in the palms of his hands. "I'm so, so sorry!" He cried out with tears falling down his face, "I'm useless and destructive...I hurt the ones I love and can't do anything to help them afterward!"

The ones he loves...?

I slid closer to him and held his tear soaked hands as he kept weeping like a little boy, "first my mother doesn't even want to be around me, then my father leaves to teach me a lesson in becoming a man and now...!" He grasped my hand and let out a sigh looking into my eyes, "and now I've hurt the only girl I could bring myself to talk to..."

I laid there in awe not knowing what to say until he laid down next to me. "Sam...I don't blame you for any of this." I turned my head all the way to the side to look at his angelic features besides me, "we were ambushed, there was nothing either of us could do." As the airlift rocked, we locked our eyes in silence.

Sam, after a while, started to fade away as I drifted into sleep.

He didn't do anything wrong...He didn't do anything wrong...

"HE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG!"

Huh?!? W-where am I?

I looked around to see a haziness on the border of my eyes, and all the color around me drained to black. Looking from side to side, I saw guardians everywhere, but they were wearing more camo patterned attire and had muddy boots on. They also had these weird crow like masks on spraying a gas all around different areas making people fall to the ground.

Looking across the street, I see a woman yelling and trying to fight off a guardian, "HE'S JUST A CHID HE DIDN'T KNOW ANY BETTER, PLEASE! STOP IT!" The guardian she was attacking was giving orders to other men with masks on that had prisoners chained together. Prisoners were all different genders and ages, most of them older though.

Within the group, I saw a little boy crying and reaching towards the woman saying Mama. I ran across the street and tried to tackle the man the woman was talking to but instead, I bounced back.

What the hell...? It's like I hit a wall or something.

I looked back at the crying mother, the guardian she was pleading apparently had enough of her nonsense and slapped her aside.

In pure horror, I covered my gasp. Looking back over to her little boy in chains, the guardian that had just slapped his mother blew a high pitched whistle. Everyone around them didn't stop but kept going with their business, but the men controlling the chained people stood at attention. "READY?" The man with the whistle echoed. At that, several more guardian came out holding silver handhelds, I watched in horror as they lifted them to eyesight aimed at the chained civilians. "AIM..."

NO NO NO! THEY CAN'T JUST DO THIS! WHY WHAT REASON IS GOOD ENOUGH TO KILL INNOCENT LIVES?!

...There was none... A voice echoed around me, snapping me back to the scene I was witnessing. I felt helpless staring at them. I began banging my fists against the invisible barrier in front of me until I heard a crack. I looked up to see everyone in the black and white horror look up at me. Every single pair of eyes, including the precious little boy's, turned an empty black. I stepped back in complete confusion and horror as the top guardian raised his gun at me and said, "fire."

At the loud pang of the gun going off, I popped straight up and out of bed ignoring my bruised abdomen. I paced the room ignoring Sam stirring in his sleep where he laid next to me just a second ago.

What does all of this mean? Does this have something to do with the books and why no one knows what happened in Tomo's past?

Woah, relax Zam...Maybe it was just a freak dream. You could just be tired and overworked from being on the road for nearly a week.

But I've never seen any little boy like that before! He didn't look familiar at all, what if this is connected to the old lady in the sanctuary!

What do you think she put a spell on you or something? Pfft come on those are just fairytales!

I looked back at Sam to see him sleeping peacefully.

Yeah but, I always thought the stories Papa told me were just fairy tales...

"Look how that shit turned out." I didn't realize I'd said that aloud until I heard Sam rise from the mat and yawn while stretching high into the air.

He looked at me perplexed, then motioned for me to go to him. Without any hesitation I went to him, sitting beside him on the mat. "I'm just gonna check it alright?" I shook my head at him, but when he lifted my dress he dropped it immediately and turned away from me.

"What's wrong Sam? Is it that bad?!" Panicking, I stood up and lifted it myself to see that the whole bruise was gone and instead replaced with a note.

I ripped it off in an instant and it began to glow a soft yellowish gold. I woman's voice began to speak from thin air, "Azami my darling," at the sound of my name, I stepped towards the lights streaming throughout the small room and listened. "I know that you have been subject to many visions as of late and many hardships, but all of your work will pay off. You have now entered the main heart of the capital. You are in between the rebel's base and Eiji's main office. You know how to find us, we'll be waiting." The voice dimmed with the lights, the letter dissolving in mid-air.

I looked over to Sam to see him still staring wide-eyed at the air. "What the fuck just happened?"

I couldn't tell ya.