The 10th Circle - Abyss [Complete]

11. Engram: Secrets (5)

The words descended between us like a guillotine. It cut through the air in the room, thick from the tension of before, and almost tangible now in the silence that followed in the wake of his voice.

I stared back at him in horror.

"What?" Moon whispered, putting my thoughts into words.

That can't be right, I thought, I would remember that.

But then I recalled that one clear memory I had about that day. The memory of being caught in this state that barred any description and qualia except for being grey, for what had felt like an eternity, and yet nothing but the blink of an eye. And then waking up, facing my mother and telling her, flat out: This is what it must feel like to be dead.

I couldn't remember how I had gotten there. Only what it had felt like waking up from it. But it couldn't be.

"That's not true," I said, but my voice was filled with doubt and pain. "It's NOT TRUE."

I jumped to my feet so abruptly that I almost knocked over my chair. My hands were shaking so I clenched them into fists, and let my fingernails dig deep into my palms, hoping that the painful sensation would wake me up, because clearly, I must have been dreaming. This must have been a nightmare.

"Tell me that this is not true," I said again, my voice wavering.

Sure, the first year at the academy was tough. The results of the aptitude test had made me not exactly popular with my peers, nor with the Keres faculty, who probably thought that I would have been better off as scientist, just like my parents. Lily had made it her favorite hobby to pick on me. I hadn't met Moon or Bastion yet, and for most of the time, I was lonely and perhaps, arguably, even depressed. But certainly not suicidal. No matter what kind of drug they had given me, I would remember if I had even so much as considered killing myself. Wouldn't I?

I could feel my defiance waver as I stared into my mother's eyes. They were filled with an unspeakable pain, and just a hint of something that seemed utterly incomprehensible to me because I had never seen her look at me like that. No – not never. Just not in a very, very long time. She had loved me once. But now she looked at me as if all that she had loved was lost.

This is what it must feel like to be dead.

I could remember how my mother's eyes had gone wide with shock and terror at my words that day.

And within a split second, it all came together, and I backed away from the table as the realization hit me, stumbling backwards against my chair. Suddenly, everything made sense. I realized now that everything had started to go downhill from that damned day on.

It was the day that I had been broken. So they had decided to have me fixed – but it hadn't worked out as expected. And perhaps the reason she couldn't, wouldn't face me during my times of darkness years later, when I was haunted by too many ghosts to cope with them alone and had to undergo emotional programming, was that she couldn't accept the fact that her plan hadn't worked, that I was still broken.

I covered my mouth with my hand, as a tidal wave of boiling hot anger, and icy claws of deep shock tore through my insides and battled for dominance. I felt so sick that I thought if I opened my mouth to speak now, I would throw up. I wanted to cry, but I didn't even know why. I wanted to laugh, and think of it as a very distasteful joke. And at the same time I wanted to scream, but it was like there was no air in my lungs.

I didn't want to believe a word they had said. But at the same time, I was consumed by the terrifying thought that I didn't have to. Because deep down, in some dark abysmal corner of my mind, I already knew.