Agent Rogue: Espionage

Chapter 5

Stone steps.

          Biting cold.

          Dark silence.

          Then the drip. Drip. Drip.

          With a shiver, I folded the jacket further into my torso, flinching at the itching cotton. I'd been down these steps a hundred times, and yet nausea still battled in my throat, threatening to spew out into the shadows.

          "Amber."
I paused. "Derek?"

          Nothing. My footsteps echoed as I rotated around, peeling my eyes to see through the blackness.

          Again, nothing.

          "Amber, what are you doing?"

          His voice laced with concern. I reached out, desperate to find him, eager to touch anything but shadow.

          I drew my hands in at empty air.

          "Ambi."
"Scotty." I stumbled into solid metal – the table – and glass shattered. "Scotty, where are—"

          Feminine sobs. "Amber." Gabby. "Please don't leave me alone." How did she—
"Agent Knight, get out of here!" I whirred around at Collins's voice. Where washe? Where was everyone?

          They came all at once. Every single voice crying out my name among orders and pleas. Davis's voice joined the chorus, as did Jade and Rodriguez.

          I covered my ears and scrunched my eyes shut. "Stop."

          They kept going. On and on.

          "Amber, get out."

          "Don't leave me alone..."

          "Knight, I don't know what's happening."

          "Amber, darling I am so sorry—"

          A scream shot through my ears.

          "STOP!"

          The voices cut, and the lights flashed on. I shielded my incinerated eyes and gasped, waiting for them to readjust.

          With a manic heart, I squinted through the gaps between my fingers, but nothing was clear. I lowered my hands to glance around the white and metal room.

          My knees shook at the image that beheld me.

          I did not face the horrors of my childhood. There were no bloodstained walls, no surgical tools, nor threatening messages. Only me. Exactly how I was.

          Dressed in a long, white lab coat.

          I watched as my lips separated, hands shaking as I touched the glass, palm to palm with my reflection. I looked at her – at me – directly in steel eyes void of all warmth. She blinked, and the veins at her temples bulged into violet.

          I staggered back into nothing, and swallowed agony as an object as sharp as a blade pierced my neck.

***

I crumbled over the toilet bowl and wretched.

          Derek was at my back in a second, switching on the light on his way in.

          Tears streamed down my cheeks to the sound of my own vomiting. I let everything out like it was routine, knowing to stop once the cramping guilt subsided into still, bobbing waters in my stomach.

          My sigh made Derek let go of my hair and turn on the tap. He silently handed over a glass of water as I slumped on the bathroom tiles, head leaning back against the cool wall. My skin was on fire.
"Thank you," I croaked. He sat beside me, watching me gulp down half the contents, washing away the sour tang on my tongue.

          He waited until I let the glass hang at my side.
"That's twice this week."
It had been a while since I had one. Almost two months, I had counted. "Finding the lab did something. It was good for the mission, yes, but not the nightmares." I rubbed my sore eyes and pulled away a strand of matted hair from my cheek.
Derek brushed another from the side closest to him. "You're strong. I know you can get through this."

          I hugged my legs in close, even if my skin still burned.

          "Do you want to talk about it?" Derek asked.
No. But if I kept quiet, he would only stay up all night worrying as he often did. "I was back in the lab again. Or I think it was the lab. I walked down these freezing cold steps following a voice."
"A voice?"
I swallowed, looking him in the eyes. "Your voice. Then Scotty's. Gabby's, Collins, Davis, and Jade. Even Rodriguez."
He blinked. "What did they say?"
"I couldn't figure everything out. They called out then started... started screaming." I had to be careful. To tell him they screamed like Marcus's victims would have put god-awful images in his mind regarding Jade. "Then the lights turned on and I—" I was me... but different. How Marcus wanted me, I believed.
"It's okay," he soothed. "Take your time."
I clenched my jaw tightly together, driven to speak by sheer determination that I was not what I saw. "I wore a white coat. Like the one the doctors wear."
"You are not like him."

          I hoped so. But whether I liked it or not, we were always bound. And that image... I wanted to burn every white coat within range just to singe it from my memory. "God, I hate my mind sometimes."
"You're an overthinker," Derek said. "You manage to plot out every possible scenario in your head, but you're also logical. With that logic, you must know that you could never, ever be like Marcus."

          It was with that logic that I tried to map out how I could have possibly grown different to the man who raised me. Was it my mother's influence? Alistair's? The pieces wouldn't fit, the gaps in my memory too strong.

          I shuddered at the cold tiles pressing against my skin. "This is going to get worse before it gets better, isn't it?"

          Derek's throat bobbed, not daring to let out the words. He knew I was right. When we inevitably took on Marcus again, he would be forced back into our world physically. Then all these emotions I felt without trying – without even being conscious – would become reality once more. But he did not want me to be even more afraid than I already was, so his arm weaved around my shoulders and guided me into his own sweating chest, holding onto me so tightly as if to try and mask the shaking of his own limbs.

          "I'm here," he managed to say. "To whatever end, I am here."

          The guilt lurched. I reached for my mouth, worried I may be sick again, but the feeling subsided. With a heavy heart, I leaned into him, draping a weak arm around his waist.

          I didn't deserve him. Not with everything I brought to the table, and yet he didn't care. He put up with the nights of vomiting my guts up, my secluded nature, the baggage of my past – all of it. I tried hiding it at first, but life taught me that keeping things from him was dangerous. Information was a double-edged blade, but no harm came to me when he was near. I was free to be myself, with even the ugly parts on show.

          "I love you," I whispered into his chest. "I know I don't say it as often as I should, but I do."
He smiled. "And I love you." His chest fell. "We'll be free of this one day. I'll never stop believing that

QOTD: What do you think of Amber's dream? Is it just a dream, or a hint to something darker?