Leo Hernandez
Following the big scary guy into an even bigger and scarier bunker wasn't on my bucket list, but as soon as I get back to Ren's home, I'm adding this on there and crossing it off. Right after that, I'll add in "Survive the bigger, scarier bunker."
Ren went in first, with me behind him, Sarah behind me, and Alistair behind all of us. Nobody wasn't holding their breaths. As we descend the angled hall made of a sleek metal, I reach into the atmosphere, trying to find the threads of someone, or a group of people. Sarah had a point aboveground, saying I practice in the number of people and not the range of my power. Still, something about this felt different. Call it my chili-cheese dog withdraws, call it my rattled-to-the-bone nerves, but it seemed eerily cold and silent, as if no one was ever here at all.
Once we reach the bottom of the descending hall, the bunker splits into three sections. "You've got to be kidding me," I grumble, knowing that splitting up has never helped anyone. "We can all go down together, one hall at a time."
Ren shoots me a glare. "By the time we do that, Kya could already be dead, or wind up like that Sage." He sighs and closes his eyes, desperately trying to control his emotions. "It's my fault this happened," he tells us. "If I wasn't such a dick earlier, then she wouldn't have felt the need to lose the Sages tailing her, and this might have never happened. If you guys want to stick together, then be my guests, but I'm going to cover more space."
Sarah speaks up next. "Why were you so harsh? She did nothing wrong."
Furiously, Ren snaps, "I know." There's a pause before he speaks again. I've never seen the Dragon so unsteady. "I hurt her without meaning to, just like I've done with the rest of my family. I wanted her to hate me so she would stay away from me. I know I went overboard. I thought I was doing the right thing, but..."
Delicately, Sarah places a hand on Ren's arm. "You don't give Kya enough credit. She typically knows when she's in danger and when she'll get hurt..." I don't miss the guilt clouding Alistair's face. "Quite frankly, I don't think she would mind if you hurt her. She knows you better than you think. Maybe even more than you know yourself."
"You're probably right," Ren admits, eyes looking down each of the halls, all of them brightly lit and made of the same lightly-colored metal, but their end seeming unreachable. "I just hope she sees things the same way."
"We can find out when we get back to your house," I sum up. "So, how are we splitting up? Ren goes one way and we all go the other?"
"No way in hell I'm going with you," Alistair snarls at me. If he had fangs, I'm sure they'd be out by now and ready to sink into my neck. But I'm not too afraid. I've been living with Ren, after all.
"Fine by me," I disclaim. "Sarah and I go down hall number one, Ali down two, Ren down three? Sound good?"
"No," Ren disagrees, jamming a finger in Alistair's direction. "I don't trust him alone." Dude, seriously, what the heck is going on with these guys? There's definitely more than testosterone feuds going on, here, but if I recall, the two have never met. What gives? The tension isn't really helping us out right now. "He's coming with me. You two are going to have to split up."
I gawk. "I'm not letting Sarah go in there alone!"
"She'll be fine, Leo," Ren assures. "She's powerful."
"I know that. I mean she can't go in alone because that means I'll be alone. I'm nothing but a defenseless little nugget!"
Alistair scoffs. "Dude, man up."
"Leo, chances are, you'll be fine," Ren tells me, growing tired of my squeamishness. "Do it for Kya."
I remember how happy she was this morning. She was so bright, and despite the beginnings of winter in Japan, she made it feel like springtime was in the air. I know I'm aching with the idea of Reaper doing to Kya what she did to that Sage, and I'm still cowering like a newborn. Ren's known Kya for a far shorter time than I have, yet he's in all kinds of messes right now. I can only imagine how much he cares for her, deep down, even if he doesn't know how to express it all the time.
I feel ashamed of myself for not being braver for Kya, or braver in front of Sarah, or in front of Alistair – my newfound archenemy. Bucking up, calming down, and stepping to the side, I nod. "Alright," I concede. "I'll do it. I go down here, Sarah goes in the middle, and you two go in the third hall."
"Thank you," Ren gratifies, and I don't think I've ever heard him say that to me.
I look to Sarah, something welling in my chest. If something happens to me tonight, then she may never know how much I love her. Is it selfish of me to tell her now, before we tread into the ominous depths of the halls? Would I only distract her?
I don't want to risk it. Briefly, I rest my hand on her shoulder. "I want some chili-cheese dogs whenever we get back to –"
The air in my lungs is squeezed out by a teacup-sized girl with cream-colored hair and the sweetest lavender eyes. Her arms constrict me with the surprising strength of a pair of pythons, and for a moment, I'm too stunned to register what's happening. It's the sniffle and shudder that bring me to my senses, and I carefully wrap my arms around Sarah, one hand stroking her hair while the other gently keep her close, as if she's dangerously brittle. She whispers something into my shirt that only I can hear. Ren and Alistair turn away out of respect for privacy.
I respond with the thing I've wanted to say for years, now. "I love you, too."
When we part, Sarah and I exchange glances with everyone else, bidding our potentially last goodbyes before we head our separate ways. I feel a manic mixture of terrified and elated; my nerves running ramped and my heart shaking for different reasons. Sarah looks embarrassed and just as scared as I feel. Alistair appears torn, as if his visible guilt and uncertainty are warring with each other to overpower the other. Ren seems...I don't even know how to describe him. He's like every fairytale's giant beast, but with the knight-in-shining-armor's intentions.
Then we head down the halls. Again, I reach out, trying to feel the threads of a person, or a bug, or an animal – something. As I creep down the stretch of hall, I can't help but feel like this is less of a setup and more of a personal fault. Maybe if my power wasn't so useless, then I'd be less scared. Surging with frustration and the inescapable feeling of being a failure, I kick one of the walls, the thud reverberating against the sheets of bright metal.
I have people counting on me. Kya is counting on me, Sarah is counting on me – the girl I've liked since I first saw her five years ago loves me back, and she's counting on me. Heavily, I sigh, fingers groping my suspenders and stretching them all about as I tiptoe down the hall. "Think, Leo. Think..."
Abruptly, I stop in my tracks. Finally, I see the end of this hallway. There's an empty chair, made of the same material as this bunker. Beyond that, there's a plain-looking door. Though my travel isn't over, I can't help but think that maybe Ren was right. Chances are, I'll be just fine. Still, I take in the chair. I can't risk missing a clue to Kya's whereabouts just because I was lazy.
Cautiously, I go to the chair. Examine the back of it. Look under the arms. Scrutinize beneath it. I even kick it around a bit, just to see if there's something special at the bottom. Nothing. Nada. So, what's the point of this at all? Why set up a chair with no one here? What's the point of all that extra effort?
Biting my lip, I know something's wrong. I mean, more wrong than it already is. The likelihood of there being chairs set up here, as well as Reaper and Cerberus checking this place out, all being for nothing is slim. What's their angle?
I didn't hear the footsteps, nor feel the threads connected to the being until it was too late. A sharp pain pinches my neck, making me flinch. I move to turn, but there's a knife pressing to the base of my throat, held so firmly that even my slightest jerk has caused to blade to sever the first layer of skin, warm blood trickling down and onto my shirt. My white shirt. At least have the curtesy to give me a bib, dammit.
"I've just given you pure GHC. In about twenty minutes, you will be entirely passed out. By then..." the voice is female and grainy – must be the Reaper. She wraps something hard and cold around one of my wrists, the icy temperature biting into me as she over-tightens them. "I should have just the right leverage for Kya to use her dark strain for me." Knife still pressed to my throat, Reaper guides me to the chair, sitting me down and staying behind me, bringing my arms behind my back at an uncomfortable angle and slapping the second cuff on my bony wrist.
Reaper finally steps into view. I don't know what I expected when I saw her. Foaming at the mouth? Constricted pupils like pinpoints, or maybe eyeballs that show no whites? Did I expect scaly skin, devil horns, and rotting teeth? Whatever it was, I didn't picture this. She looks dangerous, yes, but not vile if you glance over her. From the horror stories Elektra told and the brutality of the attack against the Sage, I envisioned a monster. Instead, she looks just like us, if not a bit normal – without markings, human, average. Personally, I think it's the beasts who hide in sheep's clothing that are the most dangerous, however.
"Why can't I sense you? I could feel you near at the airport," I tell her, mind racing for a way out of this. One-on-one, I can never take down the Reaper. Though my lack of strength always seems to fail me, three things that I usually despise about myself are sure to come in handy. One of them: my uncontrollable, messy hair.
"This metal was designed by the same metal as your cuffs. Originally, it was meant to prevent all powers from working, in case an earthquake forced the Dragon into hiding and due to stress, he reacted as usual..." while the Reaper explains, she twirls her knife with a nonplussed expression. I realize she's waiting for the GHC to kick in, which means I have to work fast. Thing number two I hated about myself before this: my unsavory favoring of wearing suspenders everywhere.
The Reaper goes on. "The flaw was that it prevented people from practicing powers that connected with other people's strings. It's like a barrier. Things like you, Sarah, and Cerberus are helpless here. Speaking of...I do believe Cerberus should be rounding up that little girl right about now. But these cuffs are all-restricting. We've fixed the error at SD. Don't worry."
My body shivers. Cerberus was never a bad guy in Asylum, as far as I can remember, but then again: he's working with Reaper. Thing number three I was always frowned upon for: my insatiable knack for stealing. "If he lays a hand on a single one of her hairs, I swear to God, I'll –"
The Reaper barks out a laugh. "You'll what? Kill him?"
Expertly, I wriggle my back right to the seat so I sit as a right angle. I stretch my fingers so they can reach my suspenders, where I keep a couple of hairpins on the straps in case it's a windy day. Once I unclip two of them, I bend them out of place and blindly fashion them into locksmith's picks, an easy maneuver when you've been rummaging through people's safes and closets for entertainment. As quickly as I can manage, I begin to feel out the locks on one of my cuffs, keeping Sarah in mind as I work.
"If he hurts her," I answer the Reaper. "I just might." I feel my erratic heartbeat start to slow for some reason. If anything, it should be speeding up. The GHC. It's kicking in. I need to go faster.
"Please, Leo," the Reaper sighs, reaching into her waistband of her dark pants and unfurling a series of papers. "You couldn't even save your mother when she was nearly beaten to death. Sure, you were only a child, but...she was your mother." My hands stiffen. I haven't thought of my life before Asylum since...well, Asylum. Remembering what little life I had makes me shudder.
I drop one of my hairclips, the small ping it makes is all-consuming in the wretched silence. Reaper doesn't miss a beat. "Well, there goes your chances of escape. I'll make sure you're all fastened in before I take care of the others."
Gritting my teeth, I blink tears out of my eyes. My head feels too heavy to lift, but I do it anyways. "How the hell did you know about my mother? I burned –"
Reaper waves me off like I'm a nuisance. "Save me the story. I obviously know all about you. You were born as a bastard child to an unnamed father and whore of a mother, who used to sell herself for money but found a love in drugs more so than a love in you. Things got violent, she nearly died a thousand times, and a neighbor called in the police, tired of all the noise."
She takes a deep breath, as if reciting my story is exhausting. Meanwhile, I'm reliving all of the memories that I've tried so hard to repress. I remember when I was three, I was always confused why there was a different man in the house each night, and I never understood the banging against the walls, or the primal grunt of a stranger, or the strained moans from my mother. I only understood that each time it ended, my mother had a wad of cash and a new man on the way.
Around four, I started cleaning around the house, dusting off the white powders form the counters, placing metal spoons and syringes back in Mother's bathroom. I thought the white dust was baby powder, the spoons for something like pudding or ice cream, and the syringes were for playing nurse.
The police came when I was four, too. Luckily, the white powder was gone, the syringes and spoons stashed, the mysterious men gone. Still, they found the cash, which was baffling to them because my mother was jobless. They reported the strangeness, which reflected on my personal school records under the "personal" file.
Reaper has collected her breath and barrels on. "You're actually rather intelligent, despite behaving like a fool all the time, according to an IQ test you took in elementary school. I'd have never guessed. It was then, your mother started to try and clean up for you, right?"
She's right. I took the test when I was seven. By then, I understood that the men only wanted my mother for her body, and the powder was something that was dangerous but made her "feel free." Soon, I stopped seeing the drugs and the payers. Mother wanted to get a real job so I could go to a good college, one day. She didn't want me to end up like she did.
"Also around that time, things got bloody, if my files are correct," Reaper teases, dramatically flipping through her pages. "The men who liked your slut mother most were going blue-balled, and when she refused her service, well. You know what happened, right? You were around eight. She was beaten half to death, probably forced into doing what the men wanted anyways, and left for dead. Teachers started to report you showing estranged behavior, also: fear of touching people, or of being touched. You reacted drastically to loud thuds and couldn't stand seeing someone crying. Jesus, you felt too much. Emotions are crippling."
Gritting my teeth, I yell at her, but my voice is broken and hoarse from me trying to hold back all my emotion. "Sorry if I care for people! Maybe if I stopped, I could be just like you, right? Hunting down kids just like you, murdering them for a hobby and probably hanging their head on a wall."
She snorts. "I'm nothing like you. I'm far more superior."
I wrinkle my nose and shake my head. "You're just a girl."
Something flashy and bold crosses her dark irises, and it's the same look I've seen in the men who didn't get what they wanted. "I've left my humanity long ago. I'm far better off without it, obviously. I'm not the one cuffed to a chair."
"No, you're the one who has to make yourself taller by stepping on others," I correct, eyes burning and lip trembling. My heart still slows, making my gut feel heavy and my chest hollow.
"It's humanity that caused Kya to fall right into our grasp. It's humanity that makes you cry. It's humanity that makes people break when something overwhelms them," Reaper instructs as if she's teaching a lesson.
"It's also humanity that will get us all out of here, safe."
"Right," Reaper blandly states, clearly unbelieving. "It's also humanity that makes us cower in fear. When you were in fifth grade, a teacher gave you a psychology test, where you drew a scene you witnessed in your own shitty apartment: the accident that gave your mother sectional amnesia. Those documents also went down in your school records."
"I burned those!" I shout, straining against the cuffs, which bite into my skin. My stealing streaks started with the school files, when I snuck into the school, picked a few locks, and turned those papers to ash in the office. "How the hell did you get them?"
"It's the twenty-first century, Leo. Everyone makes copies. Only smart people keep the copies well-hidden." She smiles, as if she files herself under one of those smart people. Well, she's smart enough to have lured us all down here. She knew we would go after Kya. "It took a lot of digging, but I finally got my hands on your history just a few days ago, along with other materials, like the GHC from my agency that I'm sure Elektra told you all about." Her eerie smile widens as she takes slow steps towards me. "My favorite part about your story is after your mother's partial amnesia diagnosis..."
No, please don't mention it. Don't you dare remind me.
"...how you kept visiting her, basically living at the hospital for the year before you were taken into Asylum..."
Stop it right now...I can only take so much.
My heartbeat feels as faint as I do. My head lulls so my chin rests on my chest.
"...even though whenever you brought her roses you stole, or her favorite food you bought with the cash you pickpocketed from others..."
Stealing. That was what landed me in Asylum. Stop there, Reaper. Don't go on.
"...your mother had no idea who you were." Reaper lifts my head so I see her psychotically twinkling eyes. "You're the only person she couldn't remember. She didn't keep your amateur art projects from elementary school, she was too busy buying drugs to purchase a camera to take your picture, and she tossed out your birth certificate to erase the memory of your conception."
As my eyelids become too weighted to keep open, I shut them, seeing blackness as dark as Reaper's hair, and probably, her soul. Though my eyes are closed, I still feel the tears pouring down my cheeks.
The first time I visited the hospital, she looked at me with vacant eyes. She asked who I was, and why I was there to see her. I thought she was kidding, and when I kept trying to get my mother to admit she was just pulling my leg, she became infuriated. The first visit, I didn't even get out my name, let alone the ability to tell her I'm her son.
I started to wonder if that was for the best. For a woman to throw out her only child's birth certificate, she must have really hated the father, or the responsibility of caring for someone else. She always treated me with love, but like Reaper said, I think she loved drugs more than me. After that first hospital visit, I said I was a hospital volunteer who was given the job to accompany her during her recovery. The doctors showed me her brain scans, and where I should've occupied a space in her memory, there was nothing. Her blank stares dedicated to me were no joke.
Often, I hope that she felt sad when I suddenly stopped showing up – when I was taken by Asylum. It would be a sign that she cared for me, or wanted me around.
As I feel myself drift into the realm of the unconscious, I feel Reaper tighten my cuffs a bit more. Her breath is scorching against my ear as she whispers, "Maybe she never wanted to remember you."
I mumble, "Why go this far?"
"To win," Reaper answers, voice bouncing in the hall. "To weaken you to the point of not being able to go on. I trust that Cerberus has taken care of Sarah. Now, on to the main event."
Never in my life have I felt like such trash. Abandoned by my father, forgotten by my mother, failing my friends. Nobody ever wants me around. Besides Asylum. Asylum wanted me, and they got me. But I didn't want them.
Sarah, I remind myself. She told me she loved me. Sarah wants me.
I knew the moment I saw her, I would never be like those men who tormented my mother. I would be patient, I would treat her like an angel, I would shower her with affection. Never would I lay a finger on her the way they did, or yell at her and say the things they did.
The only reason I'm able to be so friendly with people now was because I forced myself to move on. When I flinched at being touched, I invaded personal space. When a bang in the room frightened me, I forced myself into a construction zone. When someone cried or yelled, I calmed them down and made them laugh. I was determined I wasn't going to be like those men – like my father. I was going to be a good person.
So be one, I tell myself. Be a good person for Sarah. For Kya. Hell, even for Ren and Elektra.
Groggily, I force my eyes to open. Painfully numb but still working, my brain tries to conjure an escape plan. And with my highly emotional state and dire situation, I feel my fingers start to tingle with the sensation of my power whirring back to life. But this time, it feels different...