It was a cellar, alright. Some dank room beneath the floorboards of the barn house that smelled of rat droppings and mold. There was zero light but for a candle burning in the middle of the room, and I had to wait for my eyes to adjust. There wasn’t much else to see when they did. The room must have been storage before, as it was lined with shelves of jars caked with dust and dirt that still looked like they held fruit preserves.
Ugh.
Even this game of chase was becoming old. Perhaps this round would have a more definitive ending.
Movement from my right caught my attention, and sent my defensive walls soaring high. “Who’s there?” I demanded.
“Ellie?” the female voice called through the darkness. “Is that Ellie Armstrong?”
Wariness swept through me. “How do you know my name?”
“So you are Ellie Armstrong?”
“Possibly.”
“Come here. I’m along the wall, in the back.”
I followed the voice, genuinely curious upon what I would find. It ended up being a woman, probably in her late forties or early fifties, shackled to a wall. Her body was thin and her skin was ashen, but her eyes sparkled with a defiant spark I wished I could sustain. Her hair was black, curly, and long, draping along her body in dejected tangles. The ratty jeans and shirt she wore were holy and covered in grime.
“It is you,” she breathed, eyes scanning my face, almost as if in recognition.
Of course. More people than you could probably believe from here to kingdom come know who you are.
That was an ill-fated truth.
“I’m sorry,” I said, voice sounding rather small and weak in the oppressive darkness. “I don’t know who you are.”
“That’s okay. That’s okay. I know you, and that’s what matters.”
I sagged against the wall beside her, exhausted, mentally depleted, throat crying out for thirst and stomach rumbling with hunger. My wrists remained bound tightly behind me, so situating myself comfortably was nearly impossible. The woman’s eyes never strayed from me.
“My name is Lucille,” the woman spoke. Her voice was raspy. I wondered how long she had gone without water.
“Hello.”
“I’ve heard so much about you, Ellie.”
Great. “You must think me a freak, then,” I muttered, wincing as I shifted on the ground and the ropes burned harder into my wrists. “An abominable addition to nature.”
“Not at all.”
Her response was immediate, and I wasn’t expecting it. I turned to her in the dying candlelight, seeking her face, not sure if she was joking or not. “I’m sorry, I’m not the best at undertones,” I said. “Are you being sarcastic?”
Lucille laughed. “No, Ellie. I am quite serious. You had no choice in who you became. You’re merely a victim.”
A victim.
I guessed I kind of was.
“What about you?” I asked. “Why does Angel have you locked up?”
The smile that appeared on her face was sorrowful. “I admit that is a long story,” she murmured. “Though I hope, one day, you will find out and understand why.”
Frowning, I said, “Why can’t you just tell me?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple, honey.”
“Oh.” I sagged best I could against the wall. “How long have you been here?”
“In this place, only a few days. I’ve been their prisoner for months, though. Would have been years, had I not been so savvy at getting away.” She winked. “I guess I’m getting a little old.”
My heart skipped a beat. “You’re not—”
“No,” she said. “I’m not like you.”
Hope crashed to the ground. “Oh.”
“But, Ellie.” I looked at her. “You must find a way to surpass your sister. You cannot let her win.”
I nodded, swallowing hard. My stomach growled at the teasing action. “I am trying.”
Are you? Last time I checked, you were about to walk off a bridge.
“You aren’t, though.”
Lucille’s voice turned snappish and cold. “What?”
“I still have ears,” she added. “I heard them talking. When they went to retrieve you, Angel spoke with her men. You were on the bridge. You were planning on killing yourself.”
The naked truth laid out before me shamed me into silence. It sounded so much different than when I said it in my head. When I glossed over the words and focused on the purpose. Lucille spat out reality with a callousness that disturbed me.
“That isn’t trying,” she continued. “That’s cowardly. It’s using extreme measures to avoid the problem that you can’t handle.”
She was right, though. I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle any of it anymore.
“I just can’t believe it. I never thought my—” she caught herself, pausing a bit to restructure her sentences. “I can’t believe you would do that, Ellie Armstrong. You always sounded stronger than that to me.”
“So what if I’m not?” I burst. “What if I’m just not? I’m still a person, too. I’m still scared, and sad, and miserable that people keep dying. I can’t stop any of it. What do all of you people want from me?”
Pity streaked across Lucille’s face. I wanted none of that. Pity never did anything for the world.
She opened her mouth to speak, but then the candle blew out and we were inundated with darkness. Nothing more was said, so I figured it was primetime to catch up on some sleep.
Even with my wrists bound and my body in a perpetual state of turmoil, I nodded off in seconds.
~*~
The cellar door flinging open stirred me from sleep. Somehow I’d ended up on my side, which was supremely uncomfortable. My arms ached, as well as my wrists, and my entire body could use a good massage.
Light streamed through the open door. I surmised I must have slept through the entire day, right into the next one. Lucille still remained against the wall, eyes closed and chin tucked against her chest, snoring quietly. After a mighty effort I managed to push myself to my feet, and limped on sore legs to the cellar’s opening. Rex’s face greeted me, leering into the darkness.
“Rise and shine,” he said, and before I knew what was happening reached in to grab me and haul me out. The door was shut and locked behind me. Even in the enclosed barn there was too much light, nothing like the cellar, and I had to turn away from it.
“Angel wants to see you, now,” Rex stated, tossing me over his shoulder. I guessed I was moving a bit too slow for him. We travelled through the building, passed the cellar and towards the back, into a large room that looked like it had been modified to fit my sister’s needs. A table sat in the center, with the leather straps, and that was all I needed focus on.
No.
All I remembered was Lana, and that horror, and I wasn’t sure I could survive that kind of torture again.
“No,” I whispered, once Rex sat me on my feet. “No.”
“Angel, she’s—”
“No!” I screamed, cutting him off. With my abilities back full power Rex blew backward, back smashing into the wall. I tried to make a run for it, but two other guys came out of nowhere and shut the doors, keeping me out. I attempted to move them, but they just wouldn’t. Their faces pinched with pain, and when I glanced to the side and saw Angel trying to counteract my wishes, I realized why.
And immediately stopped, because the monster was dormant at the moment, and I had no wish to arouse it.
“Don’t you manipulate by men,” she snapped. “Only I can do that.”
I said nothing.
“Rex, hurry up and put her on that table. Strap her down nice and tight.”
He did, and I offered no resistance. Nightmares swarmed my brain as the leather straps tightened around my wrists and ankles. A tear clung to my lashes, but I refused to let it fall.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, when Angel sauntered up to my side. She still looked like death warmed over, but her eyes were cold and unfeeling as always.
“Just a little curiosity,” she said, trailing her finger down my cheek. I glared at her. “Find out what’s keeping you looking so good. I need some of that.”
“Aren’t we the same? Maybe you just look worse.”
She growled. “We are not the same. Don’t ever call us the same.”
I seconded that.
“I’m not trying to hurt you physically,” Angel continued, voice cooler. “That’s not my intention. I think I’ve done enough of that in the past.”
My wrists screamed in protest, the leather straps even more unforgiving than the rope had been.
“Everything bad is psychological,” Angel said. “You know? I mean, the stuff in your head, that’s the worst. You can’t get rid of it so easily. It doesn’t go away with time, or by some magical healing balm. Those nightmares you have will probably haunt you for the rest of your life. But you know that, don’t you?”
I said nothing, because I did.
“I want to break you,” she whispered, face leaning close to mine. “Irreparably, Elle-Belle. I want to psychologically devastate you, and render you a mindless ticking time bomb.”
Her words were daunting, and rather frightening. The physical stuff I knew I could somehow endure. My life was built off that kind of torture.
But this?
I wasn’t so sure.
A high keening sound hit my ears, and then the table I was on began moving. Just slightly, tilting me enough I could see the new addition to the room; a cart supporting a boxy TV.
“What better place to start than the truth?” Angel said, standing beside me. “I mean, that’s all you ever ask for, right? The truth, like it’ll be your saving grace.” She walked forward and turned on the TV, pushing a VHS tape in. “Sometimes, Elle-Belle, it’s better to remain ignorant.”
The screen was black for a few moments. Fuzzy words popped up: “This has been classified as confidential by the E.N.D. organization and is not to be distributed for public view.”
So much for that.
Then the words disappeared, and the first person to flash across the screen was . . .
“Tia,” I breathed.
Angel smiled.
The image was grainy and a little distorted, but it was definitely her. I would recognize my most attentive caregiver anywhere. “Why are you showing me this?”
“Shh.” She turned up the volume. “Just shut up and listen.”
Without any other choice, I did, watching the film. Tia was standing at a podium of some kind, standing before a giant room filled with people.
“Others of the E.N.D. organization,” Angel informed me. “Before me and the Prophets killed practically all of them off.”
My blood boiled.
And the public had been completely unaware of this clandestine civil war happening in their country.
On the video, Tia held up her right hand and proceeded to take an oath.
“You have pledged your undying allegiance to this organization that you will serve faithfully and fully, with your life if the situation so calls for it,” an unseen man stated.
Tia nodded. “Yes.”
“E.N.D. works to neutralize all domestic threats, and does so in a timely and effective manner.”
“Yes.”
“As of now, you work for the government first and anybody else second. Should you hold personal interests and opinions over that of the good of the nation, consequences will be faced.”
“Yes.”
My skin tingled. Not good, I thought, even if I didn’t know why. I just had the feeling. Not good, not good, not good.
“Do you understand the orders and duties expected of you, Tia Larange?”
“I do.”
The video fizzled out, but shortly returned with Tia dressed in some sort of uniform, her hair pulled tightly back, standing in the same room. There were less people, though. Only a handful. And they were all looking at something.
“Your mission, Tia Larange,” the same man spoke. “This is the threat to be neutralized.”
Tia nodded on the screen. “Yes, sir.”
“Unguarded she poses a threat to national security, and to the general public. We have word from D.C., and they want her on constant watch.”
Angel snickered. “Here it comes,” she murmured.
I frowned, wondering what she could possibly be talking about . . .
Oh.
Okay.
That made sense.
The video moved from Tia’s face to a large screen that all the people in the room were looking at. And on it, around sixteen or seventeen at the time, was me.
Me.
“Ellie Armstrong,” the man spoke, the same time as Angel right beside me. “She resides with the Prophets at the moment. She is to be displaced and kept under close watch.”
And all Tia said was, “Yes, sir.”
No.
My body tightened, brain hammering away at some realization my survival mechanisms wouldn’t let me acknowledge. It would break you, they seemed to say. Acknowledging this truth would break you.
The video cut off. Rex grabbed the cart and rolled it out of the room.
Tears rolled down my face, mourning the truth I was not allowing myself to accept.
The door closed.
Angel and I were left alone.
Silence reigned for the first few moments. This surprised me, because Angel always liked to talk so much. I figured this must be another one of her tactics; make me simmer in the implications of that video.
“Where did you get that?” I questioned shakily.
“You know as well as I we can be very persuasive.”
“So you stole it.”
She grunted. “Not like they had a lot of need for it anymore. Tia is dead. The E.N.D. organization is in the ground. Both their greatest weapons are at large.” Her eyes flickered to me. “I could put it to much better use.”
I shook my head. “That was . . . that was all a lie. You’re just messing with me.”
“Sorry, sis. That’s classified video nobody else on this great green earth has ever seen before. Consider yourself privileged.”
Privileged.
That wasn’t the world I would use.
“I mean,” she continued, pacing in front of me, “you can’t possible sit there and tell me you never suspected a thing. The entire time you were with her, and you thought her intentions were good?”
My lips pressed together.
“You seriously thought she was there for explicitly your benefit?”
A pounding started in my skull.
“Come on. How dense can you be? Don’t you know by now that nobody in this world is on our side? Everybody is out to get us. People don’t like what they can’t understand, Elle-Belle.”
“You’re wrong,” I spat, desperation clawing at my insides. “You’re wrong.”
“Unfortunately, I’m not. What you saw was one hundred percent true.” Her lips twisted into a cruel smirk. “I’m not programmed to feel things; not regret or empathy or sorrow. It’s the only way to survive in this world, El, and I would suggest you do the same.”
The tears rushed faster, an unbridled flood drowning my cheeks. No. That couldn’t be it. There had to be something else. Something hidden, some loophole, some change of heart. Sometime over the three months Tia cared about me. She had to care about me, right?
She had to have been on my side, right?
Or not.
The urge to clamp my hands over my ears was overwhelming, but with my wrists bound I could not. Voices and doubts swamped my head, suffocating logicality and reasoning, and what I thought I’d known before.
Maybe everything you thought you knew was a lie.
Maybe Tia was never who you thought she was.
Maybe everybody at the safe house is the same way.
I released a broken cry as the war inside my head battered everything to crumbling pieces. What was truth and what was false? I couldn’t discriminate between reality and make-believe. Everything was a jumbled mess of indiscernible chaos.
“Face it,” Angel jeered, slamming her hands on the table by my head. “Nothing is at it seems. Nobody works truly in our favor. You are one hundred percent, always have been and always will be, alone.”
The word shattered everything.
The chaos quieted into nothing.
There was just that word, repeating itself over and over and over again, bouncing around my head.
Alone, alone, alone.
You were alone in your town.
You were alone when Lana captured you.
You were alone with Tia, who would never understand, who never spoke of word of what she knew to you, who was working behind your back the entire time.
Alone, because she never gave a hoot about you.
Alone, even at the safe house, with more people who could never understand, who grew irritated with your ignorant mind, and who you endangered just by proximity.
Alone.
You should have jumped off that bridge when you had the chance.
“So glad it’s finally sinking in,” Angel said.
Oh, it was sinking in, alright.
Tia betrayed you.
Nobody will ever understand.
You are truly alone in this, you unforgivable monster.
Angel mistook my silence for sorrow. If only she knew the tears that dripped from my eyes did so with straight, unadulterated wrath. The blood in my veins turned to fire. The doubts in my head ceased, until everything was silenced but my own angry voice.
The one that cried, How dare she, when thinking of Tia and her possible betrayal.
My heart that endured beating after merciless beating begged for retribution. Some sort of revenge to sate the stirring monster.
Don’t you warrant that much?
All your life you’ve just been tossed around like a ship in the ocean without an anchor, waiting to hit a rock and sink.
Well, you’ve finally sunk.
So, what now?
It was a good question.
What now?
Angel retrieved a knife and slit one of the leather bands so she could grab my arm and turn it over. My wrist was red and bloody, and would surely bruise later on. The serrated edge of the blade pressed against my skin, near a vein.
She wished to draw blood?
You know how to draw blood better.
Just as the knife broke the skin, Rex burst through the door, breathing heavily, eyes wide. “Miss Angel.”
Angel cried out in frustration. “What is it, Rex?”
“That Masterson boy. He—he’s here.”
I wanted to feel something at hearing August’s name, at knowing he had tracked me down and come to save me.
But there was nothing.
How could I feel anymore? How could I risk anymore vulnerability?
“Well, take care of him,” my twin snapped. “Did he come with back-up?”
“Not as far as I can tell.”
“Then why are you still here?”
But Rex appeared nervous, tugging at the collar of his shirt. “It’s the rest of our squadron,” he said. “They’re all dead.”
Even Angel paused at this. “Dead? All of them?”
“All twenty-eight. Give or take a couple.”
Wow.
“You’reabsolutely certain he came alone?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She cursed under her breath, tucking the knife in her belt. “I guess I’ll just have to do everything myself, like always,” she mumbled.
No.
My eyes clashed with Rex’s, and seconds later, he was tackling Angel like a linebacker. She went down hard.
“Rex!” she cried, voice cracked with pain. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Angel! I cannot help it!”
“Well, get off.”
“I can’t!”
“What do you mean you can’t? I’m ordering you to get off me now.”
“But I can’t, Miss Angel!”
“Get up,” I interjected simply, and per my orders, Rex wrapped a thick arm around Angel, pinning her to his chest, as he shuffled toward me. “Take out your knife.”
He did
“Cut me loose.”
“Don’t do it, Rex,” Angel warned. “Do not do it.”
Rex’s jaw was tight as he could do nothing but slide his knife through each of my bonds, still holding Angel tight against him. She was trying hard as anything to dominate my control over the man, but it was her fault she couldn’t.
She said to get rid of the emotions.
So I did.
The monster was overjoyed.
“Don’t move,” I ordered. “Not for ten minutes.”
And by God, that man was not about to move for ten minutes, regardless of Angel’s protests and manipulations.
I grabbed Rex’s gun before running from the room, ignoring the pins and needles feeling in my feet. Bursting through the door, I entered the main area. The irony stench of blood slammed into me. I thought about Lucille in the cellar, and whatever humane shred still existed right then inside of me demanded I rescue the poor woman.
But that voice was silenced the moment I saw him.
Covered in blood that so clearly wasn’t his, eyes dark and murderous, holding the throat of a man that was questionably conscious.
I said nothing, but he seemed to sense me, like he always could, and turned right around. Our eyes clashed. The bloodlust filling his blue depths faded, filling with relief as his shoulders sagged.
“Ellie,” he said.
He started making his way toward me, so I ran.
Right out of the building, cursing the open landscape of the abandoned Nebraskan farm. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape to. August’s Corvette was parked off to the side. More tears streaked my face at the familiarity of it. Good familiarity.
Another battle waged in my head.
“Ellie!”
He was close, so I whirled around. The moment I pressed the nose of the pistol against my head, he stopped.
Froze, with his eyes wide and his hands up, palms facing me in a harmless stance.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, voice catching in my confusion as tears continued to roll down my cheeks. “Didn’t you get my note? I didn’t want to be found!”
August looked different. He’d shaved the beard and trimmed his hair, creating a more put-together appearance. I stared into his eyes, which were the same, which would always be the same.
“You don’t know me at all, then,” he spoke, slowly and deliberately, “if you didn’t think I would come after you.”
But there was a part of me that always, from the beginning, knew he would.
A part of me that hoped he would.
“No,” I sobbed. “You don’t understand, August.”
He chanced a step forward, stopping when I pressed the gun harder against my skull. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Then try and make me. Make me understand, Ellie.”
I shook my head. “You can’t. Nobody can, and nobody ever will. I’m just an inconvenience! Nobody wants me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Don’t lie!” I shrieked. “When it’s you who cares for me least of all.”
A pained expression twisted his features. Pained and disbelieving. “Don’t you dare say that.”
“It’s true.”
“The hell it is.”
“I got your aunt killed!” I shouted. “And you know what else? She didn’t even care about me! She wasn’t there to protect me, she was there fulfilling her duties to her stupid organization! None of them cared! Not her, not Jim, not Esme, and not you.”
His body quaked with anger. “Put the gun down, Ellie. Let’s talk about this.”
I shook my head. “I’m done talking.”
“You don’t want to do this. Shooting yourself is letting them win.”
“I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do. Put the gun down and let me take you somewhere safe. We can talk. You’re just feeling a lot right now.”
On the contrary, I wasn’t feeling a thing. “Go back to the safe house, August.”
He took a step forward. “No.”
“Go. Be with Jessica. You two belong together.”
“You’re wrong.”
“And Ryan, and Blake. Hang out with them. Go back to Yale and see your roommates. Live a life. Live one without me in it.”
His hands lowered, eyes boring into me with earnest intensity. “There is no life without you in it.”
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded. “Let me die. I just want to die.”
August swallowed hard, my words clearly upsetting him. “That’s not what you want, and I can’t let it happen. Put the gun down, Ellie.”
“No.”
“Ellie, please.”
“No.”
“So you’re just going to kill yourself off? And then what? What happens after that? Angel and the Prophets win, the world goes to hell, our government is overrun by that manipulative, God-playing bitch, and America dies? Is that what you want to happen?”
My hand trembled. “This world is doing no better with me in it, either.”
“You can’t seriously think that.”
“I’m a monster, Augie. I’ve killed thousands of people, all at once. Even more after that. I’m just as bad as my sister.”
“Bullshit.”
The word was definitive and firm. “What?”
“Bullshit, Ellie. You’re nothing like your sister. Nothing like I thought you would be when you found me at Yale so long ago. Nothing like anybody thinks you to be.”
“This is what I want, August.”
“It’s not, Ellie. It can’t be.” He stepped forward once more. “Think about what you have here.”
“I have nothing.”
“You have me.”
Silence.
“You have me, Ellie.”
My fingers ached with the tightness in which they held the gun. “One person out of billions is hardly anything.”
“Fine. You have Jessica, too. And Ryan. And Blake. And maybe others, with good souls, if you just find them. But you won’t be able to if you’re dead, Ellie.”
You probably wouldn’t be able to, anyway.
One more tear slid down my cheek. I breathed deeply, closing my eyes. “I’m sorry, August.”
“Ellie, no—”
I squeezed the trigger.
*****
A/N: unedited (sorry!) so hope there aren't too many mistakes. Yes, I'm torturing you with a cliff hanger, but I hope you enjoyed the chapter and love the book so far. VOTE and COMMENT and SHARE! Give me your thoughts! :D
-EJ