ACT i. why was six afraid of seven ?
because seven lived and six did not.
CHAPTER viii. ❛ GUIDE TO A FUCKED-UP ORIGIN STORY. ❜
4 years ago,
turgistan border.
"SORRY, MISS LAMBERT!" MILO SAMSARI YELLED AS THE NINE-YEAR OLD gleefully raced over to her to collect his football. Eden smiled as she watched him, picking it up and glancing over his shoulder. Behind the boy were six others and a grown man who she knew all too well. She had been observing the group playing blithely on the sand when the man, someone who had rather directly introduced himself as Andre West, had playfully kicked the ball at her. Only, in his efforts of harmless flirting, the ball had hurtled into the back of her head much harder than he was expecting. So now, he stood there, grimacing in humiliation as the other boys giggled.
"I told you, call me Eden, Milo," Eden beamed, bending down as she handed him the ball.
"Right, sorry Miss-...Eden," Milo corrected, taking the ball with excitement. Then, as he gazed up at the girl before him, he grinned and leaned forwards to whisper in her ear. "I think Mr. Andre has a crush on you."
Eden smiled and eyed the blushing man. He was tall, dark and muscular with an intimidating body and the biggest heart she had ever seen. Despite his frightening build, the man was the most child-like being she had ever met. Which is why his flirting often ended up in tragically embarrassing scenarios such as this one. Eden whispered back. "Well, you tell Mr. Andre that he needs to work on his game. Both football and otherwise."
Milo smiled and nodded.
Eden had spent three weeks there now at the Turgistan border, helping out at a secret medical shelter with the rest of her charity foundation. Since the reign of the country's newest leader, the organisation had been created in order to help the sick children that could not find aid elsewhere. All around the war-torn country, hospitals like these had been bombed with chemical attacks, courtesy of said leader, and she was there to help the children inside the camp. And Milo Samsari was one of these children.
A child so unique and special that Eden found it a privilege to have met him. Though his mother and sister were murdered in the latest attack, the boy had soldiered through and lived his life grateful for everything that was given to him. He never complained and he never protested, remaining optimistic through each and every horror he was put through. Like the Legionellosis he was currently suffering from. And despite his disease, he remained polite and happy and everything he was supposed to not be feeling. So Eden and him had formed what was a very special friendship in the eyes of the both of them.
She watched him run away to join the others and turned back to her brother with a smile on her face.
"A million people have been displaced since the conflict began. We have over 80,000 in this camp alone, nearly half of them children," Mike explained to her clearly uninterested brother.
"Heartbreaking," he muttered, his face stoic and his voice unmoved. "God."
"Yeah. I'd love to show you the hospital we just built," Mike continued excitedly.
Her brother grimaced at the thought. "We're not gonna go to the hospital. I'm a little behind on my Malaria pills, but..."
"Malaria's not an issue in this part."
"I'll be the judge of that."
"You are such an asshole," Eden remarked, shaking her head at her brother's 'generous' social media stunt. She knew he didn't care about her foundation or the children here. What he did care about was the publicity he would be getting in return for donating to the charity camp. "Could you at least pretend like you give a shit?"
Her brother shrugged, amused. "Can't, sorry. I'm busy saving lives at the moment with my money so if you wouldn't mind...?"
The girl scowled and stayed silent.
"Here's what we're gonna do, though. Okay, I'm gonna...What's your name again?" The man asked, pointing towards his cameraman of three weeks.
"Uh...Oliver?"
"Oliver. Oliver here is gonna take a picture of us right there, and then I am going to take some shots of some kids, hopefully not too sick, nothing too depressing, no amputees. Then I'm gonna carry some...you know, water jugs around, and then I'm gonna cut your foundation a giant check," her brother smirked. Eden rolled her eyes in disappointment. She had brought him to Turgistan to show him that there were people in need that he could help. Not just use to boost his social status. She was trying to stir some form of empathy within a heart grown icy over years of wealth and isolation. "Okay, what's your name again?"
"Mike," the leader of the foundation and Eden answered simultaneously.
"Yeah, okay. Thank you, Mike."
With that, he patted the man's shoulders and headed towards the medical tents, carrying two jugs of water as he did so. Oliver followed, snapping as many pictures as he could. Eden watched the two with her arms folded, sighing.
"Your brother's kind of a...-" Mike began, hesitating.
"...A total fucking dick-splash?" Eden finished.
The man gave her a reluctant frown. "Yeah...whatever that means."
The girl went back to surveying her brother as Andre strolled over to him, offering to carry a jug.
"Please, let me help you," he smiled and Eden realised that he probably trying to score extra brownie points. Of course, being that it was her brother, she also realised that he would probably destroy any interest that he had in her with a single anecdote. It was kind of his thing to fuck up her life. Especially when it comes to relationships.
"It's balanced. If I dropped one, I'd just walk around in circles," One dismissed but Andre followed him anyway. From then on, the two began to talk. And talk was a dangerous thing. So...doing what any sane person would, Eden begun to speed-walk her ass over to them with a smile that did not at all look as if she was ready to pluck out her brother's eyes.
"I should've been a soccer player," he rambled, spewing massive amounts of bullshit. "I could've gone pro."
"Uh, yeah. If pro meant that you would have only had the slightest chance of winning against the other team if they were a pair of amputees," Eden interrupted, trying to humiliate her brother and subsequently impress Mr. Andre.
Only, in the worst cases of timing ━━━ and I mean, the absolute worst, a young girl wandered over to the man and jumped up on his shoulders, sucking her thumb as she shot a glare in her direction. Of course, this wouldn't have been so bad. That was, if the girl had had both of her arms.
"Daddy, why are you talking to this mean girl?" She asked, eyes narrowing on Eden's.
Eden felt her heart sink at the unfortunate irony. So, if she was any other person, she would have apologised and the situation would have quickly resolved. Only, Eden was not a normal person. And away with her lack of social skills, she tried to lighten the mood with a joke when something escaped her mouth that really shouldn't have, still haunting her to this very day. "So...I'm guessing this is your half daughter? Um, shit, sorry. That is not what I meant. I-...uh...fuck."
Immediately, her brother burst into hysterics. To no surprise, however, Andre shot a horrified expression at the nineteen-year old as his daughter begun to cry. And as the two walked away, Eden wanted nothing more than for the ground to swallow her whole. Her cheeks flushed red and she made a humiliated groan, grudgingly watching him practically scramble to get away from her. Not her finest moment, she'd admit. But she had been raised to use dark humor as an escape route and had apparantly not been taught when to keep her fucking mouth shut.
Her brother, who was now keeled over in a crippling laughing fit, tried to taunt her through entertained breaths. "Oh, my God......that was so-......humiliating. You should have seen your face.....and his......Jesus Christ......his fucking half daughter..."
Eden punched her brother's arm and stormed away, leaving him to roll on the floor in his amusement. She didn't know where she was going but she knew she needed to get away from there. The girl had built up a long fucking list over the years but that...trainwreck right there was a fucking disaster. Up there at the very top. So, without any alcohol (that wasn't for medical uses only), the girl decided to go for her back-up plan. To run away from her problems.
Of course, she couldn't run for too long. I mean, she was on the fucking Turgistan border after all, having zero clue on where she was going. Surrounding them entirely from the West of the site was sand and only sand. And sand was a comfort for Eden during this...trying time of her's. So, she wasn't sure how long she had left for or how far she had fled but by the time the camp was merely a blur, it happened.
That was the moment the bombs struck.
Eden wasn't sure what was happening at first. All she did was watch as several planes flew overhead, swarming the group from the skyline. Whatever it was they wanted, survivors had not been it. When the first bomb dropped, it dropped hard and crashed into the ground a dozen yards away from her. For a moment, she was nothing but perplexed. The girl had even been naïve enough to have thought it had been a spare part, dropping from the machinery above. Of course, that was until it exploded.
The blow had sent her hurtling through the air and crashing down onto the desert ground, slamming her head against the floor. Eden passed out for what she was sure was only minutes. Because as she awakened, it was really a surprise that she was still alive.
Barely.
The first sensation Eden felt was the burning. As she lay on the sheet of what felt like fire, blood trickling from her forehead and sand coating her cheeks, all she felt was that fucking burning. The burning of the sun on her limp body and the burning in her throat from the Sarin gas. The thick cloud of death engulfed her body and as she tried to stand, she felt her figure light aflame. With each breath she inhaled, a scorching knife of fire sliced into her chest. She wanted to scream but she needed the oxygen, the smoke consuming her air.
That's when the realisation hit her.
Thousands of people were in the camp before her. Thousands of children. Her brother, even.
Eden took off in a wobbled line, trying to run on legs that weren't even functioning. Many a time, she stumbled and fell. But the sheer panic within her acted as an adrenaline and she continued, waving her hands and screaming warnings over at the tents. However, when the stinging in her eyes subsided just a little, she realised it was far too late. The girl didn't even know where to turn. Explosions had spread across the camp like wildfire and there was a sweep of toxins invading their system, suffocating them slowly like a silent, extremely deadly mist. All around were children screaming, grown men pushing them out of the way just to escape and what she thought was her brother charging across the camp to hand out gas masks.
Eden fell to the ground once more, her throat closing up. But when she saw the body lying in front of her, the pain stilled almost immediately. Milo Samsari lay in the ground with his body buried into sand and ash and Sarin gas. His eyes were fluttered shut and his face had fallen into a state of tranquillity. At first, it didn't even register that he was dead. In some dream-like optimism, the girl had simply thought he was sleeping. Ever since his disease, he was always sleeping. Only, when she peered a little closer, her ideology of peace seemed to have simply vanished into the pool of blood that escaped his nose. There was no peace in a country like this; ran by a dictator that ordered atrocities like this.
She tried to cry but her body wouldn't allow it. Her throat was far too dry to make a noise and her eyes were too ablaze to contain any moisture. So as she lay on the ground and accepted her fate, the girl reached forward with the last of her strength. Eden's hand slipped into Milo's, his body feeling much warmer than she thought it would have. And together, the two lay there in the sand, falling victims to lethal chemicals. The world around them passed them by, people running and shrieking for their very lives.
Fortunately for Eden, the gas had rendered her temporarily blind. But that didn't exactly matter. The images of children running in a nightmare heat burned into the back of her eyelids and forced her to watch.
By the time her brother found her, Eden was having a seizure and she was most certainly thankful for it. The man she loved slipped a gas mask onto her face and pulled her head towards him, permitting it to convulse against his chest. He wasn't sure he had a heartbeat now as he screamed for a medic. Nobody came. Eden continued to spasm. But whilst her body fell prey to a gas exorcism, her hand never left the boy's beside her.
Her brother stayed like that until it was over, holding Eden with all the love and protection he had left inside of him. If she died in his arms, she would have died hating him. The man's eyes tried to scan a sea of corpses, looking for survivor's to help him. But when he saw the things he saw, he wished he had never gone searching. He became jealous of his sister's unconscious state of mind. The surrounding bombs left a ringing in his ears but he was certain he didn't want to hear anything. Anything at all.
And for the first time in forever, the man was not searching for a way to show off his billions or increase his eminence. He wanted nothing more than to help these people. When he looked down at his sister, that was when he knew. That the good people of the universe, the people that actually gave a shit about helping others, they get royally fucked by a morally-corrupt world. So he decided that he would fuck it back. Hard.
Not literally, of course.
But the man that did this, the general that ordered and will continue to order these harrowing chemical attacks would get fucked so hard he wouldn't be able to walk.
Ever again.
Rovach Alimov was going to burn in hell and they would be the ones to drag him there.
▃▃▃▃ AUTHOR'S NOTE ▃▃▃▃
hiiii, so this was a bit of background on the scene with one and since his name has yet to be revealed and he wasn't one just yet, you can tell I was struggling for different pronouns to describe him by the way I call him 'her brother' and 'the man' like 700 times lmao. (and just in case you forgot from the beginning chapter, even though you probably all got it because it was kinda obvious, eden is zero before the whole dying thing).
also,,, this book just hit 5k so I'm currently screaming sjsnsjsnsk,,, thank you all so much !!!! ILYASM !! 💓
anyways, this chapter is dedicated to tytythecreator for always supporting this book and being an overall amazing person and writer,,,(you should definitely check out her books) ily!!! <3
well, I hope you enjoyed this chapter !!