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“What is it?” I grimace.
“Let’s call it a safety precaution. If you behave, I’ll enlighten you later.”
The chemical settles into my bloodstream, feeling cold and unnatural as it travels to my brain.
“This one, on the other hand, is the new Mind Phantom. I’ve added a twist to help your conditioning set in a little faster.” He injects me again, this time, on the other side of my neck. I flinch at the way this one scalds like flesh-eating acid as it invades my body.
It happens fast. The quick ink that blots through my vision. The shouting of Warrose. The cruel, narrowing of Masten’s eyes.
And I’ve been sucked into something I can’t climb out of.
I’m back in Kane’s childhood home, swinging the sickle into Sophia’s chest.
45. The Call Of The Void
Skylenna
“I want to die,” Ruth mutters as she spits more bile from her mouth.
Marilynn ties Ruth’s thick curls back into a braid so they don’t get clumped with any vomit. Her pain level is so high that it’s affecting her stomach. Nausea, diarrhea, migraines, body aches. We’ve all felt helpless while taking care of her. Watching her suffer is bearing witness to my heart being cut into tiny pieces, then set on fire.
After one final dry heave, Ruth slumps back down, letting us wash her half-naked body. She smells like captivity. Like dried blood, bile, sweat, and terminal illness. We thought that by cleaning her up, it might help her feel a little better.
But in fact, nothing can make her feel better.
She’s depressed. Every time Ruth looks down, she sees the empty space where her legs once existed. And it only takes her a moment to process, but she ends up sobbing quietly into her hands for an hour.
“The boys should be coming back any moment,” Marilynn says, trying to make her voice sound hopeful, even though the action is obviously foreign to her.
And that’s the sad truth of this. Our hope has been waning significantly. Everything everywhere looks so grim. It’s the feeling all living, breathing beings in captivity feel, isn’t it? A complete loss of hope. Our world turns a shade of black, cold, and empty.
But no matter what, we do our best not to let Ruth see that.
“I want to die,” Ruth repeats in a withdrawn voice. She has this dead look in her chestnut eyes, as if her soul is retreating far away, not bothering to give this body a second glance.
My hands tremble at the reminder of Scarlett. In a way, she looks like her at this moment. That same expression Scarlett wore when I left her to gather blueberries.
I won’t bury another friend. I won’t lose any more family. Stumbling toward her, I place my cold hands on her cheeks. They’re hollow, ghostly without that radiant olive tone she usually wears so beautifully.
“Should I take you away for a while?” I ask.
“I guess.” No emotion. No care for anything at all.
My bottom lip sticks out involuntarily, a natural impulse as tears gather in my eyes.
It only takes a few moments to lure her back to Ambrose Oasis. And only a few more to return to Marilynn, who watches me with exhaustion hanging over her soft features.
“We’re in hell, aren’t we?” I ask her.
She nods. “The ninth circle. Right in the thick of it.”
As we watch Ruth breathing shallowly, I try to count back in my head. The minutes, maybe hours, of how long the boys have been gone.
“Shouldn’t they be back by now?” I look at Marilynn with suspicion pinching my brows.
“Right? What else could they be doing?”
I turn my head down the hallway, waiting to see if I hear their voice or footsteps. They were only supposed to be gone for twenty, maybe thirty minutes or so. It feels like it’s been a couple hours.
