Taylor’s face briefly registers surprise, but those big, tormented eyes spell relief as tears stream down her face. “Thank you.”
“Now,” Theia orders.
A soldier pelts me in the spine with the butt of their gun, knocking the wind out of me as I hit the ground. When I getback up to my knees, Taylor is half escorted, half dragged to the helicopter. Hunter stands over me with her rifle aimed at my head and watches as Theia boards after Taylor. Once secured into her seat, Taylor’s head hangs between her knees, sobs shaking her frame.
Theia looks between the two of us, and then nods to Hunter. “Kill her.”
Taylor lets out a heart-wrenching screech and struggles against her restraints. She breaks free and stumbles out of the helicopter, then falls to the ground with both hands tied behind her. Theia steps out with an unearthly calm, then stomps Taylor on the back to keep her flat.
“Please, don’t,” Taylor begs, rising slowly to her knees. “Don’t. I’ll do whatever you want. I—I’ll be good, I promise. Don’t kill her. I’ll do anything.”
“I see your loyalties live with this Piccolo scum,” she snarls. “And so, they shall die with her as well.”
“Hunter, please,” Taylor beseeches her as Theia takes Taylor by the back of the shirt and smashes her into the ground. It doesn’t stop her. She looks up. “Kill me instead. Please, please, kill me instead. Don’t make me live without her.”
Theia withdraws a syringe from within her jacket and plunges it into Taylor’s neck. Taylor slumps almost immediately, but she tries to fight whatever chemical is yanking her into unconsciousness.
That’s my girl, always a fighter.
Hunter looks between us with rimmed-red eyes, then up to Theia. “But you said?—”
“Hunter.” Theia’s voice conveys both surprise and finality. “Kill. Her.”
Hunter smacks the rifle into my skull and sends me sprawling backward. My vision and hearing are muffled andmuted, as if I’m submerged underwater. Drowned. Blood trickles into my eyes. It’s warm. Darkness vignettes my vision.
A voice sounds over the ringing in my ears. “She’ll never forgive me.”
Click.
Bang.
TAYLOR
Five Months Later
19
Iam not insane.
For the sake of honesty, I may exhibit acute signs of madness. But I am not insane. This is an important distinction to make.
Our wondrous brain, with its complex processes and synapses, wilts under long durations of isolation. Like the muscles of the body, it requires exercise to stay useful and fit. I do what I can to run rudimentary equations in my mind, but I have no one to corroborate the accuracy of my solutions to the imagined mathematics.
An urge to self-terminate comes and goes. No real effort has been made to keep me from suicide; the metal slats screwed into the windows to prevent escape are cautionary. Plenty of glass, utensils, fabric for rope. I could even drown myself in the tub or toilet if I grew desperate enough. Though my existence has dwindled to only essences, one of those essences is survival. Not by any cognizant desire of mine, but leftover instinct buried in my DNA. A life-virus that hopes one day to propagate, to replicate. It won’t—there was never a chance for that even before this—but I play a gracious host.
I float in the foam of space-time. Actual time passes in the usual way, a clock next to the bed clicks each minute. It is my sole connection to the orbit of Earth, which evidently goes on perfectly well in my absence. I am a non-factor in the continuation of society.
At least I am not insane. But.
One must permit a flame of madness to prevent the all-consuming fire of insanity.
I read. I read out loud. I read out loud to her.
A seven-foot-tall, ornate bookshelf made of polished white birch holds rows of well-loved books, their pages dog-eared and worn, text underlined and notated in neat blue ink. I read these books aloud in my isolation, as if she’s here listening. Other than these readings, I do not use my voice. No one speaks to me, nor I to them, and I will not scream nor whimper.
So, while it may look like madness to read poetry and fiction aloud to no one, I am not insane. It is not madness to speak into the ether—it is only madness if it speaks back.
At 0700 hours, breakfast arrives in the clenched hands of my guard, Private Frank. She places it on the dressing table without looking at me. The same fare every day—two hard-boiled eggs, three strips of bacon that go untouched, eight cubes of roasted potato, and a tin cup of orange juice. Adequate nutrition is provided at each meal.
