Page 7 of Deadfall

I came back to myself slowly, up through darkness that burned my lungs and left my limbs heavy—dragged by that invisible thread of life that wouldn’t let me go. For a second, I didn’t open my eyes. I sat slumped against the wall and took inventory the way I’d been taught.

Everything seemed intact—no bleeding, although my wrists felt raw with the way the cold iron of the restraints tugged at my aching skin. My fingers were stiff with the chill, and from the lack of blood flow from where they were situated above my head. I was naked. Not ideal, because it was fucking freezing, but also not something I was unfamiliar with. Nudity didn’t bother me, even though it was meant to make me feel vulnerable. The memories I’d swum through in my unconscious state hovered in my mind. That had been the last time I’d seen Octavius.

No one had touched me after that. No masked men had come to the house. And three months later, Vetticus had dragged me in front of my father and everything had changed again.

I inhaled slowly. The air tasted like brine, damp stone and the decay of wood. There was a dull whisper and thud through the walls at my back that must be the ocean, as it relentlessly pounded the foundations somewhere in the inky depths of this place.

I cracked open my eyes and confirmed what I already felt—the darkness was all-consuming. I had no idea where I was. No matter how hard I strained, there was no seeing anything. I took another deep breath and waited until the part of me that remembered how to be afraid got bored and wandered off.

I was too exhausted to panic. None of this was new anyway. A pity party of one had long ago lost its appeal, and I’d much rather have a good long dissociative session on all the ways I was going to kill whoever put me here instead. That was infinitely more satisfying. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a face to envision driving a knife into. Men in black tactical gear and masks had taken me from Quarry, put me on a private jet and knocked me out before we left the runway—the usual—so I wasn’t sure who to direct my vengeance towards or what name I needed to add to my kill list. I wasn’t worried. I’d have one eventually.

I rolled my head back against the frigid stone wall and stared up into darkness I couldn’t penetrate. I sighed and tried not to let my mind wander. For most people, the past was something they thought about with melancholy and maybe some spicy emotions whenever they stumbled on whatever childhood trauma still plagued them. They’d cringe away from it and refuse to touch it, maybe file it away to talk to their therapist about if they were really adventurous, or a masochist—whatever. But, either way, they would put it all back in a neat little box and go back to their matcha lattes and social media highlight reels. If I tried to do that, I’d have so many boxes I’d look like a hoarder.

A hoarder of trauma.

A soft laugh escaped before I could stop it. I didn’t mean to sound unhinged, but it was true.

Maybe I was going crazy. Because, while the past still haunted me, it didn’t scare me. It used to—oh boy, did it fucking used to—but, I’d realized years ago the only way to move forward was to confront what terrified me.

No one was coming to fight my battles. No one was coming to slay my demons.

In the end, the only person I could trust to do those things was myself. So, I did what any insane person would do, I coaxed my demons out of the shadows. They slunk to me with teeth bared and gleaming eyes, and one by one I’d dissected them with their own sharp edges until they were honed into weapons I could use at will.

I smiled again. Sacha would be so proud. Those early days in the forest roared through my mind—I closed my eyes and breathed it all in like I always did when I needed extra strength or resilience.

But, even those memories were tainted with darkness.

Truly, nothing was safe after I was ten years old, and sometimes even those early memories didn’t feel real. Like the times I spent fishing with Dad and swimming with Cole, and letting Mom braid my hair—maybe they were all just fictional things that happened to someone else.

Still, that version of me, that little girl, existed somewhere—before all the screaming, before the smoke and the blood. Before Octavius’ touches, and trauma so deep it felt ingrained into my being. Sometimes I tried to picture her. I wondered if she would recognize me, or if she would look at me with an appalled look on her face and ask, “What did we become?”

I could say a survivor, and it would be true.

I could say a weapon, a daughter, a ghost—something half-feral, and half-forged in the dark.

I could say I learned how to endure because no one came in time to let me become anything else.

All of that would be true, but none of it would be enough because maybe she isn’t the only version of me that got left behind. Maybe there are others, too.

Like, the girl who might have laughed without also calculating exit strategies, and how to make the most efficient kill. Or the girl who might have loved without having to shrink herself to keep the peace. The girl who might have grown up with clean hands and an unbroken heart and no idea how many ways a person could be ruined and still live. I liked to think maybe, in an alternate reality, I was her in all the ways I could have been if Vetticus hadn’t come to the lake house.

Sacha always said, “You don’t remember things the way they happened. You remember the way you survived.”

Maybe that’s why people like to put the past behind them, because survival is messy. But the past doesn’t stay behind you. You carry it with you everywhere—in those damn boxes maybe—and it waits. It learns the shape of you and finds all your cracks.

It becomes you. It is you.

The past broke me, but it rebuilt me too. It showed me my strength, honed my wildness and taught me to rely on no one but myself.

People like to talk about letting go and moving on, but the awful truth is—I don’t know who I would be without it. And maybe that’s the hardest part—not letting go, but integrating—learning to walk in the shadows, but also in the light. Maybe it’s about exploring every scary nook and cranny in between until none of it remains unknown.

Until all of it is seen. Until all of it is known.

And that might be the scariest part of all.

I am every age I have ever been.

All time ever does is pass