Authors: Shannen Crane Camp
Chapter 27
: Reality
Brynn had known she was coming. It was almost comical to see her standing there in all of her terrifying glory.
“You’re so predictable,” she mumbled under her breath, not in the mood for their little back and forth.
“If you’re going to kill me you might as well get it over with,” Brynn told her, getting to her feet and trying to be brave.
Maybe this was how Rachel had done it. If she had been resigned to her fate and knew she had
nothing left to live for, it would almost be easy to face it.
But there was
one difference.
Brynn did have something to live for.
She had Ty. She had Jonah that she needed to rescue. And she had friends who were counting on her. And that was the most dangerous thing of all, because a person with something to live for was a person who could be broken. Not through any harm caused to them, but through the harm caused to their friends.
And that was why Bry
nn was shocked to hear Ty’s voice say, “What are you talking about?” even as she looked at Eris.
She knew Eris was standing in front of her. She would know the Angel anywhere.
And yet, somehow, she could hear Ty as Eris spoke to her.
“Brynn,” he said as Eris took a step towards her.
Brynn had been prepared to face Eris. She knew what the woman would do to her and she had come to terms with her fate. What she wasn’t prepared for was trying to decipher any possible scenario where Ty’s voice could come out of Eris’s body.
She took a step back as Eris took a step towards her.
“Brynn, it’s me,” Ty said with Eris’s sharp purple eyes blinking in confusion.
“Stop it!” Brynn yelled, moving away from the woman yet again. “You already have me, why are you doing this?” she asked.
“Brynn, I’m not going to hurt you,” Ty said as Eris’s hand reached out to grab her.
Instinctively Brynn lashed out, striking Eris across the face as hard as she could. The woman instantly brought a hand up to her cheek
, looking shocked.
“Brynn
, what have they done to you?” the Angel asked, still sounding like Ty.
Eris walked swiftly towards Brynn
again, trying to grab her wrist. Brynn hit the hand away and backed up until she was trapped against the wall.
“Leave me alone,” she screamed, scratching the face in front of her and leaving four long red lines on the paper white cheek she had struck.
The walls shifted, just like they always did in her dreams and Brynn suddenly felt dizzy, falling to the floor and grasping her head.
The lights went out before igniting once more and that was when Brynn saw him.
Ty was on his knees in front of her, clutching his cheek that was now bleeding profusely and backing away from Brynn.
“What did they do to you?” he asked again, fear in his eyes now.
“Brynn, can’t you see me?” he pleaded.
Brynn want
ed to run to him. She wanted to apologize and stop the blood seeping from his cheek, but she still didn’t trust what she was seeing.
Somehow Eris had gotten her to see something that wasn’t real. What if that’s what was happening
still? How could she trust anything she saw?
“Brynn?” Ty repeated. “I knew you were going to try
to find Jonah so I followed you,” he explained. “Right back to the room I saved you in before.”
“Ty,” Brynn said in a rough voice, feeling that even if she couldn’t trust her eyes, she knew that it was her friend.
She crawled over to him quickly and brought her hand up to his bloody cheek.
“I’m so sorry,” she said over and over, tears
threatening to escape as a realization dawned on her: she wasn’t alone anymore. And that meant she had to get out.
She was fine with sacrificing herself
, but Ty was a whole different story.
“We need to get out of here Ty. I can’t let them take you,” she insisted.
But she was too late.
The door was already opening and a Worker stepped out.
“No!” Brynn yelled, trying to pull Ty away from the too graceful woman.
Ty, however, thought Brynn was the one who needed protecting. He put his arm in front of her, shielding her from whatever the Worker might do.
It only took a few seconds for Eris to appear next on the elevator. She had apparently sent her minion ahead of her to take care of Ty.
“Brynn
, I’m so happy you’re back,” Eris said with a smile that actually looked sincere. “Eve, will you please bring our little friend over here?”
Brynn instinctively backed up, pushing away from the woman with her palms. But it wasn’t Brynn they were after. The woman grabbed Ty
and forced him to his feet, practically dragging him over to Eris with his arm twisted painfully behind his back.
“He’s a handsome one Brynn,” Eris said, taking Ty’s jaw between her thumb
and middle finger and turning his head from side to side.
He stared at her with more hate in his eyes than Brynn thought humanly possibl
e, though he didn’t say anything.
Maybe that had been Rachel’s trick; hating Eris so much that she couldn’t
bear to speak to her.
“Oh no,” Eris said with mock
concern in her deep rich voice. “Look at what you’ve done to his beautiful face.”
She turned his head to the side to show Brynn the place where she had clawed him. The bleeding had stopped though his cheek was
moist with thick red blood.
“Poor boy,” she said softly, kissing his cheek and staining her lips
crimson.
“Get away from him,” Brynn
growled, her anger flaring up inside of her.
She got to her feet and charged at Eris. She knew she was no match for her but that didn’t stop her from trying to knock the woman off balance like she had before.
Eris was faster this time, however, and she effortlessly grabbed Brynn by the throat and forced her back down onto the ground.
“You stay put. I’m not done with you yet,” she whispered, her eyes taking on that terrifying look she possessed when she really got angry.
She pushed Brynn across the floor until she skidded to a stop by the wall.
“What should we do with this one?” the other Worker asked, turning Eris’s attention from Brynn for a moment.
She wiped the blood from her lips on her lab coat,
turning the arm red.
“What would you like me to do with him
, Brynn?” she asked.
A slow grin crept onto her features as she walked behind him
, placing one hand under his chin and the other at the top of his head on the opposite side.
Brynn
’s stomach sank as she realized what Eris was preparing to do. Her whole body went numb as she watched helplessly, knowing that if she made a move towards Ty, Eris would break his neck like a twig.
“Do you know how easy it would be?” Eris whispered, her lips brushing Ty’s ear as he closed his eyes, accepting his fate Brynn thought.
She let her purple eyes flicker up to Brynn as her smile continued to grow. “Or maybe I can find a better use for you,” she said, never moving her hands from their lethal positioning. “I don’t think Brynn will tell me anything if I torture her. What do you think, Ty?”
“Don’t touch her,” he said darkly, opening his eyes and staring straight ahead at Brynn.
“I was thinking the exact same thing,” Eris said, slowly removing her hands from Ty’s head. “I think that’s where my big mistake was with Rachel. She didn’t really care about herself much. Humans are so silly that way.”
“Brynn,” Ty said in a shaky voice, his expression pained, not because he knew what would be happening to him, but because he knew what might happen to her.
“Let me guess?” Eris said, widening her violet eyes at the pair. “You love her?” she mocked. “Well that’s exactly why I need you around Ty. You see, Brynn cares about your well-being more than her own. I should have seen it a while ago but I missed it somehow. I guess that’s the
only
problem with not being human. I don’t have all of those pesky emotions to get in the way.”
“Eris
, please,” Brynn pleaded, knowing she had made a huge mistake the second she’d spoken.
Confirming to Eris that she cared about Ty only put him in more danger.
“Fantastic,” Eris said in a slow deep voice, grinning again like the happiest person in the world as her hand flashed through the air and landed on Ty’s arm with a deep, resonating crack.
He screamed out in pain and fell to the ground, clutching his limp arm to his chest.
“Stop!” Brynn screamed as she scrambled over to him, crawling on her hands and knees to get to her friend.
Eris stepped in front of her before she could reach him, pulling Brynn up by her hair and walking her over to the bed.
“Sit,” she commanded her, and Brynn did as she was told, not wanting Ty to get hurt anymore.
Tears were no
w silently spilling down her pale cheeks as she watched her friend writhe in agony on the soft floor. He groaned softly and kept his eyes firmly shut against the pain.
“You can take him away now,” Er
is said, sounding almost bored.
“Please don’t kill him,” Brynn begged
as Ty was pulled out of the room.
Eris already knew that she cared about Ty so she figured th
ere was no point in hiding it. She had to find a way to save him, even if that meant giving Eris every bit of information she knew.
“Killing him means I lose power over you,” Eris said reasonably, forcing Brynn to
lie on the bed. “Give me your arm, darling,” she asked sweetly.
Brynn tried to imagine how Rachel would have behaved in this situation. Would she attack Eris to try to escape, even knowing it meant Maxwell might die? Or would she do anything the woman asked in order to save him?
Deciding on the latter Brynn held out her arm and Eris stuck a needle connected to a long plastic tube into it.
“Do you see how much easier everything is when you cooperate?” she asked her, still smiling that manic smile.
Brynn instantly felt foggy as a warm sensation swept over her body. Eris leaned over and stroked her hair gently. Almost maternally.
“I’ve been conducting a few
experiments of my own you know,” she said like a girl telling her friends about a boy she’d just met. “I’ve learned to navigate your mind quite effectively.”
“What do you mean?” Brynn asked, though her speech was slurred a
nd almost impossible to understand.
“Ever since our last meeting in this room
, I’ve been mapping that interesting brain of yours. My little experiment with Ty a minute ago was actually quite enjoyable to watch if I’m being quite honest with you,” she said, still sounding much too happy. “Imagine, being able to turn you against him so easily just because you thought he looked like me.”
“How did you do that?” Brynn asked, or at least she thought she did.
Eris must have understood the intent behind her mumbling though because she smiled down at her.
“Brynn you’re always such a pleasure to work with
,” she said, still stroking her hair softly as Brynn’s eyelids grew heavier and heavier.
“Where’s Jonah?” she asked.
Eris laughed her deep, throaty laugh.
“I’m just stockpiling your boyfriends
, aren’t I?” she said with glee. “I think it’ll make you so much easier to control, watching them suffer. Though I can’t pretend there’s nothing in it for me. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.”
“Please,” Brynn managed to say, her voice almost inaudible.
“Don’t worry Brynn. I’ll keep them alive and well for you,” she promised. “Well… I’ll keep them alive at least”
Chapter 28
: Fog
Brynn couldn’t be sure how long she was in the white room. Time seemed to come and go without her notice and after a while, Brynn couldn’t tell if she were living out one of Rachel’s memories in her nightmares, or if she had actually woken up and was still stuck in the room.
The plastic tubing in her arm felt cold and foreign
, though her body was so heavy that she couldn’t move to pull it out. Eris hadn’t bothered putting Brynn in the white hospital clothes she had expected to find herself in. Instead she remained in something resembling a white version of her default outfit.
Every so often
, Brynn would become aware of a Worker in her room, adjusting the clear, liquid filled bag connected to the tube in her arm, or forcefully opening Brynn’s eyelids to check her pupil dilation. She couldn’t help but think that for someone who hated her so much, Eris went through an awful lot of trouble to make sure Brynn was all right.
She knew it couldn’t just be Eris’s desire for knowledge that fueled her hate towards Brynn. It was something deeper. Yes, Rachel had somehow sabotaged Eris’s plans and that was enough for the woman to dedicate her life to getting answers from Brynn; but there was something else to it. Something that had to do with Eris’s pride.
Rachel had been the first person to ever outsmart her and get away with it and the Angel couldn’t live with that. Her hate for Brynn was a more deep-seated one. She hated the very idea of someone who could possibly ruin her programming and because of Rachel, Brynn was left behind for Eris to ‘correct’. The woman wouldn’t stop until she had gotten the information from Brynn, more to save her own pride than to save her actual purpose in life.
Being locked in the room and unable to move was reminiscent of Brynn’s constant nightmares on so many levels, the most torturing, however, was the fact that she was forced to lie motionless and imagine what was happening to her friends. She had left the group in an attempt to save Jonah and all she had done was trap Ty and herself. No matter what she tried to do
, it seemed like Brynn only ever made things worse.
At least two good things had come from her visit to A1
, she thought. They had managed to install the bug to stop the gas manufacturing wing, and Brynn was certain Jonah wasn’t working for Eris.
Brynn knew that Eris wouldn’t miss a chance to rub a
revelation like that in her face. If Jonah really had been working with Eris she would love nothing more than to point out her sad, misguided attempt to connect with someone who would ultimately betray her.
Instead, Eris had threatened to hurt Jonah to get to Brynn. This had to mean that Jonah didn’t work for her.
As if the very thought of the awful woman were enough to conjure her into existence, Eris was suddenly at Brynn’s side, sitting on the bed and looking down at her. She couldn’t be sure how long Eris had been there since her dreams and wakefulness seemed to be indiscernible at the moment.
“Where are they?” Brynn asked, her throat feeling like she’d swallowed a mouthful of sand and her lips dry.
“Don’t worry about them, dear,” Eris stated simply. “I’m just making sure they don’t have any information I need before… well, making them useful.”
“Jonah?” she asked, hoping her short, weak
sentences were enough for Eris to understand.
“
Him?” Eris answered with a shake of her head. “He’s hasn’t been much good to us for a long time,” she finished, leaving Brynn to wonder exactly what that meant.
Had Jonah worked for them before but decided to leave their service? Had they kicked him out?
In a perfect world, Brynn imagined that Jonah had been working for Eris when she’d met him, but had decided to leave after getting to know Brynn.
She tried to quickly remind herself how farfetched that particular scenario was though.
“I’m afraid I may have gone a bit too far with that little Maxwell stunt,” Eris said out of the blue, not really sounding sorry despite her words. Brynn could only imagine that by ‘stunt’ she meant killing him and forcing Rachel to find his body. “You remember Maxwell, right?” she asked, raising a pale white eyebrow at Brynn quizzically.
Brynn tried to nod her head but found that the task was simply too monumental, so instead she settled for blinking up at the Angel.
“I’ve seen your dreams about him,” Eris said cryptically, launching another deluge of questions in Brynn’s mind. Apparently questions were the only thing she’d ever be getting out of her conversations with Eris. “I thought I’d have a little fun with Rachel when I shoved her into that freezer,” Eris went on. “But I’m afraid I might have broken her.”
Brynn closed her eyes, wishing she had the strength to cover her ears and block out the terrible things Eris was saying.
“Do you know, when I tortured her she didn’t even scream?” Eris asked, her eyes now taking on a wickedly happy quality. “I could break her bones, cut her open, burn her skin, and nothing. She didn’t utter so much as one sound.”
Eris almost sounded impressed by this
revelation that turned Brynn’s stomach.
“At first I thought she was trying to be brave. Stoic.” Eris brought her cold fingers to Brynn’s forehead to brush a few stray hairs away. “She’d just lay there with this smug look on her face and I’d think to myself, ‘finally I’ve found someone worthy of my time’
. But you know what I’m starting to think?”
Brynn didn’t answer, she couldn’t. So she stayed motionless, twitching her fingers and trying to regain feeling in her limbs so that she could strike out at the woman she hated so much.
“I think I broke her long before I meant to,” she finished darkly. “And
that’s
why I’m afraid the Maxwell stunt was a bit too tasteless. You see, if I’d kept Maxwell alive and just tortured him in front of Rachel until she spoke, I think things would have turned out much better for all of us. I was just too anxious to have some fun.”
A small whimper escaped Brynn’s lips as she continued to flex her fingers, feeling her control slowly returning to her body. She glanced down for a brief second to see Eris sitting on the tube that connected to her arm. She was unwittingly stopping the drug from entering Brynn’s system.
I have to keep her talking
, Brynn thought, hoping that if Eris stayed there long enough, Brynn would regain full control over her body and use the pinch on Eris again.
She could feel the cold metal ball still in her pocket. Because Eris hadn’t bothered changing Brynn’s clothes, she hadn’t found the device.
“Jonah’s an A.I.?” Brynn managed to ask, unable to think of anything else that might keep Eris there, sitting on the tube and unwittingly giving Brynn her strength back.
“A.I.,” Eris repeated distastefully. She glared down at Brynn in offense. “How dare you call me an A.I.. Tell me Brynn, if my intelligence is so artificial how is it that I’m constantly able to outsmart someone with biological intelligence?”
Apparently Brynn had hit a nerve without even meaning to. She hadn’t ever considered what A.I. really stood for and she wondered what Eris would call herself if not an A.I..
A ping resonated through the room suddenly and Eris turned towards the door as if she could hear some announcement that Brynn couldn’t.
“I’m sad to cut our little conversation short,” Eris said regretfully as Brynn turned her wrist from side to side. “But I need to go
attend
to Ty,” she finished, instantly grabbing Brynn’s attention and giving her that same sinking feeling she’d been experiencing so often lately.
“I hope you can be stronger than Rachel and not break when I take your Ty,” she said, before standing and exiting the room without another word, leaving Brynn by herself in the cold, stark facility.
Her arm instantly felt cold again as the drug began seeping into her blood stream once more and it was all Brynn could do to lift her heavy arm up off of the hospital bed and reach for the plastic tubing. She could feel it between her fingers but couldn’t raise her arm close enough to where it actually entered her skin to pull it out.
Pinching the tube as hard as she could and holding her breath, she pulled with all her might. She could feel the plastic slide
under her skin a bit but it didn’t quite come out all the way. Brynn felt her stomach go sour at the feeling of the tubing moving under her skin but tried to swallow those feelings down. She had a job to do.
She pulled once more, this time gritting her teeth against the feeling and was rewarded with the
sensation of liquid spilling from the tube onto her arm. The drug was slowly dripping from the plastic still but it no longer resided in Brynn’s vein. The tape that had kept the tube in place was now hanging off of her arm and she frantically tried to wiggle her fingers and toes to bring the feeling back into them.
The fog that she’d felt in her head almost instantly vanished the second she had pulled the IV out
, and the longer she kept the drug out of her system, the more control she had over her body.
Unfortunately, i
t was only a few minutes before Brynn heard the elevator coming to her room.
Mustering all of the strength she possessed she re
-taped the IV so that the medicine would drip behind her back onto the bed, but still look like it was attached to her arm. She pulled the pinch from her pocket and held it in her left hand which lay hidden under the blanket.
As the elevator door opened
, Brynn closed her eyes and slowed her breathing, hoping she seemed like she was asleep as the Worker approached her.
The Worker, a man this time, stood over her, studying her face with his intelligent purple eyes. Brynn was disappointed that it wouldn’t be Eris she’d use the pinch on but she’d take what she could get.
His cold fingers ran over the tape on her arm as if he suspected something might be off. He checked the bag, beginning to look worried and Brynn knew: it was now or never.
Pushing the small red button on the pinch she heard the same high
-pitched beep she’d heard right before her world was turned upside down by the revelation that Jonah was an A.I.. The Worker was still staring down at her though now his eyes were unblinking and Brynn knew he was frozen.
She said a silent thank you to Hadlock and Rusty for inventing the wonderful device that had saved her life on two occasions now as she searched the Worker for keys or anything else she might need to get out of the room and into the facility.
Brynn located a small card on the man’s belt and quickly took it, running to the elevator door on unsteady legs. Her right foot dragged across the soft white floor as she tried to get the feeling back into her legs, hoping they wouldn’t slow her down too much.
The card she’d stolen from the Worker opened the elevator door
instantly and she stepped inside, pushing a button to the floor right below hers and hoping it’d be where Ty and Jonah were kept.
When the doors opened to reveal a long white hallway
, Brynn silently cursed her bad luck. She hadn’t really expected to simply find Ty and Jonah right away by pushing a button at random, but that hadn’t stopped her from getting her hopes up.
There were no Workers to be found down the hallway and Brynn half ran, half limped through the white space until she realized that it actually looked familiar to her.
She had been there before and that meant, she knew the way out.
That brought Brynn to a decision she wasn’t sure she was ready to make. Did she get herself out of the facility alone in order to bring in the full force of The Alliance to try to save Ty and Jonah? Or did she stay behind and find them herself.
One thing was certain: if she left now, she was almost positive that Eris would kill both boys purely to spite her.