18. Liar, Killer, Traitor Silene
18
Liar, Killer, Traitor: Silene
S ilence bears down on us as we all observe one another. I have only completely trusted one person since I woke up in this godforsaken house riddled with memories that don’t feel like my own. I have only trusted a singular person and tried to keep her away from anyone that could pose a threat, and yet, we found ourselves woven into a web of lies alongside them anyway.
We find ourselves locked inside with a liar, killer and traitor tied into one. The worst part about it is I know every single one of these men are capable of ending a life just as easily as they are of lying. I know, because I remember what it was like working with them at one point in time. I still feel the aftermath of fists connecting with my body during training and the skin of my own cracking while fighting back. I remember some but not enough.
“How would it have been one of us?” Ronan finally asks, breaking the silence that coils around our bodies like a snake ready to suffocate us until our breath is no longer our own. My green drowns in his deep ocean blue when I look at him and find that he doesn’t look surprised by my statement in the slightest.
Knowing what I want to say isn’t difficult, but knowing how to approach the subject is an entirely different matter. How will each person react? How do I differentiate their truths from their lies?
“It’s time we talked about what we remember and how we got here.” It’s a slow, careful statement as I step away and around the body before ducking through the shattered door and coming face to face with the only one who hadn’t entered the room.
Her back is propped against the wall opposite of the door. Her fingers nervously fidget and twist as we stare at one another.
“How did he die?”
Her question throws me off balance as my second foot touches the ground through the shattered door, and I find myself slightly stumbling. Her wide, autumn eyes are brimming with curiosity as they track every movement.
“How did you know?” I question as we both fall into a silent cadence of footfalls away from the others who have yet to follow me through. I suppose that’s a good thing though, as I’m reeling from the fact that someone has died in this house while we’ve been occupying it. It feels like my thoughts are in a free fall of curiosities and secrets that I may never have the fortune of knowing.
“The stench of metallic death was heavy—enough to know I didn’t want to be in there. I presume the smell will linger everywhere we go now that there are two bodies,” she says, following a soft, thoughtful hum.
Something about the way she says it feels as if she’s becoming desensitized to what is happening around us. As if the fear has molded itself to her soul long enough that death is still an inevitability she knows exists, but it doesn’t make her uncomfortable anymore. It’s the nature of the beast, some would say, but I don’t like the change in her. I don’t like how I’ve told myself she would live, but something that is a core part of her identity feels as if it has been ripped away to make room for the very thing that makes everyone else here the same.
I never wished for her to be like me.
“He was shot. Recently.”
“Oh.”
“Do you remember anything?” I ask as we navigate the dark hallway. “Because all of us are about to have that conversation, and you need to be ready to be questioned pretty heavily. If you remember anything that could help us figure things out, that would be—”
“I don’t. At least, nothing that would be helpful to you.” Her voice shakes a little as she grabs onto my arm and pulls me to the side. The grip is harder than I would have imagined possible from her, and I wonder what she could have remembered that would cause such panic. “Please don’t make me say more than is necessary.”
“I can’t promise anything and you know that, just…just figure out what you’re going to say in front of them. They don’t need to know, but you cannot keep things from me after tonight. I need you to be one hundred percent transparent with me. Is that clear?”
There’s hesitation behind her gaze as it shifts, and I realize that no matter how much I’ve told myself I could trust her, I did so blindly. Can I really? Have I been so stupid as to put my trust into someone after I was explicitly told I shouldn’t? What if she was the one who has betrayed me?
I can’t help but wonder about the possibility. If I were to die by her hands, who could I blame but myself? Or maybe not by her hands, but rather her unintentional doing. Not when I so easily gave her my protection and showed my most vulnerable self to the sad and dreamy soul whose heart I thought matched my own. How stupid is it that I still don’t think she is capable, even at the brink of this realization?
The feel of her grip on my arm eases as she backs away and takes small steps toward the staircase while tears surface and threaten to spill as she frantically shakes her head. Each movement is delicate and swift before she turns her back to me and continues on her own.
I give myself a moment to gather my own thoughts, chancing a backwards glance to find nothing but Nathaniel’s searching gaze, intense and accusatory.
His eyes, already dark, are emphasized in the shadowy unrest that the house casts over his face, making him appear unintentionally menacing. Standing unnaturally still, he doesn’t move when I do. Not until I take a step toward him and he cocks his head to the side. It was a small movement, but it has me faltering, nonetheless. It has me taking back that distance I’d attempted to bridge and instead grabbing the cool railing that presses into the bare skin between my shorts and sports bra. I turn and make quick work of the steps below.
Once I’m downstairs, I shake my arms out as a chill shoots up my spine. The house isn’t necessarily cold, but it feels as if the eeriness surrounding us has drained any remaining warmth left to be found, leaving me with only the frigid sense of awareness.
Carmen sits still on the couch, as far away from everything as possible. Moving to walk to the kitchen, I abruptly stop in my tracks when I almost run into the body in the middle of the living room floor. Just as Ronan had described, his head is nothing but a mess of brain and bone and too much blood.
One thing I wasn’t expecting was to feel safer in the middle of the woods than I do inside the house. But even with an escape route, I feel trapped within these four walls of death and secrets. Like there’s no real way out now that we’re back where we started. These thoughts feel like giving up though, so I decide to check the cabinets for what I might be able to stomach instead. Decide to use food to take my mind off of the matter rather than dwell on the formidable.
Food fixes everything.
Almost everything, at least. But dread continues to settle within me as I grab a package of crackers from the pantry and rip it open. The sound of plastic tearing is almost too loud in the silent house. Though I refuse to care as I shove a few crackers in my mouth and begin pacing.
My thoughts run rampant as I decide what I need to do.
Survive.
Above all else, that has to be the goal, and not just for myself, but for Carmen as well. Regardless of my newfound doubts I have toward her, I made that promise. I intend to keep it.
It doesn’t help that my memories amplify my desire to get her out alive.
But how?
How do I get us out alive when there are three others here watching our every move?
Despite my original thoughts, I’m not so sure this situation is as black and white as I believed it to originally be. Lines seem to have blurred within the past twenty-four hours. The lines that were never supposed to have the chance to, seem to have slowly dissipated into the space around us, leaving nothing separating me from them . Nothing holds me any less responsible than my counterparts for us being here.
I’m hoping that with the talk we’re soon to have, maybe the tides will turn in my favor. There’s a possibility someone will reveal something that will help me understand or piece together what’s been forgotten.
Or maybe we’ll be stuck in this tumultuous cycle of mistrust for a while longer.
The sound of footsteps descending the stairs halts my thoughts, as well as my pacing, and I turn toward the living area where Carmen is seated. She stares at the ground in quiet contemplation, as the sound of thunder slowly fades as the storm travels farther away. Not for even a second does she pull her attention away from what clouds her mind, even as the three men crowd around the couch of the living room.
I expect Ronan to be the first to look my way, or even my shadow who seems to follow everywhere I go, but instead it’s Adonis whose eyes land on me. His cool gaze is full of questions as he holds six folders low at his sides. Each varying in just how much information seems to be contained within, and the idea of answers hidden within the flimsy binds compels me forward.
“What do you have there, big guy?” I question, stepping forward and dipping my chin toward his hands. The three other sets of eyes narrow on me, and Carmen’s tight-lipped smile tells me I might not really like what they have to say.
“Answers,” Adonis grunts out. I reach for the folders, and he raises them up, far out of my reach. “Answers reserved for after our talk,” he says with finality, holding no room for any questions or arguments.
“Have you seen what’s inside?”
He shrugs with indifference, but by the way Ronan and Nathaniel look away, I see the truth that they won’t speak. All three have seen the contents of the folders, yet they are denying us the same courtesy.
“Why don’t we get the same privilege you have so graciously bestowed upon yourselves? Why keep it away from us?” My tone is cold, accusatory, and I know they feel its bitter chill. Carmen looks away from everyone again once the words leave my mouth, and Ronan has the decency to look as if he doesn’t necessarily agree with their actions, but the other two men—Adonis and Nathaniel—seem convinced they are in the right.
“The three of us spent a couple days alone. We saved each other. You ran off the first chance you got…” Nathaniel tries to explain everything, tries to keep the peace, but my temper is rising, and I do not care for such pleasantries at the moment. Not when I’ve done just as much for them as they have done for us.
“I don’t think that’s a good enough reason for us to be kept in the dark,” I spit out, my voice deceptively low, despite how I wish to scream and fight. How dare they deny me the right to know as much about myself as they now know of me?
“We don’t trust you.” If Nathaniel was attempting to be the keeper of peace, Adonis was the chaos that disrupts it. He doesn’t care about pleasantries, and while it’s something I think I would normally be fine with, at the moment it only causes the inferno inside me to burn hotter and hotter, ready to burst and destroy everything around me. This almost feels like an odd change given how silent he has been for the majority of the time spent around him thus far, but if he’s ready to speak and it’s words of trust, then he better be ready for me to talk back.
“You think I trust any of you!? You think I want to after you held a blade to her neck the first chance you got?” I question while jabbing my finger into his hard chest. Carmen inhales sharply, surely thinking I have a death wish, but I don’t care. Who is he to talk about trust when his first action was one against the two of us?
Nathaniel slowly steps between the two of us and cautiously removes my finger from Adonis’ chest, but even without the contact, our gazes remain locked on one another, daring the other to look away first.
But neither of us do.
“We haven’t tried to kill you, but you’ve tried to kill every single one of us, or at least showed that you have no qualms about doing so,” Nathaniel says warily, as if he’s walking directly into a fight between two predators. I take one step back, but keep my gaze narrowed until Adonis chooses to look away.
“If I wanted to kill any of you,” I start, voice low and indifferent, while leveling a murderous glare at every man in the room, “I would have done so already.”
Minutes pass by as the residue of the argument lingers in the air. Silence that no one wants to fill stretches around us. Not a single person wants to counter the statement I had just made—the truth that I had spoken—because I have had every opportunity to kill them if I wanted to. When they had trusted me enough to keep watch while they slept by the fire, I could have easily slit each and every one of their throats while they slept and left their bodies to rot.
But I didn’t. Instead, I kept them alive. I told them about the electrical fence, I helped them get back into the house, I got us into the room, and still they actively question my motives.
They question me .
“Well, you were the one that wanted to ask everyone what they remember. So go ahead and share first. Make us believe you.”
I look to Nathaniel as the words leave his lips and slowly study him. His tone suggests he is still rightly cautious of me after my little display, but his body language says otherwise. His cheeks are slightly flushed, but he appears to be steady with his arms resting at his sides, and his fists are clenched together.
He tracks my gaze and relaxes his hands, shaking each one out. I turn my curious eyes to Ronan, who hasn’t interjected at any point, though I wonder if it’s because he knows I wouldn’t want him to fight my battles for me. When our eyes lock on one another, I find that he was already staring at me.
In his typical fashion, it’s not in a way that diminishes my presence, but one that is always searching. He looks at me as if there’s always something new to learn, and he’s eager to find out what it is—even if it’s something as crazy as violent and murderous tendencies.
“Help them believe, Silene. You don’t have to convince me. I’ll tell you everything you want to know no matter what. But help them see.”
There’s a plea in the way he looks at me as he asks this, one that has me taking a deep breath and shoving past them all to sit next to Carmen. I allow myself a moment to gather my thoughts. No matter how much I hate to admit it, I never would have relented as easily as I did if it weren’t for that damned look on his face. I would have held my ground or started throwing kicks and punches to pry the folders from Adonis’ fingers.
Dead or alive.
“Fine. I have nothing to hide.”
I regard everyone the same as I say it, searching for any changes in body language, but nobody breaks the carefully constructed facades they’ve created. No twitches, no scrunched eyebrows, no change in breathing or shifting weight. Not a single person moves except Adonis whose head tilts, just slightly to the left, as if he knows something I don’t.
Or worse, that he’s already caught me in a lie.