14. Rhett
Ana is performing tonight, and Alistair is making me watch. She’s an absolute spectacle without having to do a thing. Her full-length black dress exposes one glorious leg with every movement, and I’m hypnotized the moment she comes on screen.
I stand from my lax position on the mattress, compelled to her as if she’s within reach. Her red hair is curled and braided away from her face to show off her perfect sculpture. Those hazel eyes bore right into the camera that closes in on her, and it’s as if I could just reach out ... just touch her once ...
The static hum of the TV against my fingers is a worse lashing than the leather that scored my flesh last week.
She begins to play, and I’m slammed, utterly broken, to hear the song she played on Christmas Eve last year. Is it a coincidence? No—it can’t be. She could have chosen any song. In my misery I choose to grapple with the small dose of warmth that she’s playing this song for us. For me. Even if she’s moving on, she hasn’t forgotten.
I know this is why she never wears color anymore. At first I thought that a coincidence too, but now I’m certain it’s deliberate. She believes I’m dead, and she’s still mourning.
Oh, little bird, don’t cage yourself for me.
She was so free and light, and I never should have infiltrated her life and let her care for me so much that it’s affecting her even after this much time.
When her song finishes she looks around, so sad and lost, only for a second before she fixes on a mask for the crowd. I’m torn to fucking shreds.
The TV starts glitching, and I assume they’re about to cut the feed, leave me here in silence and solitude as my mental torture. I start to turn away, but a flicker in the corner catches my attention. It skips my pulse.
What the fuck?
A serpent head snakes across the screen. I’ve seen this animation before. I blink hard several times, believing wholeheartedly this is some delusion I’m conjuring in my delirium.
He’s truly breaking me. I’m losing it.
I watch as the serpent crosses into the infinity symbol. Xoid’s symbol.
The picture is still changing between this and Ana. This and Ana. When she smiles, it’s as if my whole world erupts, and I know it’s not a trick. Not an illusion.
What I haven’t seen before is the addition of a little bird that stops at the serpent’s head.
What are you up to, Anastasia?
Have Xoid found her? But why the message, unless they know ...
They know I’m alive. Or at least they believe it enough to hope I’ll see this. I stumble back as the screen turns fully black, and nothing comes back on.
I brace my hands on the back wall, replaying her performance. The sign. Every small flicker. I’m shaking with dread and terror and euphoria. I don’t want Ana involved any more than she already is. If Alistair finds out she had anything to do with that display ... I can’t fathom what he’ll do to her, and I want to explode with the rage in me.
It’s been too long. They’ve won for too long, and I have to get the fuck out of here. There may be little of me left by the time I do, but I want to lay those last pieces of me at Ana’s feet, or use them to destroy every last evil who ever set their sights on my little bird.
The door groaning open doesn’t evoke anything in me anymore. I don’t anticipate what they’ll try to do to me. I just become hollow and brace for the worst.
“My favorite time of the week,” Micah sings chillingly.
I’ve met his kind before—the truly sick in the head kind—but this is the longest I’ve had to tolerate one at their mercy.
I’m led down the same path as the last, so I know what’s coming. After Alistair’s visit, I know he’s pivoting on what he’s conditioning me for. Trying to break me for.
Sure enough, when we enter the same room Jack was in last, there’s another kid in his place. The same age, around seventeen, and my fear is that they’ll keep getting younger. Forthson’s brother is only twelve.
Of course, Alistair has many in his service that would carry out the task of assassinating a child. Sadistic, evil fucks. But he wants it to be me. He knows it’s the worst thing he could make me do.
Micah wanders over to me, dark eyes sparking with amusement. He holds the same revolver.
“I know each time I give you this you’re going to wonder if there’s a bullet inside. If you knew, I’m certain you would try aim for me, and that makes this so thrilling. You can take the chance. Let me warn you though. If you pull that trigger on me and it’s empty, the missing bullet will end up in Ana. We won’t kill her, of course—that would be such a waste. But I wonder how many shots she can take to that perfect body of hers.”
I’ve been forced into a twisted version of Russian fucking roulette.
If there’s a bullet and I choose wrong, aim for the kid, I’ll kill an innocent. I’ve done a lot of heinous things in my life, but this would be irredeemable. I wouldn’t know how to live with myself.
If there isn’t a bullet and I choose wrong, aim for Micah, he’ll hurt Ana.
He places the gun in my hand, and it feels exactly like the last time. I need to shoot the full round before he’ll let me go, and it’s near impossible to tell the added weight of a single bullet.
The kid is blond this time. With blue eyes. It’s almost like looking in a damn mirror, and I can’t allow myself to feel this personally. I have to turn my heart to ice and my mind to steel. Each time I face this, the chances of a bullet being loaded are higher.
“His name is?—”
I lift and pull the trigger before I can hear the name. I round off again. And again. And again. Each time the click pounds in my chest and slicks my skin. I’m braced for the impact to change. Again. Again. And ...
The final round clicks.
My next breath shudders out of me, and I throw the fucking gun at the wall as the kid cries hysterically, muffled by his gag. He pisses his pants too, and I can’t blame him. I don’t know if they’ll meet death anyway beyond my test here.
This is the most cruel and villainous form of torture Alistair could have forced upon me, and I can hardly clamp my fists tight enough to stifle my tremors of fury.
“Your dedication is impressive,” Micah comments.
I have to fucking hit something, and before I can care about what the repercussions will be, I’ve spun around. The guy behind me is near double my build, but he goes down at the impact of my fist on his face. I don’t register anything else but my feral blind attack on this man. I land punch after punch, and he’s too bloodied and disoriented to fight back. They let me take my rage out on him as no one comes to haul me off. I’m certain they’ll let me kill him, and in the heat of this release I’m not certain I won’t when this guy works for Alistair and I know no mercy for that fact. Until a spark of defiance in my mind reminds me this is what Lanshall wants. The blood, rage, and savagery. The killer. The monster. The person who will do the worst for him.
Pushing up, my breaths heave out of me, and I don’t recognize myself right now. I want to claw myself free from my own mind and body, but it’s the one place I can never escape.
My eyes catch on the gun.
There would be one way.
One bullet.
The thought creeps up from the depths of my mind like a dark old friend. The next time I hold a gun with the chance of a bullet inside, there won’t just be two choices. There’ll be three.
Micah, the kid ... or me.