Chapter 19 Cameron
CAMERON
My pulse thunders through my head as I leave the barracks and walk straight past the men standing guard.
They give me a wary once-over but decide I’m not their problem.
I’m used to them all avoiding me as best they can.
They know what I am… I’m glad for it. I prefer the embrace of isolation to their judgment.
“Where are you going, Mori?” Adams mutters from his desk at the edge of the gates.
He’s leaning back in his chair, lowering a notebook and twirling a pen between his fingers boredly.
His eyes drag over me, taking in my disarray.
I’m keenly aware of the black liquid all over my shirt and the blood that stains my lips a bruised purplish-red.
He gruffly looks back down at his notepad.
“Out for a crisis walk, I see. Carry on then.”
I have half a mind to argue with him, but the headache that racks my skull at the moment won’t allow it. I storm past Adams and straight up the ramp back into the world above. It’s quiet now that all the cadets are below ground and sleeping, but the silence brings me no comfort.
She said she cares about me. I smack the side of my head and set a fast pace as I jog toward the forest. She’s lying to try to get me to lower my guard around her, I know it. She’s just like the rest of them.
Just like everyone else I let get too close.
“No one cares about you, Cameron. When will you understand that? Something as dirty and useless as you can never be more than what you are, nothing.” The words echo through my head, but I can’t recall who said them.
The voice sounds like my mother’s, but I’ve heard it from so many people it all blends together in my mind.
She’s going to try and kill me just like my mom did.
She’s biding her time, waiting for the perfect time to catch me off guard.
I know it. I know it.
“Stop!” I shout, clenching my jaw and fisting my hands through my hair.
I break into a sprint. The trees blur as I race through them, trying to outrun my past. To outrun my thoughts. I don’t stop until my lungs are on fire and my body is so stiff that I trip and fall over roots.
The snow cascades around me and makes me still in its hold. It feels like frozen hands reaching up and gripping my arms, legs, and throat. I can’t breathe.
“Cameron, be good for me. Okay?” my mum said.
She held my small hand delicately, gloved.
Like she didn’t want to feel the warmth of my skin on hers.
She took me to an odd building, the interior gray and cold.
The walls were made up of cinder blocks, and old wooden chairs lined the hallway.
The sign read “Intake,” but I didn’t know what it meant.
“Okay, Mum,” I replied softly as I took a seat. She didn’t sit down next to me. She stood anxiously, tapping her foot and checking her watch a few times.
After a while, a woman opened the office door and called her in. My mum looked at me sternly as she muttered, “Don’t move from that spot.” Then she disappeared behind the door.
I waited for a long time. Until the sun crept back beneath the mountains and the snow began to fall again. I knew I should listen and wait, but I had to use the bathroom and decided to stand by the glass doors and watch the snow for a while.
“Cameron, dear,” a woman’s voice called. I turned and looked over my shoulder and found a stranger with a clipboard in her arms.
I didn’t respond. My eyes moved past her and down the hall where I saw a flash of my mum’s purse. I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, and my mum was right there. Fear struck through me, and I walked down the hall toward the woman and my mum, but she walked away. She didn’t look at me.
“Cameron, honey, can you come with me for a moment?” The woman tried talking to me again and attempted to grab my arm when I passed her.
I broke into a run and started screaming. “Mum! Help me!” She didn’t turn to face me. She kept walking toward the exit. Can she not hear me? “Mum? Mum!” I shouted over and over, but she only gripped her purse tighter and shut the door behind her.
The sound of those heavy doors rolled through my being, creating cracks and crevices I’d never fill properly.
I didn’t realize it was a school for bad children when she dropped me off. It took me years to come to terms with the abandonment she put me through. A few more to open up to others again. She’d visit twice a year. Once on my birthday and again during Christmas.
Something hardened inside my heart during my time there.
I had Clara, who was as close to a sister as I could’ve hoped for, but she was five years older than me and left long before I did.
The only things I learned from her were how to drown out the world with depressants and how to braid hair properly.
The beatings and lack of love made me grow cold.
Then came the news of Clara’s death only a few years after her departure.
“People like us don’t live long,” she told me once, and the thought replayed often through my mind.
By the time my mother brought me home, I was already sixteen. Already dead inside.
I didn’t make it easy for people to tell me they loved me or that they even cared about me.
Because I knew how much those words hurt once someone took them back.
How much it shredded my soul when they betrayed their own promises.
I’d run away often, sometimes just to see if my mum would care. She didn’t.
When I turned seventeen, I started to turn things around for myself, started to put my anger into productive things like woodshop class. I even had a scholarship in the States to get my teaching degree.
I wish I’d never worked on that birdhouse. I should’ve let that bitch kill me. Grief was fleeting after I left my mum on the floor of my bedroom with a nail in her head. I didn’t feel bad, and I knew she was right all along.
Something was terribly wrong with me.
It was awfully easy to hide her fate. No one cared for that evil woman, she had no one to report her missing besides me. I already had everything aligned for my departure before she tried to kill me, so it was easy to wait the few days before leaving.
Funny how your darkness seeps into the world around you. Unable to hide it for long before it spills into the things too near. Three years was enough time to bleed into my new surroundings.
A man found me in the mud, beaten and bloody after a fight with some barflies after they stole my shoes. I’d fallen into a nasty spell of partaking in alcohol. It went too well with my medications. Gave me the right kind of buzz.
He sat next to me and didn’t say a word. I wiped the blood from my face and cursed at the pain that flared across my entire body. God, I fucking hated pain. I was so tired of hurting, on the inside and out.
We sat in an awkward silence long enough that it irritated me. “What do you want? I don’t have any money,” I grumbled as I forced myself to my feet, only to wince in agony and fall back to the ground.
The man observed me carefully. His eyes were the dullest I’d ever known, much like mine. “You have nothing to live for, do you? I know a drowned man when I see one,” he whispered, and it sounded like a taunt.
Rage coursed through my blood, and I gripped the collar of his shirt. “There’s nothing keeping me from killing a nosy asshole like you either. Fuck off.” I threw him back and choked on a cry as pain shot up my forearm. Blood oozed from the gash near my wrist.
I was so tired of being in misery.
I wanted it to end.
The man’s brows lifted, an empty smile spreading over his lips.
“Technically, I can’t bring you in unless you’ve done something heinous.
” He reached into his coat and pulled out a silenced pistol.
It was slick black, almost impossible to see in the dark.
DF was engraved on the handle. My brows pinched together, and I met his gaze.
“Are you going to let those drunks get away with what they did to you?” His voice was silk, almost like he wasn’t insinuating for me to kill them, which he definitely was.
My eyes dipped back down to the pistol, hands trembling on my knees.
“Bring me in where?” I asked, distrust evident in my glare.
His expression relaxed. “I can’t tell you unless I decide to take you in. I’ll leave it up to you.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, taking the gun and reveling in the weight it held. “What’s your name?”
He laughed as he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Vance Belerik, but I go by Erik. You won’t find my name anywhere but in an obituary and on some gravestone.” Intrigue fluttered through me, but I gripped the pistol tighter. “Well? What are you going to do?”
It wasn’t even a question for me.
I could’ve told him about my mum and the nail I smashed into her face.
I could’ve peeled back my shirt and showed him the horrid scar on my chest that I’d neglected.
But I’d never had a weapon like this to hurt someone before.
Never had the encouragement to make others pay for their crimes.
Erik followed me as we walked back into the bar.
It was almost empty, save for the four dickheads who beat the shit out of me and the bar owner who backed them.
I killed them all. It was easier than I thought it’d be. The terror in their eyes soothed something deep inside. The monster.
And I felt more alive than I ever had.
My eyes slowly open. I’m met with darkness and the kind of cold that is bone deep, sweat clinging to my skin and threatening to freeze.
The scent of cigarette smoke fills my lungs.
I turn my head to the side and find Lieutenant Erik perched on a rock, casually inhaling a long drag.
It’s his fault I picked up the habit myself.
“What’s got you in flight mode?” he mutters as he exhales. When my eyes narrow at him, trying to figure out how he found me, he lifts a shoulder. “Adams rang me and let me know that you’re having a crisis.” That doesn’t explain why you’re here, in the middle of nowhere.
I let my eyes linger on the treetops and try to feel the pain like I once did so vividly in my memory. It’s odd to miss pain. The lack of it makes you wonder if you’re even truly alive. If it all isn’t just some cloudy dream.
Erik tosses a fresh-lit cigarette onto my chest. I mindlessly pick it up and breathe it in.
“She said she cared about me,” I say quietly. Those words make my stomach twist. The mental image of my mum abandoning me for years just to bring me home and try to kill me will haunt me forever.
Humans are incapable of selfless love. There’s always a transaction in mind, something they want from you. This I know. Everyone in the Dark Forces knows it, so why won’t Emery conform? I grit my teeth.
Erik doesn’t look at me; he simply continues to smoke. Maybe that’s why I feel so comfortable around him. He never seems interested in what I do or how I feel. It’s easier to confess things to those kinds of people.
“What’s so wrong with that? At least you know she’s not going to try to terminate you.” Erik sounds annoyed with me. His hair is swept to the side, dark amid the snow around us. His golden brown eyes study me—they have a similar hue to Emery’s.
How does he know that, though? She’s too innocent and tender around me. I know the real her—the executioner that lives in her veins. I saw it for myself today. I have no doubt she’ll take her shot if the opportunity arises.
“Did you know she’s a Mavestelli?” My tone is low as I watch him, calculating his response.
Erik doesn’t even blink. He takes a deep inhale from his cigarette, blows it out, then sighs. “Yes. It changes nothing.” He flicks the cig into the snow before standing with a stiffened posture.
I match Erik’s irked temper and change the subject. “Why are you out here, Lieutenant? I thought the Fury Squad was gearing up for a mission?” I rub the back of my head to free snow from my hair, but find blood instead. Shit. I wonder how long I’ve been bleeding.
Erik shrugs. “It was a small mission. We’ve already been back for a few days, which is why I tagged along to watch the trials this term.
” He’s been watching? I glower. “We can’t do much without your crazy ass.
Don’t freak out over every little thing with the new squadmate.
Use her like you use everyone else, just don’t kill her.
” He stands and gives me one long, stern look.
“We can’t afford more casualties on the level black missions, and we have a big one coming up, so don’t let me down.
We need you, Mori.” He offers me his hand, and I take it.
Erik pulls me up and pats me on the back once.
“I’m trying, Lieutenant. She’s witty, and I really do like her. I think she’ll be the one to survive me.” My voice is raspy. Something hot runs down my lips and chin. Erik’s eyes flick to my nose before I can wipe the blood away. “I’m fine,” I say. It feels robotic at this point.
Erik walks ahead of me, guiding us back to the bunker. “I wonder how long you will believe that,” he retorts.
I’m already starting to question it, I consider telling him.
Emery has made sure of that.