Rosabelle 11
Rosabelle
“Rosabelle?”
I hesitate at the sound of my name but I don’t stop walking. I’m conscious of my bloodied mouth, my bruising skin, my swollen eye. I keep my head lowered. I’m moving slow. Each step recoils through my damaged body, like a mallet to my injured face.
I try to take even breaths.
Upon my exit from Sebastian’s room I’d managed to rearrange my long, loose hair around my face like a curtain. I’d nodded a wordless acknowledgment at the soldiers standing guard outside, and this had proven sufficient communication.
Most people don’t expect me to speak.
I didn’t really expect anyone to speak to me.
I’m already halfway down the hall, passing doorways to common areas at the rehab facility.
I made no friends while I was here, and left nothing but destruction in my wake.
Warner assured me that measures had been taken to ensure I would not be obstructed from my purpose, and so far, I’ve encountered no issues.
So far, I’ve been successfully ignoring the familiar rhythms and contours of this place.
The brief life I lived inside these walls.
“—let’s solve to resolve,” calls out a familiar voice, the sounds carrying from the main hall. I have an instant flash of memory: Ian Sanchez, I don’t perform miracles, we’ve got a lot of work to do. I hear him clap his hands together. “We’re going to wind down this session with some I statements—”
I don’t like it here.
I don’t want to be here.
I felt anxious being back in my old room. Now that I’ve managed to pacify Sebastian, the alarm bells of this most pressing emergency have quieted to a dull hum, leaving room in my head to reckon with the reality of where I am and who I was when I first arrived here.
The results fill me with creeping unease.
It was surreal to have been returned to the set piece of so many memories of James; to the scene of so many nightmarish crimes. The people I killed in that room.
The way James used to look at me in that room.
“Excuse me? Miss?”
Leon becoming Klaus, becoming Leon, becoming Klaus, becoming Leon. Klaus promising to kill Clara. Leon eviscerating before me, entrails heaving through the hole in his head.
What are the last three phases of the mission?
Death, destruction, and rebirth.
James rushing into the room in the aftermath. The unspeakable disappointment in his eyes—the betrayal—when he’d found me surrounded by dead bodies, knees sinking softly into the seeping carpet, blood so thick it saturated everything. The way he’d looked at me.
The way it killed me.
They’d ripped out the carpet, of course.
“—a good point, Aya, thank you for sharing. Let’s focus on how it makes you feel to visit the past. Can you complete this sentence: When I think of the past, I feel …”
A spike of anger.
My head is pounding violently. My face is swelling. I feel the pain like heat through a window.
“Wait, Rosabelle, is that you?”
Hesitant footsteps come up behind me, and I try to move faster.
Your father was weak.
Your mother was weak.
Your sister was weak.
You are a disgrace.
“Good,” Ian says in the distance. “That’s good. Let’s keep going. Help me finish this sentence: When I think of the past, I feel angry because …”
Unbidden, I hear Clara screaming.
My heart starts racing. A blade of hunger cuts through my gut and the pain is blinding. I almost stumble, nerves tightening through my limbs. My right arm trembles.
“Rosabelle—”
There’s a tentative touch on my back and I kill the impulse to strike out. I come to a sudden halt, my head down, hands clenching at my sides.
“—fascinating, isn’t it, how fear is often the driving force for many destructive behaviors—”
I have to force myself to relax.
“—fear of being abandoned; fear of being punished; fear of being misunderstood; fear of being unworthy; fear of being unwanted—”
“Stop,” I say sharply.
“What?” says the stranger. “Stop what?”
He’s bent his head in an effort to look at me, and I peer up through the curtain of my hair. The sight of his familiar face is a strange, dislocating relief.
He points to himself. “It’s me,” he says in his thick accent. “Elias. You remember Elias?”
“Yes, I remember,” I say after a beat. I look him over, trying to keep my face averted. My lips feel numb. “You have fungus all over your foot.”
Elias breaks into a brilliant smile; his straight, yellowing teeth gleaming through the scruff of his salt-and-pepper beard. “Yes,” he says, thrilled to be memorable. “Some toenails fell off, so, a little better now, but yes.”
“That’s great,” I say.
Blood is still slick in my mouth, draining down the back of my throat. My face has a heartbeat.
There’s a muted eruption of applause.
“Really great work today, everyone,” Ian is saying. “Don’t forget to journal tonight. Use today’s topic as a guiding principle—”
I don’t know why Elias is smiling at me.
He and Jing and Aya and several others bore witness to the horrors I painted across the walls and floors of this facility.
They’d shoved their way into my room just in time to watch me kill Deepti and Agatha.
Everyone assumes I was the one who killed Leon, too, and I saw no point in correcting them.
“Tomorrow we’ll be diving back into our purpose exercises, so I want you to come prepared—”
“What are you doing here?” says Elias, still beaming at me. “Are you back?”
I nod my head tactically, my hair falling over more of my face.
I repeat what I was instructed to say in the event I encountered anyone familiar: “They released me from prison on a probationary term, but I’m not allowed to join group sessions anymore.
I shouldn’t even be talking to you. In fact, I really have to—”
I cut myself off as a crowd of bodies floods into the hall; class dismissed. I duck my head again, trying to hold myself apart as people surge around me.
My breaths quicken.
I need to get out of here.
I’m supposed to contact Warner for pick up when I’m ready.
He’s secured me a pager, the object unrefined and heavy in my pocket.
The tech is so old and dated I can’t believe it still functions.
In my case, it hardly does. He’s restricted the device so that I’m allowed to communicate with him and no one else.
As if I might use it to contact other agents or mercenaries.
Warner still doesn’t trust me, which is fine.
I don’t trust him, either.
“Jing!” Elias calls out. “Jing, look who’s back!”
I was hoping to find a bathroom and clean myself up before I had to see Warner again, which is why I haven’t contacted him yet.
I don’t want his opinion on my methods of dealing with Sebastian.
I don’t need him to agree or even to understand.
Sebastian is my business, and I’m not in the mood to be lectured.
Warner and I don’t exactly get along.
I have no intention of sharing the full scope of my plans with him, and—
Someone brushes against me and I stifle a shudder. My skin hurts. Everything hurts. I’m using what little strength I have left to hold my remaining pieces together.
There are too many people here.
Too many voices.
“Rosabelle!” Jing shoves his large body through the crowd, barreling into me like we’re old friends. “You’re back!”
When he lifts me off the floor in a crushing hug, I nearly scream.
Pain shatters across my face, wraps around my head, drives down my neck. I cry out softly as he sets me down, fresh blood seeping from my mouth. I trip a little over my own feet, reaching out blindly to stabilize myself, and Elias catches my arms. My hair falls away from my face.
Jing inhales sharply at the sight of me.
“Rosabelle,” cries Elias, his accent suddenly thicker. “What happened to you?”
“N-Nothing,” I say automatically, dull panic suffusing my head. It’s getting harder and harder to speak. The gears in my mind are turning too slowly.
I wasn’t prepared for this.
I didn’t have a plan for this.
“Nothing,” I say for the second time. “I—I have to go—”
“Wait,” Jing says.
He musses my hair again, covering my face, and I stiffen. Half blind, I hear him hiss, “Aya! Aya, get over here—”
Elias is still holding me in place. He gently squeezes my shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he whispers. “Aya can help.”
A frisson of surprise moves down my spine.
I can just make out the approach of another person through the fringe of my hair. “Is that Rosabelle?” says the figure as she moves toward us. “Is she back? Why is her hair like that?”
“We need to get her to your room,” Jing says in a low voice.
Aya goes ramrod straight. “Oh.”
I try to look around at them. I’m trying to understand what’s happening.
Aya draws closer.
She’s a soft-spoken, slender woman with dark features and olive skin; I clock her as older than Jing but younger than Elias, maybe late-forties.
“Okay, how bad is it?” she whispers, matching her tone to Jing’s. “Anything broken?”
They all turn to me.
It takes me a second to realize I’m supposed to answer this question.
“No,” I say, tasting fresh blood. I think my jaw is still intact, but it’s hard to be sure from this mental distance. “I mean, I don’t know.”
Elias frowns, drawing a hand repeatedly down his beard.
“Aya,” says Jing, “do you have a session right now?”
“No. I’m supposed to be working on my self-compassion narrative.”
“I’m on lunch,” says Elias.
“Great,” says Jing. “My radical gratitude was canceled.”
“Rosabelle,” says Aya, “do you have a session?”
“She’s not allowed to do group sessions anymore,” Elias answers for me.
“Oh,” Aya and Jing say together.
They shuffle me forward as a group, wedging me carefully between them, and given that they’re all significantly taller than me, I just about disappear.
Despite my spinning confusion, I’m transfixed.
It’s as if I’m being inducted into some kind of secret society. One with a language they assume I understand.
“How’d it happen?” Jing asks as we move. “They get to you from inside? Or were you out in civilian territory?”
He glances over his shoulder at me, and I push some of the hair out of my face. I’m trying to keep up, but the pain is devouring, pulsing behind my eyes. I can’t process quickly enough.
I have no idea what they’re talking about.
“There’s no way they got to her from inside,” says Aya. “This facility is locked down.”
“We’ve had incidents here before.” Jing again.
Elias shakes his head. “That was three years ago. Security protocols are much better now.”
We come to a stop.
My head is dizzy for innumerable reasons. Their familiar faces seem suddenly foreign to me. I listen for the key turn, then the familiar tumble of a lock before Aya opens her door, and we surge inside as a mass.
The door slams shut behind us.
Jing bolts the lock.
The three of them turn as one to face me, and I realize, with increasing apprehension, that I have no idea who these people really are.