The Remedy Files: Illusion (23 page)

I feel defeated, heartbroken, outraged even. I want so badly to change her mind, to be able to give her the gift of emotions, of feeling. So she could look at Ethan and see him in a new light and be giddy and excited. We could share all the moments we should have had growing up- all of the emotions girls should share. But that’s not going to happen. We lost out. And she doesn’t want it any other way.

I stand up and Jacqueline follows my movement. I almost give her another big hug, realizing it may be the last one we ever exchange, but I realize how pointless that is in this moment. She won’t feel it anyway and it’ll just make me hurt even more. Instead, I walk to the door, take one last look at her, and shut it quietly behind me.

The chill in the air is more severe as I walk out, cutting through my clothes to my skin. I pull my hood over my head and zip up tightly. I finish my trek around the final three houses and swing up to go behind the back row and to the route back home.

I replay the conversation in my head with Jacqueline, wishing that the outcomes I had practiced were the final result instead of how reality turned out to be. Jacqueline did always firmly believe in the ways of Impetus. I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am but thought she would be open to hearing about a different way of life. I thought for sure she would choose my friendship and value it more. But then I realize for that to occur, feelings and emotions have to be tied into it and for her, there’s nothing.

I’m beginning to comprehend what Gavin meant by seeing in me that I always had some feeling. Even when I didn’t realize they were actual emotions, they were there, a basis under most of the things I chose and a guide for my thoughts. I just never knew until now.

I consider the fact that it’s the second revelation I’ve had this evening of Gavin being right with the things he has told me. I do need to put more trust in him. If he says he can’t tell me everything right now, I need to believe that. Because, as much as I hate to admit, he has been right with everything else. I need to believe in Gavin like Jacqueline believes in Impetus.

Then the kiss with Gavin repeats in my mind and my knees go weak at the thought. I suddenly feel the urge to run back to Rebirth, apologize to Gavin and cover him with kisses.

I near the road at the end of the tool shed and scoop down, listening for noises and looking for signs of life. I stand up to run across when a strong bony hand covers my mouth and an arm pulls against my waist. Someone has a hold of me! I am being dragged backwards, so I stick my feet in the ground to make the movement tougher and attempt to bite down on the hand but can’t get my mouth to open up large enough to get my teeth out. I remember some of the moves that Liam taught me so I take my elbow and jut it as hard as possible behind me. It immediately connects to bones and I hear a loud “oomph” come out from behind me. But the grip doesn’t loosen. I try it again but he pulls back so I miss. “If you know what’s best for you, you better stop.” A deep voice growls.

I fight hard to get him to let go, but his strength is too much and my angle is too off to be able to do anything different. I hear him kick the tin door and yell “A little help!” In a few seconds, the door squeaks open, lighting up the sky, and I’m pulled inside, watching as the door slams shut.
               

CHAPTER 29
 

“Who is it?” Another man’s voice asks.   

“Not sure yet. But she was sneaking around so I figure, no matter what, someone may have just volunteered themselves for our experiment.” His laugh makes my stomach turn. He whips me around and pulls the hood off my head.

My eyes take a moment to adjust to the light, but when they do, my first look is at him. The peculiar man all in gray who I ran into by the thickets of Impetus. “You.” I manage to say.

“You.” He repeats back, clearly mocking me with a smirk on his face.

“You guys met before, boss?” I look over to see a new man, tall and slender but with broad shoulders and large arm muscles. He’s the one that grabbed me. He seems close to Gavin’s age with reddish-blonde hair and big, bold black eyes. Their voices… they’re familiar. They are the two men I heard speaking by the tin sheds. 

“We ran into each other once.” He states, keeping his eyes on me in the same creepy stare as the first day we met.  “She was sneaking around by the bushes at the other shed. I knew you were up to no good. And then no doubt, a few days later you’re getting thrown into the chamber.”

“Is this one of the ones that got away?” The younger one inquires.

“Yeah, it’s her. The big deal one that got the Board all crazed by rebelling during the Futures Ceremony.” He turns back to me. “You really screwed up a lot here. No respect for our plans, huh?” He’s sneering at me now and leaning up against a metal desk that holds several different tools. He notices my eyes wandering over all the equipment. “We were just designing a new punishment chamber since apparently some of the old ones had holes. Some people managed to find a way out. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”

I keep my mouth tightly shut, my lips formed in a thin line and attempt to look as strong as possible despite my rapidly beating heart and the sweat that is forming on my back. My mind is frantically searching for some way to get out of here. The tools were my first hope but he’s blocking those. If I can manage to get around him, I could grab one and protect myself.

“Well, if you’re not going to give us answers, you just get to play the part of our first guinea pig.”

The younger one laughs in a way that sounds like all of the evil in the world has somehow been bottled up in that sound. “You want me to notify them that we got her?”

The older man rubs his chin. “Nah, we’ll do double duty here. We’ll report back on how the new machine works and be able to turn over her in whatever condition she ends up in.”

The younger one grins in excitement over the plan. “Yeah, let’s do that!”  He takes my arm, almost ripping it out of the socket as he drags me, my body scratching against the concrete floor. He pulls me to the corner where a clear glass box sits.

It’s exactly like the one I was in, except a little shorter in height. My stomach wretches at the sight as all of the memories come flooding back. Inside, several thick ropes are coming out from the edges looking like brown twisted snakes ready to strike and a head strap is hanging from one side, like a screaming metaphor that my life is dangling by a rope.

“No!” I yell, giving a brutal kick to the crotch of the younger man. He lets go of me to instinctively grab himself. I turn, picking my body off the floor and sprint to the door.

The older man takes a large steel pipe and swings it at my calf. “Oww!”I shriek, as I fall to the floor in front of me, landing on my stomach with a loud thud. My leg is throbbing in ruthless pain. The younger man grabs both of my legs and drags me all the way back to the corner. I’m sliding on my stomach, the floor rubbing against my skin, as I claw at the concrete and anything nearby to resist. I try to kick but it hurts too much and with each attempt, I let out a cry.

“Sounds like she’s still off of Remedy.” The younger one observes bitterly.

Together, they flip me over and pick me up, one holding each side of me and viciously drop me into the box. They tie my wrists and legs down so I’m sitting with my arms behind me and my legs in front, bent so that my feet are just inches from my butt.

“Tell ya what,” the older man says, breathing into my face, smelling like a mix of tobacco and chili. “We won’t use you as a guinea pig if you tell us how you escaped out of the last one and admit where you’ve been hiding since.”

I glare at him. He takes me for a weak person. I spit in his face as my response. “No.” I am not going to give away any details about Gavin or Rebirth. They can do whatever they want to me. My pain or death is worth it to protect everyone else.

He pulls back, wiping my spit from his face with the back of his sleeve. “Maybe we’ll just keep you for our own toy then. You can be the one we test every new punishment tool on.” I know I can’t prevent the horror from showing on my face. Every part of me is screaming how evil these two are. I knew it when I first heard them speak, and it’s all been confirmed in the worst possible way.

The older one grabs my hair and pulls my head back so roughly that I feel like my neck is going to snap. He then slides the headpiece over my face and adjusts the strap to make it tight. It leaves my neck straining backwards so that my eyes are facing the blinding lights from the ceiling. He makes one more adjustment to the straps that leaves my mouth slightly agape. I can’t move. I can feel every muscle tense up which makes the pain so much worse.

“Shhh…” he says in a voice that sounds as though it’s from an immoral world, dripping in a thick evil blood.

The younger man snickers as together they lift up a top that’s completely black and about three feet thick and lay it on the box. Now my view is total darkness.

I hear locks being snapped and then squeaky turning noises like a faucet is being connected. All of a sudden, the sound of running water is obvious.

“Do you like this?” The man asks in a sickly sweet way.

“Let me go-!” I struggle to say as much as I can with my mouth forced open. As soon as I speak, water downpours from the top of the box, running over my head and into my mouth. I choke on the water, spitting up what I can but more continues to fall on my head. I can’t move, I can’t do anything, except let the water drown me.

“Here’s a tip,” he utters in an overly syrupy voice. “Every time you make a noise, the water comes down. Every time you try to scream or moan from the pain- every single noise will trigger it. The box isn’t that deep, so keep that in mind. It won’t take long for the water to reach the top.”

Reflexively as fear floods me, I squirm to get out of the ropes, yelping from the pain and the panic. As soon as the noise comes out of my mouth, as he warned, the water pours down like a powerful waterfall over my face. I’m trying to gulp the water in an effort to beat the drowning but all of it is too much. I can’t breathe when it comes down that hard.

The men sit by the box, watching me, playing a game with each other of who can get me to make a noise. The only good aspect about the chamber being enclosed is they can’t touch me so instead they are left with feeble, juvenile efforts like sneezing and yawning in hopes that it would trigger the same effects in me.

“Or we can just do this,” one of them suggests. The shrill of the faucet signals the release of water coming out in a flood. I’m coughing and sputtering since I wasn’t expecting it and unprepared. I can hear them laughing in the background amidst my suffering. The faucet squeaks again as the water stops. “But what fun is that?” He says and they both laugh in wicked unison.

“Let’s go get some food. I’m hungry.” The younger one suddenly interjects, already sounding bored.

The older man seems hesitant at first but then says, “Yeah, ok. She’s definitely not getting anywhere with those straps now. Just remember,” He leans his face to the box. “You choose whether to have the water fill the box or if you want to sit there. Our preference is that you would extend the torture. But if you drown, we’ll enjoy that too.” Snickers erupt from both of them.

A part of me wants to scream and tell them to stay. Even with their malevolence, the idea of being completely alone in this situation is somehow still worse than having them around. Like there’s a hope that somehow they would still set me free versus being alone in this box where there’s nothing at all I can do. As their footsteps get further in the distance, the terror inside of me rises.

Suddenly I hear a commotion. Several voices shouting. Loud banging noises as though the room is falling apart around me. I try to turn my head but the straps are too tight and I moan out in pain. The water comes flushing over my face once again, choking me. Through the water I can see an outline of a face appear. At first, I think it’s one of them, coming back to laugh at my struggles.

The water stops long enough for me to see it’s Gavin. “Gavin!” I try to muffle out which again creates the flow of water.”

He’s banging on the faucet, trying to get the water to stop, not realizing that it’s the noise I made that set it off. When his efforts fail, he frantically works on the box, trying to find the right latch that’ll open it up. He instead grabs a pipe, slamming it against the latches, hoping one of them will set it free. Finally, one of them breaks, allowing him to shove the top off.

I’m coughing up water as he undoes the head straps, using his hand to support my neck as I struggle to pull it back up. Then he undoes the ropes, freeing my hands first, then my feet. He pulls me out of the box and straight into his arms.

Gavin puts his hands on my face. “Are you okay?” I’m still coughing, feeling as though I could pass out at any point but still manage to mutter out a, “Yes.”

He gives me one more quick hug and says, “We gotta get out of here.”

Grabbing my hand, he pulls me across the room. I bite my tongue to prevent from screaming out over the pain my calf is still in.

The younger man is on the floor, his arm bent in such an awkward position with what looks like a bone poking out. Despite my relief that he’s in that state, it makes me want to gag. His nose looks broken and blood is streaking his face. The older man is lifelessly stretched out over a desk. There’s a huge slash in his side with blood steadily dripping into a pool on the floor.

Gavin pushes through the tin door as we enter the cool air again. I’m sucking it down, letting my body realize something else other than water is being breathed in.

“This way”, he says, but we walk in the opposite direction of the normal route I would have ran if I was on my own. He must know a different way.

Gavin bends down at the waist as he runs, looking through the bushes, as I can only assume in hunt for an easy opening we can get through. Further in the distance, I see what looks like a blinking light coming through the thickets about a hundred feet ahead. Instantly, I realize that’s what he’s looking for. “Gavin.” I whisper, pointing to the light.

As soon as Gavin sees it, we hear thunder cracking across the sky. I look up but it’s a perfectly clear night. Then I realize, it’s coming from behind us; it’s not thunder, but gun shots.

Gavin has already made this connection and immediately swings the arm that’s holding my hand forward which propels me ahead of him. “Get to the light, NOW! Don’t stop!” He screams out.

I keep running but look behind me to see Gavin stopped in the middle of the path. He has a black gun held out in front of him as he’s walking backwards, rapidly shooting at a dark figure that’s headed his way. The figure is moving fast despite an obvious limp and the night is lighting up in front of him as he fires his weapon too. I fall to the ground as an automatic reaction to the spray of bullets all around me.

Out of the blue new figure appears from the edge of the maintenance building, only several feet in front of me but inches from Gavin. 

“Gavin! Behind you!” I shout, standing back up, ready to run to him and protect him, and feeling as though this is the same nightmare that has reoccurred over and over again. Except this time there is not a train behind him, but Mr. Frank.

Once I realize it’s Mr. Frank, my first reaction is that of relief. This man who I admired over the years, who was always smiling and so kind. The one who has always kept my secrets safe and protected me from the Officials when he could have handed me over. Mr. Frank is going to save us. He knows Impetus. He will help us get out of here and into a safe place. 

Mr. Frank stands three inches above Gavin, even with his arched back.  In left his hand is the black curve steel frame of a machete. As Gavin turns around, I watch horrified as Mr. Frank brings the machete down violently, a sickening thud reflecting off of Gavin. Before the expression on Gavin’s face can change in reaction, his body slowly crumples to the ground, his head bouncing off the dirt. It comes to a rest with the back of it barely touching the top edge of Mr. Frank’s shoes.

I drop to my knees, a loud sob escaping my lips. Mr. Frank hears me and as he turns around with his machete lifted high once again, shots fire over my head and into his body. Several bullet holes puncture his skin as bright sprays of crimson fill the air. Mr. Frank falls backward over on Gavin’s body, pools of blood joining together.

“Gavin.” I whimper out. “Gavin, move.” I plead.

But there’s no response from Gavin’s lifeless body.