Chapter Two

Radiation and Dust

~August 17, 2277~

"Who. Killed. Jonas." I repeated slowly. My heart was racing, and my face was flushed with rage, not at her, of course. She was just as much of a victim that day as anyone else, but I needed an answer. "Come on, Amata! Who was it, specifically?" I grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her in the face.

She wiped the tears out of her eyes and sniffled one time, then looked up with determination in her eyes. "It doesn't matter, you're leaving!" she said standing up. "You're going outside the vault. It's the only place you'll be safe! Up top, and I've got a plan." She pointed her thumb to herself and placed one hand on her hip, then stamped her foot.

"Uhhh...isn't that...dangerous?" I asked. "I mean, it's different up there! We don't know anything about it, and who knows if it's even safe." I'll admit openly that I was afraid at that time, but I wasn't in much of a position to be scared. I had to be brave.

"Your dad apparently does. He knows what it's like up there now, and he must've thought that it was better than down here." Amata crossed her arms. "It doesn't matter, though. We're wasting time. The guards will be here any minute, and I have no idea what they plan to do!" She looked over her shoulder, then peeked out the doorway and looked in both directions. "Listen, there's a way out. No one knows about it, not even the vault security. The only people that know are my dad and me."

"So where is this fabled way out?" I asked as I began to gather my few belongings from my desk and place them in my bag. A baseball cap, Grognak the Barbarian Issue #1, my BB gun, a few stimpaks, a spare jumpsuit, and a few snacks were all that I took.

"In my dad's office," Amata said plainly.

I stood, dumbfounded, for a moment. "Ah! I see." I took the BB gun and pointed it at my mouth, and pretended to pull the trigger, complete with my own sound effects.

"Stop that! We have to go. Look, I'll meet you at the vault door. If I'm not there, just go, and don't wait. Oh, and take this gun." She took out and handed me a 10mm pistol. I was pretty comfortable around guns at that time because of my BB gun, but still not a very good shot. Of course, a BB gun wasn't exactly the most deadly of weapons. "I hope you don't need it, but I would rather be safe than sorry." she reached out and grabbed my hand. "Please, don't need it."

I nodded in neither agreement nor resistance.

Amata turned and ran around the corner. When she passed just out of sight, she immediately screeched and I heard another voice.

"Gotcha! Now where is he?!" the other voice roared at her.

I grabbed my bag, everything ready to go, picked up my baseball bat with its name, "The Ass Beater," scribbled on the side, and rounded the corner. "I'm right here," I said, lifting the bat and taking a swing at the guard's head, who happened to be Officer Kendall.

"Run!" I shouted to Amata as the guard released her and the bat connected to his helmet with a loud thunk. He stumbled and shook his head and straightened his helmet. It was enough to disorient him, and that was all I needed. I dropped The Ass Beater and leaped onto the security guard's back, wrapping my arms around his neck. He struggled and grunted, but Kendall couldn't get me off him.

He then ran as fast as he could backward, slamming me into the wall and nearly falling on me in the process. Kendall hacked and coughed, rubbing his neck as I tried to scramble to my feet. Being slammed into a wall hurt! I stood back up and braced myself as the guard drew his baton. I was unarmed, and he had a blunt instrument, but I was determined to win. I had to.

Suddenly, at least five rad roaches crawled down the wall, onto the floor, and began attacking the guard. He swung at them, mostly missing, as they swarmed around him.

"Fucking! More of these bastards!" he shouted as they climbed all over him, sinking their teeth into his skin. He cried out in pain and fell to the floor as I sprinted by him, the sound of giant, mutant roaches tearing at his flesh filling my ears. I picked up The Ass Beater and stopped and looked over my shoulder. The poor man was still screaming in agony, blood pouring from each bite where the roaches viscously tore chunks of his flesh. He flailed his arms uselessly at them, but they wouldn't stop.

"Christine's gonna be pissed," I muttered to myself.

I pulled myself away and kept running, checking around every corner as I came to it, so I wouldn't run into any more guards. I came around one corner and saw Butch Deloria pacing around the hall.

"Hey, Bitch!" I yelled. He nearly jumped out of his skin, and then turned to me. I carefully approached him, but something was wrong. He wasn't his usual cocky self, he almost seemed afraid of something. I had my hand on the pistol behind me but took it off when I saw how utterly terrified he looked.

"Hey! Hey! I-I need your help!" Butch whipped his head around and then looked back to me. "It's my mom! Th-the rad roaches! They're in there and she needs help!" Butch shook me around and pointed to his family's quarters.

"Butch, I have problems of my own right now, I have to go!" I pushed past him and continued down the hall. The bully ran around and stopped in front of me, holding his arms out to try and block me.

"Please, man! I'm begging you! You can't just leave her in there." Butch clasped his hands together, begging hysterically. "Look, I'm sorry for how I treated you when we were kids! But please, save my mom! I-I can't go in there, I hate roaches!"

He wasn't going to move, and I needed to keep going. I had long gotten over how Butch bullied me years before, and I couldn't just turn my back on his mother. He didn't need to know what it's like to not have one.

"Here." I pulled the pistol Amata had given me out and held it toward him. He stared at me, confused by what I was planning. "You take this gun, I don't need it. I'm a lousy shot anyway."

Butch took the pistol as if he had never held one before, which, for all I know, he may not have even seen one before. "Yeah. Okay." He held onto it with both hands.

"Now, you know what you're going to do? You're going to go in there and you're going to fuck. Them. Up." I patted him on the back and pointed him to the doorway.

"Yeah. YEAH!" Butch gripped the pistol, finger already on the trigger and bolted to the door shouting about the Tunnel Snakes.

I straightened my bag and took off down the hall, watching through the window as Butch fired bullet after bullet into the oversized bugs. He would be okay and so would his mother.

Ahead of me was the Diner. I came around the corner and peered into the room, making sure I wasn't in for an ambush. The lights were out, so I activated the light on my Pip-Boy and almost immediately regretted it.

"Holy-" was all I said as I saw at least ten roaches crawling all over the room. In the middle, lying dead on the floor, was Grandma Taylor. The roaches must've been feasting on her for at least an hour by that point. The room smelled terrible and looked even worse.

I didn't have any time to gawk at the carnage, as a noise was coming from up the stairs at the end of the hall. I readied The Ass Beater and ran up the steps. My dad's office was ahead, so I decided that I had to search it for any clue as to where he might've gone.

I watched from afar as flames and sparks jumped from the end of Andy's weaponized arm, burning the two or three rad roaches alive. Stanley was next to Andy, squashing them with a metal pipe, and an officer was swinging his baton wildly.

"Great," I grumbled as I sneaked up behind the security guard, holding my bat high into the air. I was about to take a swing when Andy tackled me (as best a rotund robot with no legs could.)

"Hold on there, young master!" Andy sang in his chipper, English-accented voice. "You needn't assault an officer of the law! Not twice in one week!" Andy released me and floated a little lopsidedly, towards the clinic. "Now, I'm sure you're looking for the good doctor, yes?"

"Yeah, is he around?" I asked, still having doubts about my father's departure.

"No. Sorry, sir! I believe he has gone up above for a bit of air." Andy floated around, picking up the burnt remains of the roaches that were unfortunate enough to be caught by him.

"He's right." the vault security guard said, still not making a move to me.

"Gomez?" I inquired, lowering The Ass Beater.

"Hey, kid," Gomez said as he put his baton back on his side. "It's a good thing I'm the one who found you, I've heard the others talking. They aren't planning on being nice." Gomez took his helmet off and held it under his arm. "So, I guess you're leaving as well?" His eyes were stuck to the ground.

"I don't really have a choice," I said, walking into the clinic. "He can't have gotten far, right?"

"If this were any other situation, I wouldn't even THINK of trying to get out." Gomez shook a little, no doubt thinking about the entire situation. "But now..."

The whole clinic was a mess. Chairs and tables were thrown about, and all kinds of files were scattered on the floor. It was quite a sight to see, considering how meticulous my dad was. He would've fainted had he seen the office in the state is was in.

"Yeah, they came through here a little bit ago," Stanley said as he started adjusting a few pieces on Andy, noticing me looking at the mess. "Tore the place the hell up. I guess they were looking for something. Anything that might give them an idea of what he's doing."

"Did he say anything? Where he was going?" I asked, pulling out one of the drawers on my dad's desk. There were a few papers and a key.

"No. Didn't he tell you? I thought you might've gone with him, honestly." Stanley gave Andy a pat and the 'bot jetted away, humming all the while. "At least, I did, until you showed up here just now. What the hell was he thinking? The whole place is going crazy."

I took the key out of the desk and held it up. I had no idea what my dad needed this key for, it wasn't like he usually locked anything up anyway. "I don't know what he was thinking. It's not like he knows anything about the surface, right?" I looked around the room, eyeing anything that had a lock, and then trying the key. No luck, though, everything was either unlocked already or beat up and forcefully opened. The last thing in the room was the framed verse hanging on the wall.

"It's worth a try," I said to myself with a sigh as I pulled the quote off the wall. Sure enough, there was a keyhole on the side of it. I placed the key inside and turned it until the lock clicked. The front of the frame fell open and dropped the quote, as well as a crumpled piece of paper, onto the floor.

"Hey, kid, you need to hurry it up in there!" Gomez called from the hall.

"Yeah, yeah." I put the note and the verse into my bag and threw it on my back. "Alright. I'm going."

"Be safe, sir!" Andy gleefully told me. "And, uh, don't stay out past your curfew!"

"Shut up, Andy." The vault repairman snapped at the robot.

"I don't know how it is up there right now, but I hope you find him. Take care, Paul." Gomez shook my hand, leaving a small plastic bag in my hand. It was filled with bottle caps.

I waved and started up the stairs to the atrium. I gave the small bag a shake, completely oblivious as to why Officer Gomez gave me his bottle cap collection, but I didn't have much time to worry. At the top of the stairs were two vault residents. I couldn't really tell who they were in the darkness, but I could hear their voices.

"Come on! Let's leave, too! Just like the doctor." the man said as a woman protested.

"The doc's a smart guy, so he must know something we don't. The surface can't be that bad if he thought that he should go up there." the man explained.

"I still think it's an awful idea. Who cares what James does, we're safe down here! Would you really give all of that up just to find out if it really is better up there?" the woman said with a clear overabundance of logic in contrast to the man.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" the man chuckled with a childlike innocence. "We'll just rush to the door and get out, it's fool-proof!"

I watched the figures moved away from the stairs, and I moved up behind them. The two ran across the main room of the atrium and towards the door that led to the vault entrance.

"Hey! We're coming through! Let us...wait! NO! DON'T!-" the man was cut off by a hail of gunfire. Bullets ripped through his body, as well as the woman's, and they both crumpled to the floor. Blood was already running on the floor as one of them gasped a few last breaths.

In the chaos, I slipped by, over to the far side of the room where the stairs leading upwards were. The normal way out was guarded, so I had no choice but to leave the Overseer's office if Amata's secret exit even existed. I ran as silently as I could up the two flights of stairs to the upper level of the vault, peering over the edge just in time to see a security officer hauling one of the bodies away.

"Savages..." I muttered as I kept moving.

I passed by a window and looked into the room. It looked empty, but suddenly a man jumped up and started pounding his fist on the window. It was Allen Mack, the local vault rat. He was always wearing this stupid looking hat that really didn't suit him but to each his own.

"You!" he shouted as his face burned with anger. "This is all your fault!" he roared at me from behind the bullet proof glass. He continued to punch at the window, calling for the guards as I flipped him the birdie and continued onwards.

I went to the computer room, a few rad roaches skittered across the floor, and came around to the hall. At the end was the Overseer's office: freedom, safety, and hopefully the sons of bitches that killed Jonas.

The hallway was eerily empty, there was nothing but blaring sirens and flashing red and orange lights. I held The Ass Beater close to me, ready to swing at anyone who might jump out at me. No one did, though. I stood in front of the door to the Overseer's quarters and gasped as the door slid open.

There, tied to a chair, bloody, bruised and his head misshapen, was Jonas.

"Shit..." I said as tears filled my eyes. I guess I really hadn't processed that he was gone until I saw him sitting there, dead. He was holding something, though. It looked like a holotape, and my name was scribbled on a piece of tape on the front of it. I shakily reached out and took it from Jonas' corpse. I had no idea why my name was on it, but I assumed it was from my dad, so I didn't want to take any chances.

I popped the holotape player on the top of my Pip-Boy open and slid the tape inside. A small prompt appeared on the screen, and I selected to play.

The speaker crackled as the recorded sound of shifting papers and closing drawers also leaked out. It went on for a few moments until my father began speaking.

"Hold on Jonas, I need to record this first." dad said as Jonas rushed him in the background. "I don't really know how to tell you this. I hope you'll understand, although I suspect it won't make sense anyway." He paused for about ten seconds, took a deep breath and began again. "I'm sure you know by now that I'm gone, that I've gone to the surface. I didn't tell you because I don't want this to blow back on you, and I know you're probably angry, but the Overseer's going to be a whole lot angrier at me." My dad chuckled a little, probably thinking about the look of an angry Alphonse.

"Don't mean to rush you, Doc, but I'd feel better if we got this over with," Jonas said, interrupting my father.

"I'm almost done, just a bit longer." He called out to Jonas. "Look, I know this isn't how you thought life would be, but I need for you to stay down there without me. It's far from perfect, but it's much better than up there. You may never understand, and I wouldn't expect you to, all I expect is for you to be safe."

Dad sighed and tapped his hand on whatever surface he was near. "Okay. Go ahead. Goodbye, and I'm sorry. I love you."

The holotape ended with a click. I opened the slot again and remove the tape, placing it in my bag. He didn't want me to follow him? Where else was I going to stay? The vault wanted my head, and there wasn't exactly an abundance of space to hide in there. I respected my father, but I had no choice. I also couldn't let Jonas' sacrifice be in vain.

"No. I'm sorry, dad," I said as I looked at Jonas sitting there, completely motionless.

As Alphonse's desk lifted into the air, I peered down into the tunnel. It seemed to be well lit, if not a bit dusty. It hadn't been used for many years. I went down into the tunnel and ran to the end of it. There was a switch on the wall, so I gave it a flip. A portion of the wall moved, and sank into the ground, revealing a room containing the massive, gear shaped vault door up ahead.

I had never seen the vault door, or the room it was in either. It was a darker gray than the usual metal in the vault. I walked around the room, looking for a way to open it until my search stopped on a panel sticking up from the ground. It had green and red blinking lights, and a lever to pull. It took quite a bit of effort, but the lever moved with a creak and a grind.

A blast of steam came from above, a massive metal rod moving to the gear-like door. It connected, then screwed tightly.

"Incredible..." Amata said as she walked into the room, the vault door screeching as it was pulled out. "Oh wow, you smell that?" she said covering her nose. The scent of the outside world had begun to seep into the Vault 101 as the door rolled to the side.

We stood there and looked into the rocky cave ahead, where it looked like an old, wooden door was at the end. It was like looking into a different world, but it was the same one we had been on the whole time. Try to imagine staying inside your house, curtains drawn, never even knowing that there was anything behind them, and then finding out one day that there was a place you had never even known about. That was how it felt. You really have an existential crisis when you see that your whole world was just a tiny, insignificant piece of something much, MUCH, larger.

"So your dad's super-secret tunnel was cool," I said, trying to lighten up the mood. "Only you and him know about it, huh? I'll try not to make any jokes about it." I gave her a nudge with my arm.

Amata didn't even smile a little bit.

"So...you really are leaving?" she asked, her head held low, rubbing her right arm.

I reached over and wrapped my arms around her, giving my best friend a farewell hug. "I don't have any choice," I said plainly as she hugged me back. "Just don't forget about me, okay? Maybe I can come back after I find my dad."

"I'm going to miss you, Paul, I wish things were different. When you come back, we can..."

A click of a revolver came from behind me, and my heart skipped a beat.

"Step away from her. NOW!" Alphonse shouted at me, the barrel of the revolver pressed against the back of my head. Amata was caught as off guard as I was, and let me go. I stepped back from her, my hands held into the air as I dropped The Ass Beater on the ground.

"Sonnuva..." I muttered as I came face to face with the man who ordered the death of one of my friends, or rather, face to the barrel-of-his-gun. "You bastard," I growled at him, my anger building as he motioned for Amata to move behind him. "You killed Jonas, you bastard."

"I beg your pardon?" Alphonse said as he pulled the hammer of the pistol back. "That was Officer Mack here." He nodded to behind him where the security guard stood, who was holding a baton in his left hand. "I don't enjoy this, Paul, I really don't, but you need to realize what you've done!" Alphonse hissed at me. "You and your father have thrown this vault into chaos!" He motioned for Mack to move towards me. "Now there are rad roaches everywhere, people dead, and fear rampant in here! You have worked your hardest to throw everything in this vault out of balance. Now you'll come with Officer Mack and me, and you're going to pay the price."

Mack stood behind me, ready to swing his baton at my head. He didn't anticipate me fighting back. As his arm moved downwards, I grabbed on, quick as lightning, and swung him around. Alphonse fired a bullet, straight into the Officer's back, and he instantly fell to the ground, crippled but alive, and bleeding profusely. He groaned in pain, writhing in his own blood.

I wasted no time in grabbing for the Overseer's pistol. I pushed it away just as he fired again, sending the bullet away harmlessly. My ears were ringing from the shot, but I had to take the gun. I tried to wrestle it from his grasp, throwing an elbow in his face to knock him off balance.

"GAH!" he shouted as my elbow crashed into his nose. His grip on the revolver loosened enough for me to snatch it away. The old man stumbled backward into the wall, banging his head against the metal beam running up to the ceiling. Amata had dashed from the room at that point, exiting to the left, and closed the door behind her.

"You murderer," I said, my voice dripping with hatred. "You killed Jonas, you insufferable..." I was cut off my Alphonse as he tackled me to the ground, his hands around my throat. The pistol flew from my hands and slid across the ground until it was against the wall.

"Everything I do, I do for the good of the vault!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, saliva flying from his gaping maw. "You and your father are a danger to everyone! You shouldn't even be here!"

I could feel myself running out of oxygen as his grasp on my neck tightened. I was going to run out of time, and I needed to make a move. I grabbed him, and pulled him down, wrapped my right leg around his left foot, then pushed off the ground with my left foot, thrusting my whole body upwards and rolling Alphonse over.

The tables had been turned, but his hands were still on my throat.

"Payback time, bitch." I thought to myself as I raised one fist into the air and brought it crashing into his face with everything I had. I raised the other fist and threw it down in the same manner. I struck him over and over, his face becoming bruised, swollen and bloodied with each punch. He finally let go as he passed out for just a moment. I gasped for air as oxygen filled my lungs once again, and I tumbled over.

Alphonse was trying to form words through his bloodied mouth as he lied there on the ground. I struggled to my knees, then pushed off the ground to my feet. He didn't have age on his side, and it was taking him longer to get up after the beating I had given him.

"You...killed my...friend..." I growled at him breathlessly as I looked around the room, eyeing a toolbox. I undid the latch and opened the red box, where a wrench, a hammer, a screwdriver and a box of nails was waiting inside. I grabbed the hammer, took it out and gave it a few swings, then gripped it tightly. "You tried to kill me..."

Alphonse coughed up a mouthful of blood onto the floor as he rolled over. His eyes had already swollen up to the point of not even being able to see out of his left one. "H-how could..." he muttered, trying to stand up.

"Now you're going to pay!" I yelled as I swung at his head with the hammer. I struck him with enough force to send him back down to the ground. I sat down on top of him, preventing his arms from being any trouble. "YOU'RE GOING TO PAY!" I roared as I swung again, the hammer crashing into his forehead, and hearing a definite crack. Blood had begun pouring from his head as it had changed shape, showing dents where the hammer had hit. His eyes were rolling back into his head.

He didn't even make any noises. The only noise was the sound of the hammer hitting him over and over again, the sound of it changing from dry, "thunks" and crackling, to a sloppy wet sound as the metal floor of the vault ran red.

I breathed heavily as my arm finally had tired. I was still sitting on top of Alphonse, though he was unrecognizable by then. It was sickening, seeing a man's head caved in and knowing that you were the one who had caused it, but I felt I was justified. That feeling was fleeting, though.

The door on the left, where Amata had made her exit, opened with a squeak and a hiss. She stepped through, and her eyes went wide and her face turned pale.

I never felt more like a villain than I did in that moment as I watched my best friend look at her mutilated father lying on the ground, beaten to a bloodied pulp by someone she thought she could trust. Someone who she had thought was her best friend.

"Daddy?" she said as she covered her mouth, taking a few careful steps closer. "DADDY!" she screamed as she fell on her knees, instantly sobbing uncontrollably and repeatedly calling for her father who could no longer hear her. She stayed that way for a few minutes, seemingly forgetting that I was standing there.

I couldn't stand seeing her that way, so I thought that maybe I would help console her. Honestly, I look back now and think that must have been so the worst thing I could have ever done at that moment.

"Amata..." I began to say as I reached my hand out towards her.

She slapped my hand away, and turned around, absolute fury in her eyes. She stood up and got only inches away from my face, tears streaming down her face like a waterfall. Amata's face was a mix of sadness and anger, but entirely one of pain.

"How could you?!" she screamed, swinging one hand at me. "Why?! He was my father!" she cried out as she broke down again.

"He ordered Mack to kill Jonas!" I exclaimed, trying to rationalize my actions to someone who was blind with pain, or maybe I was trying to convince myself. Mack didn't say a word to defend himself, not that he could anyway. He was already dead, too. "He was a maniac, and he needed to pay for what he did!"

That didn't win me anything. Amata was completely overtaken with rage once I had said that. "REALLY?! Who appointed you as judge, jury, and executioner?!" she shouted, pushing me backward and down the small set of stairs near the vault door. "I know he did terrible things, but he is...was my father! How do you not understand that?!" She stood above me with her fists clenched.

"He tried to kill me, too! I did what I had to do!" I screamed at her as I finally felt the weight of my guilt falling on me. "I had no choice!"

"You DID have a choice, though! You could have stopped, but you beat his head in with a damn hammer!" she pointed at the bloody hammer I had tossed on the floor once the deed had been done. "You didn't need to kill him! He wasn't as strong as you, so why did you need to kill him?!"

"I-I needed..."

"YOU DON'T HAVE A REASON!" she screamed as loud as she could, cutting me off, while the walls bounced the sound back again. "This was just for revenge!" she yelled as she turned around and stared at the mess I had made. "You know something?" she asked rhetorically.

"My dad always said you didn't belong here, that you should be on the outside. He said that you were like the people on the surface. Selfish, violent and only out for what they want." she looked me dead in the eyes as her gaze continued onwards, into my soul. "I defended you. I told him he was wrong, and he just didn't know you like I did."

"Please, Amata..." I tried to say as she went on to finish her thought.

"He was right," she said. Her words went right through me like an arrow. "You belong out there."

I had nothing to say to that. She was absolutely right. I was an animal (still am), so I just turned walked towards the door and collected The Ass Beater on the way out. I stopped just short of where metal became rock and turned around. She was still standing there. She hadn't even bothered to look at me leaving.

"I'm sorry, Amata." were the last words I spoke on my way out of Vault 101, where they said I was born, but now I knew I was not going to die. I placed my feet on the uneven rockiness of the cave, counted the seconds until the giant, metal, gear-shaped door closed again, and faced it as I waited for it to slide shut. "I'm so sorry," I muttered to the metal door.

How could I have done something so horrible? What was wrong with me?

It wasn't long until all I could see was a large "101" in front of me, and not my childhood home, or my childhood friend who had pulled the lever.

I stood there in the dark with only the light peeking through the old wooden door ahead of me. It was enough light to see the skeletons that littered the cave floor. They all had signs begging to be let in, probably from before the Great War. They died waiting to get into a place I had just left.

"There's nowhere else to go now," I said as I pulled on one of the straps of my bag, and walked to the door. It seemed to grow impossibly brighter and hotter as I walked closer to the exit of the cave. I rolled my sleeves up, unzipped my jumpsuit down from my neck and pushed the door open. I should say I pushed it off because it came unhinged and dropped onto the ground, my eyes burning from the drastic change in lighting.

"Damn..." I said as my eyes slowly adjusting to the above ground lights. I looked over the wrecked landscape, fully understanding why my father always said that it was a hell on the surface. Just down the road from Vault 101 was a bombed-out town, complete with rusty cars that had been looted clean. The road itself was a cracked mess, and the grass, if you can call it that, was a sickly, ash-gray color where it actually was growing. The trees were pretty much the same as the grass.

I walked to the edge of a cliff just outside of the cave and chuckled to myself at the irony of a sign labeled "scenic overlook" in the post-apocalyptic era.

"At least someone has a sense of humor..." I said melancholically. There wasn't a chair anywhere like in the vault, so I just sat down on the cliff and let my legs dangle over the edge.

It occurred to me then that I had gone to having a place to stay, and being in a position to crack jokes, to sitting alone on a cliff in a world completely unfamiliar. I had killed no less than three people on my way out and ruined a lifelong friendship for the sake of some God-forsaken vendetta. I had been sprung from my whole life, and was still in the dark about my father's departure, just like everyone else.

I guess I was fortunate enough to have a father. The same couldn't have been said for Amata. I felt so sorry for her. She was always gentle, even when we were kids. She didn't deserve what happened.

I never got the chance to make it up to her, either. I came close.