Chapter 21

Alice

Dead. No. Why? Why? Why? Please just kill me. Why can't I just die! I don't want this anymore. Dead. Death. Dying. Alice. You killed them, all of them. No one survives around you. Alice! Stop, please, make it stop.

"Alice wake up!" Too loud, my head hurts. Let me die. I just want peace, even the darkness would be comforting.

"Kill me! Kill me! Just do it! Quit stalling and end it."

Death, that's all there is. Blood, like a rainbow splashing everywhere. I might as well be in a vat of it. So much blood. Just sink into it and drown. Drown in the poor souls you've made suffer. I thought I had won. I thought. I thought many things. Maybe that damned darkness should have succeeded. At least then this wouldn't be my fault.

Death. "Just please make the pain stop." Why wouldn't my lips move. Why could I not speak. "Please... I don't care anymore. Please!"

Why can I not make them hear me?

Soul

"She's gone into a state of intense shock." The lady doctor moved swiftly towards Alice, now that they were done with… Whatever that abomination was.

Alice was staring across the room, breathing heavily. She didn't move and had her hands over her ears like she was trying to blot out a horrible noise. Her eyes were glossy and wide open, Her pupils dilated all the way and unresponsive. Her whole body shivered and twitched in little spasms of either pain or some other sense. The doctor began looking her over and trying to get her to move.

Eventually she had to try and lift Alice manually, she took hold of one side of her. The man, her assistant no doubt, followed suit. They couldn't move her too much, either because she was too heavy in the armour, or her injuries were too serious to risk it. The got her into a prone position on the floor after a bit of struggle, then they began patching up what they could. The two were an effective team, like they had done this thousands of times.

I brought up their files without even thinking. Kate Rachelle, fairly young, but tons of experience both in field hospitals and as a combat medic. Jason Hardock, similar experience, but started off as a regular marine with a knack for keeping his teammates alive. I wonder what kind of story they had before getting mixed up in our mistakes.

Postponing the plan, huh? How was he planning on moving her before, then? Why does this change so much to require such a dramatic alteration. Damn I hope she's alright. She's always making me worry. Don't die, yet, Alice; you still haven't been able to live.

Soul?

Time. I hated time. Always bearing down on me, lowering me into a raving madness beset upon those who have come to realize their time has run out. I worked so hard to fight it, in the end it overcame me, but I made one small success against it. So here I am, once again able to feel the overwhelming pressure of my own life fading from existence once again. I have only just begun this life and already I know it is nearly over.

It doesn't at all help that I am forcing myself to be patient, lest everything I need to happen fall apart. Simulate breathing. Try to meditate or something. Now is the time to wait, wait until the pieces line up and fall into place. The doctor, Kate, will take longer than I want, no matter how I look at it, but that is just something I have to work around. This would have been easier to do while flying to safety. In the meantime I have to find some kind of excuse to cover this whole thing up. This gives me some time to do that, then.

I just need to wait.

Alice

The sound of my own breathing was louder than anything else I have ever heard. My ears felt like they were going to explode just from the constant scraping sound of oxygen forcing its way into my lungs. The only other sound was my heart, ramming into my ribcage painfully. My whole head squeezed down on me with every frantic beat let out by the blood-pumping organ. I wanted to scream and make it all stop, but none of my muscles would respond.

My eyes were open, but they must have been covered by something because all I saw were hazy shadows drifting by occasionally. Maybe I had died, then. It wasn't so unlikely, I had heard some people wondering if your soul just sat in your dead corpse and watched until the body was destroyed. I suddenly hoped they wouldn't bury me in a coffin…

But i couldn't be dead, not while my damned heart still pounded and forced my lungs to continue their never-ending intake of air. I tried working my arms and legs, my mouth, my throat, anything, but none of it moved. I couldn't even blink or close my eyes. Everything seemed to hurt all over, like I was wearing a suit made of molten iron. Every time I felt my body move the searing hot metal touched my raw skin and tore it to shreds. I felt like crying, like shouting, like screaming, but I couldn't. The sheer impossibility of being trapped within my own flesh made me feel extraordinarily frustrated. A feeling of panic settled onto my stomach and crushed the poor organ until I wanted to puke.

Something cold touched my neck, it was soothing and seemed to remove the pain from that area. I tried to focus on that feeling to take my mind off the burning. Then as soon as the cold had come it was replaced by a stabbing pain, like a lance of pure heat had impaled my skin. Fiery liquid poured forth from the wound and slowly spread inside of my bloodstream. A gasp echoed out, even louder than my normal breathing. It was the first sign of abnormal movement I had felt in far too long.

The lance of heat retracted and I felt the coolness return for a split second. Following behind the scorching fluid flowing through my veins came a dull numbness, it served well to reduce the pain I felt on every millimeter of my skin, but I could still tell it was there. It hit my head and my breathing quieted down, as did my heartbeat. The throbbing in my skull became less extreme, finally allowing me to think straight.

But all too soon the numb feeling was replaced by an intense pain, different from the burning, on the top of my head. I remembered the wound up there, it felt like someone was scraping around the edge of it with a knife, paying no heed to how I felt. My muscles contracted on their own, clenching my hands into fists and sending more of the fiery pain into my nerves again. Another gasp, again not in my control.

The scraping stopped, but soon resumed, sending my mind into a dark haze from the sheer agony. I just wanted to move, damn it. If I could move I could stop the pain. I could help myself, why couldn't I perform one of the most basic human abilities? I felt a blazing tear stream down the side of my face. I was so helpless, at the mercy of whatever was operating on my broken body. I wanted to die.

Just a short one, I haven't even touched this story recently, so many new things happening. On top of that I'm trying to work this into a manageable story while fitting it around other things I want to make reference to within it.