Caroline
I was going to kill them.
First they captured me, then they knocked me out. Then they drugged me and then they beat me.
Now I wanted them all dead.
Groaning softly – and wondering why the hell Jase would ever want to take any form of drug that wasn't prescribed by a doctor of his own accord – I pushed myself up into a sitting position and blinked a few times. Almost immediately, I found that I was in a small cell. It didn't feel much bigger than a closet and I had this sensation that the walls were pressing in on me. Whimpering softly, I ducked my head and covered my face with my arms, curling my hands around the top of my head, and ignoring the pain that shot through a pulled muscle somewhere in my back. I stayed like that for a long time, shaking a little with my eyes squeezed shut, trying to ignore the sensation that I knew wasn't real, couldn't be. I was too valuable to them. They killed me, they lost their hold on Ains. At least that's what I told myself.
I only moved when I heard a faint whoosh noise, followed by the sound of someone – someone very familiar – breathing my name. Blinking away tears, I looked up, letting my hands drop to my sides. It was the eyes that caught me first, staring at me as if they were in pain. I slowly pushed myself to my feet, using the wall for support. "Ains – "
He moved towards me, sliding his hands down my sides, probably checking to see if anything was broken. His dark brown eyes were swimming in so much worry that something in my chest twisted, and I gasped softly as he took my face in his hands, his fingertips brushing against a bruise on my jaw.
"Are you all right?" Ains asked me finally, his fingers carefully avoiding the bruise on my jaw.
I nodded. "I'm fine. Nothing's broken. I'm just sore."
He was shaking his head. "I'm going to kill her. I'm going to absolutely – "
"Hey," I said, reaching up and curling my hand around Natalie Williamson's ring. "This is what I signed up for, okay? I knew that. Killing her won't solve anything."
He stared at me for a moment before his mouth curled just a little bit. "You're back."
I knew he was talking about my behaviour over the past couple of weeks and nodded, looking down. "I'm sorry about . . . about everything. I just – "
He gripped my chin, possibly the only place on my body that wasn't bruised, and stared into my eyes insistently. "It's okay, alright? You're grieving. Grief makes people do crazy things."
"Yeah, I guess," I murmured, looking down. He would know better than anyone what grief could do to people – we were in this mess because of his father's grief, after all.
I looked up at him, moving my hands to the sides of his neck. "I love you."
His mouth curled and he ducked his head, tilting it to the side so that he could press his mouth to mine. I kissed back, but then pain shot through my bottom lip and I hissed softly, pulling away.
"Come on, Mitchell, you haven't got much time left," a voice – a voice I hadn't heard in reality for months – said from behind Ains. And there was only one person Ains had ever allowed to call him that, apart from me.
I drew away from Ains, looking over his shoulder at the boy standing behind him, with the dark curly hair and hazel eyes filled with light. I looked back at Ains, my eyes wide. "Is that – "
"Yeah," Ains said. "He'll tell you the story later." He stepped closer, his dark eyes insistent as he lowered his voice, his hand curling around mine. "Touch my wrist."
I frowned up at him, but I looked down, tracing my thumb across the underside of his wrist. I detected a small bump just underneath his skin and I looked up at him. "What is it?"
"It's a chip," he murmured, his hands gripping mine tight. "With a homing beacon." Then he smiled, just a little. "They're coming for us, Care."
I reached up to kiss him, throwing my arm across his shoulders. Pain exploded across my lip but I ignored it, holding him as close as I could get him. I could feel his hands around my waist, holding me as close as possible.
Then I hugged him tight, my arms curling around his waist and to hold him against me even more as I rested my head against his collarbone. "Ains?"
"Yeah?"
"I – I'm scared," I mumbled, fisting my hands in the back of his jacket. I felt him shift his head just a little against mine, his thumb brushing back and forth against my shoulder blade as he murmured back, "Yeah. Yeah, me too, Care."
"Shit. Ains, we need to go, like, now."
"Alright," Ains hissed. He kissed the top of my forehead before he was ushered out, and I saw handcuffs being snapped onto his wrists before he and the boy who looked enough like Camden to make Ains believe he was Camden disappeared.
Sighing, I sat back down in the corner, my arms wrapped around myself, replaying what had just happened in my head. I could feel something unfurling inside me, something I hadn't felt since Dad died. It was strength, the strength that I'd joined MI9 for, the strength that Ains gave me every single time he looked at me.
Eventually the boy who looked like Camden came back, opening the door and taking a step inside my cell. I felt my body stiffen in preparation for a fight and I looked up at him with a stony gaze.
"Care – "
"Don't call me that!" I yelled. I took a deep breath. "Only – only my friends call me that."
"Caroline, it's me – "
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Yeah, and who's me? You're not Camden. Camden Augur is dead. He died – "
"Exagora."
I froze. My heartbeat, my breathing, all of it just stopped as I whispered, "What?"
"Exagora." The boy said, lifting his chin.
"How do you know about that? I don't think I even told Ains about that."
He smiled just a little. "Because I was there."
I gaped. "You were . . . you were there?" I thought back to the most recent dream that I'd had and I stared at him, swallowing the lump in my throat as my eyes stung with tears. ". . . Camden?"
Camden grinned. "Hey, Care."
"Camden!" I screamed, getting up off the floor and launching myself towards him as fast as my still drug-induced sluggish body would allow. I stumbled into his body, but Camden gripped my arms, smiling down at me a little. I stared up at him and I poked his cheek a few times, just to check that I wasn't hallucinating and he wasn't going to disappear on me. I must have poked Camden's cheek like ten times before he rolled his eyes and grabbed my hand. He moved it so that two fingers were pressed into the side of his neck, and I knew that this was his silent way of telling of me to wait and look for his pulse. I did, and I eventually picked up the insistent thrumming against my fingertips.
"You're alive," I murmured and then I hugged him. I could feel myself crying, but after a few moments I regained control of myself and stepped back, wiping my tears from my eyes. "How – how are you even – "
Camden shrugged, leaning against the doorframe. "I believe you are familiar with doppelgangers."
"Doppel – oh God." I took a step towards him. "Show me your arms."
"What?"
"Show me."
Camden sighed, but he unzipped his jacket and pulled it off. As it dropped to the floor he extended his arms towards me. The scars that now covered his once unmarked fair skin were so horrific that I wanted to look away, but at the same time they were so horribly captivating that I couldn't. The scars knotted all the way up his arms, winding around his thick biceps. I eventually managed to tear my gaze away from his arms so that I could look back at his face. There were no scars on his face or neck, and I frowned. "Why – "
Camden shrugged. "I don't know. My guess is that it died or disappeared – whichever the hell those things do – before the fire got to my face."
I sighed, letting his arms drop from my grip as I stepped away, sitting down. "What about the dreams?"
"I needed to disappear, but I needed to plant a little – "
"What about Vanessa?" I interrupted.
Camden froze for a split second and then he shook it off. "What about her?"
"What about – " I got to my feet and I felt the harsh flare of anger inside me. I briefly wondered if KORPS had put another chip inside me, but when I touched my neck, I found nothing. Apparently it was actually possible to get blindingly angry by yourself. "Vanessa was your girlfriend! Why did you bother sending me dreams when you could have told her that you were alive?"
"It's complicated," Camden said. "But Caroline, this, all of this, is bigger than any of us knew. This about more than you and Ains. The Mastermind's dying and he needs Ains. He needs an heir otherwise this entire regime will collapse. KORPS will destroy itself."
"So? Ains won't do it. We've always known he won't, they have to know – "
"They do know that!" Camden snapped. "And that's why you're here. Because they know, they know, that they can't do anything to him because they know it won't do jack. They can't hurt him physically. But they know they can hurt him through you."
I sat down again, pushing my fingers through my hair and forcing the images that pushed themselves into my head away. My eyes were stinging and I wanted Ains back here, his arms curling around me and holding me to his strong chest, even though I knew that wouldn't be happening anytime soon.
"Care – "
"Please just go." I whimpered into the ground. I was starting to cry, but I didn't want to cry in front of him, I didn't want anyone to know how scared I was, that that fear had brought me to tears. "Please just go, Camden."
"I'm sorry, Care. I tried to save Lucas," Camden said, and then I heard the swoosh of the door closing. I just wrapped my arms around myself and cried. I didn't want to be in MI9 anymore. I'd lost people because of it, and I was going to be tortured because of it. Camden had isolated himself for months, risking his own sanity, because of it. I didn't want to nearly die for other people anymore. I just wanted Ains and Dan and everyone else to be safe, to not be grieving.
Suddenly it occurred to me all the things I wanted to do but probably wouldn't get to. I wanted to go skydiving, to face this stupid fear of heights. I wanted to go to Japan and eat Sushi as it was made in its origin country. I wanted to patch things up with Mum. I wanted to study music in college. I wanted to move in with Ains, get married, and have kids. I wanted to look a little kid in the face and be able to pick up what features they'd gotten from me and what they'd gotten from Ains.
Those wishes, those wants firmly in my mind, I turned my head so that my temple was resting against the wall as I closed my eyes and slowly let myself drift off to sleep.
