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Chapter Fifteen: Succumb to Self

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Deep inside, I'm on my own, I can't see straight... --Incubus, 'Deep Inside'

'Where the hell am I?' Rita said, waking up, surrounded by crimson red machinery. She touched a pipe, rubbed her fingers together...was that blood on the walls? She wiped her hands on the ground. The ground was covered in broken glass...

'Where the !@#$ am I, anyway?' She yelled loudly, and noticed a shadow coming towards her. She screamed, and backed slowly away from the shadow.

'I will not hurt you...you are already dead. You have no purpose. You shall live inside this realm of fear, hatred, and death forever. For...that is your destiny, Rita. You do not deserve the gift of life...nor do you deserve to give it to others.'

She felt a sharp, digging pain inside. The pain fleeted...

'Let me go!' She yelled, as the phantasm began to overtake her.

'Relax, young one...there is nothing more on this Earth to see, do, or hear. It is time for you to end your travels. Go home, wait for the final judgment. When you are pure again, the pain I have bequeathed upon you will return.'

'No! I can't let you do this! Now tell me! TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!!!' She screamed, pounding on the ground.

'I am, what I am, and that is all that matters. You do not own me!'

The phantasm attacked Rita, pinning her to one of the machines. A scream, then quiet.

She lay amongst the broken glass, bloodied, unconscious. She should've never been part of this mission. She began to look inside her memory, see what brought her here in the first place...

**

'Phil...I really don't want to come along...'

'But Rita, it'll be fun! We'll fight side by side! We'll be heroes!' Phil said, happily.

'Er...OK...'

**

Was it worth all the pain? Was it really worth all the horrible sights, all the horrific fights...Jason? And now...this?

'I have no place in this world, you say?' Rita said, waking up in a trance- like state. A rush of anger, then the walls all came down. The room exploded in a massive spire of light, destroying the bloody machinery, the phantasm as well. As the light poured through her, she screamed again, loudly...

Pictures, faces...all of her memories were even more prominent in this light. All of the good times she had as a child, playing in a sandbox wth Phil when she was five...graduating high school, just being with her friends...

She turned around, a spire of darkness had emerged...and with it...the memories of bad and awful things...the night Jason spent with her, the destruction of Sumera and Vale, all of the unbelievably horrific things that had happened.

A small, echoing voice emerged. 'You are...nothing.'

...He limped to her room. It was empty.

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