Disclaimer: Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions own all of this.
Author's Notes: I AM SORRY! My courses are so heavy. They think that homework is a nightly thing that I just love doing. Yeah right! Hope you enjoy!
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"Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams.
Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me.
These wounds won't seem to heal,
This pain is just too real.
There's just too much that time cannot erase."
~Evanescence, My Immortal from Fallen
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9: Counting the Days, Decisions, Decisions, and Decisions
The first day was pain. It bled out of her with a burning and stinging sensation that made her dizzy and washed her in vertigo. She was barely focused on her surroundings, head bobbing on her shoulders with no strength to hold it up. The darkness was eating at her again, the wounds festering with infection as white puss develops around the open skin. It dripped out of her at a steady rate, like a second heartbeat pounding in her ears.
She didn't wince though. Her whole body had become numb with shock of blood loss and pain.
Light streams in through the small cracks in the boards at the window. He nailed them into place, she knew this only by the sound the nails made as they splintered into the wood and the hammer against the nails. She wished they were crucifying her, digging into her hands and splintering the bones, hearing them crack like the wood.
It would be a faster death than what was coming.
The voices and ringing had faded under the pain. The breed had finally succumbing to some form of dormancy. She could tell by her senses that they were finally gone from her, if only temporary. The magical glow the world always had was now gone, faded off somewhere in her mind. Her nocturnal vision was gone, and her human eyes had to adjust to the light normally, for a human anyways.
She never had to adjust her eyes. They could see perfectly though the dark as they could through sunlight. But that was when the breed was being nice to her, returning the favour for taking up residency in her ears. Now, they were playing unfairly, making her human once again just to piss her off.
*Oh stop whining. Jesus you're worse than children.*
They didn't answer. They were too busy plotting ways to kill her when they had regained their energy.
They would release a poison into her system. That was their way, silently, painfully, and torturous. She would feel it in her head first, freezing through her veins and into her face. Her whole face would be filled with excruciating pain as the veins started to break down and the blood began to clot prematurely. Then down her neck and into her shoulders, immediately attacking the muscles and causing the tissues to break down over her arms. It would move to the heart and immediately move through it, making it beat faster with increased adrenaline to prolong the feelings of death. The lungs would constrict, the diaphragm paralyzed, leaving her gasping for breath.
So she would wait until they awakened and then she would die. This didn't make her feel any differently. The poison had a twelve hour kill time.
*Twelve hours. I've had worse news.* She thought to herself, separating herself into two parts. She found herself imagining a second of her, the stronger one; the powerful one that she had been so long ago, too long ago to remember.
`Pathetic` She said cruelly, standing up from the floor and walking to the door, her hand gripping the knob and finding it locked and bolted. `That's all you are, you know that? Controlled by every little injury you receive`
*I can't stand up, you moron. I am in shock. Or do you not understand that?*
`Oh please` She walked back to herself, looking down. `You lack that ability to persist. All you do is roll over and die`
*Fuck off.* She said, curling into the wall again. *What do you know about it?*
`Everything, you moron, I'm you, remember? See this face? It's your face. See this hair, it's your hair. Everything you are is in me, understand?`
*You're not me. You never were me. You're a god damn bug!*
`You see this?` She said, lifting her hand up to meet her face. The double moved the fingers over the soft skin, the pale complexion. The wounded one sat there and tried not to stare. The double pulled the hand away and stood back up.
`You still don't understand this, do you` She spoke with such malice that the wounded one was drawn back by how she sounded. `You never could. It moves too deep for you, deeper than those bloody bugs`
*Leave me alone.*
`You're sitting here and you're dreaming, ever think of that`
*Leave me alone.*
She knelt down again, fingers on her cheek.
`Wake up…`
She swatted her hand forward and the vision disappeared.
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Meredith hardly ever heard her parents fight with raised voices. There were the times when they would argue and cuss about something trivial and that didn't mean very much. But today it was something that meant something. She could tell by the way her mother's jaw tightened and eyes flared with anger. She knew her cue: run upstairs and pretend not to listen in. But eavesdropping was a favourite activity of hers that she engaged in whenever there were hushed voices.
Only this time her parents made it easier. There were no hushed voices.
"What are you doing John?"
"I couldn't leave her in the parking lot!"
"She's a contract killer, John. And it's obvious that she has intentions…"
"What are
we supposed to do? Keep calling the
police?"
"John that woman killed at
least five people this morning!"
"I know, Monica, I know."
Meredith leaned into the stairs a little more. They were in the kitchen, where they usually shouted.
The fighting died down for a moment, and both her parents took a couple of deep breaths. John spoke first.
"What are we going to do about this?" Her mother was silent for another moment.
"I don't know, John. I don't know."
"We can't call the police again. It's obvious that doesn't work."
"Well we can't keep he in the basement, I mean she's intent on killing us."
"I don't think so."
Meredith listened hardly. Her parents' voices had lowered now.
"I don't think that she's going to hurt us, Monica. I don't think she has the nerve anymore."
"She had the nerve this morning. What's changed?"
"I think that the bullet to her ear did something. I don't know what but I think that Brad hit something that made her killer instinct go away."
Monica looked at John now, his face suddenly filled with compassion and sincerity. He meant what he said. It was written in his stare.
But she was still uncertain about this. The government would never allow something like that to happen, would they? And in that case, at any moment she could want to kill them again and simply do so without a thought. It was clear that she wasn't one to give up so easily.
But if John was right than she was harmless?
Unless he was wrong, in which case she could kill them on a whim, like she had tried to do this morning.
But there was something that tried to make her feel sure, and she knew she could trust it.
"Fine." She said. "Fine. But I swear to God if she even thinks about trying something…"
"Trust me. If she tries something I will die before I let anything like that happen."
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Louis was going to die before 24 hours had gone by, he knew that now. He was watching the monitor and waiting for the captain of the teams they had sent out to tell him what had happened. But no one was answering, almost like they knew what would happen if they told him the news.
Finally, someone told him. The breed wasn't there. She was gone. There was only trace amounts of her blood on the ground, and that was it. It would degrade soon and disappear like the samples with the FBI. But until then, they were cleaning up and keeping people calm.
He took off the head set and tossed it to the ground. He needed some cameras there. He needed to see what she saw and replay it, but the people in communications said the satellites were out of range, and it would take hours before they were up and running again at their fingertips.
Until then Louis was screwed. He started pacing nervously.
Ridder was going to find out. And when that happened, it was game over for everyone in his division with a pulse.
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Morgan was following her instinct. Think like a killer and you'll find a killer, she thought to herself, walking down the street to the apartment buildings at the end of the street. The teams from Ridder's division were finishing up with their investigation and she was ready to do some poking around of her own. Whatever drove the other to the apartments had to still be there, seeing as how Darcy had not left in the best shape. Morgan was getting closer. She could smell it and sense it with every fiber of her being. Every inch of her was tingling with anticipation.
She started looking around the apartment lobby, watching the people sitting around on couches and looking at the landlord's office with blank stares. They hardly noticed Morgan, but she noticed them, eying them with the same amount of suspicion you would eye a serial killer with. But no one noticed her, too busy looking off into space to care.
Footsteps came down the stares and Morgan turned as a young brunette pushed a purse onto her bar shoulder and played with the white scarf at her neck. Morgan watched her suspiciously, the way she moved and walked. She looked scared at something, frightened, running.
But that could be anything Morgan. Hell, it could be an abusive boyfriend.
But she was unsettled by the girl. Morgan walked after her outside, seeing her get into a car with two other males who drove away quickly.
Morgan walked back into the building, the same sedated behaviour greeting her. She went immediately to the stairs and started to climb.
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The second day was human. It was that feeling of hopelessness.
She started to count the days between consciousness and unconsciousness. She realized that it had probably been less than six hours, but it counted as two days. It was the longest time she had ever been imprisoned for.
The first time was in Tunisia for the assassination of a government leader with a name she couldn't pronounce. She wasn't paid to pronounce names though. She was to kill them and that it.
The prisons in Tunisia were filled with sweat and heat and men and woman. It was intoxicating, like a drug, like she was at some kind of rave. They had tried to break her, rape her, torture her, and beat her. But she survived, the scars having faded on her inhuman skin. Every injury had started to display itself again, something she assumed was the breed's subliminal anger, trying to show her and scream at her. ~You see what you get when you disobey us…~
She sat there for God knows how long, looking at the floor, tears moving over her cheeks and cutting through the blood that had been rubbed on her face. She coughed up mouthfuls of it, spitting it onto her long coat at the tails. She can feel the fever coming upon her, making her ache all over and the pounding in her head grow worse.
She can't breathe without feeling and tasting blood. She can't move without making herself cry. She can't live without pushing herself further to death.
There were voices outside.
She knew what the breed would say. They would tell her to kill them.
But she wasn't the breed. And she pushed her back against the wall.
*Let them come…* She willed them, and closed her eyes.
Her heart began to slow again.
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It's the weekend. I'm not promising much, but I can say that I will probably have the next chapter up by Monday. REVIEW!