.
Until the angel trumpet sounds
.
When Zack remembered there was no need for the dead to breathe, he decided he had been swallowing panicked gasps long enough. 'Ray.'
'Yes.'
'Let's get this over with?'
'Y, yes.'
The space in the middle of the dark seemed familiar to Zack; the bad sort of familiar. It twisted his stomach and made him want to pee dry. 'MOTHERFUCKERS! IF THERE'S ANYONE OUT THERE, COME GET A BEATING!' But the white room remained empty, and the dark around it emptier still.
'Please don't scream,' Ray remarked. Her face was halfway towards blankness and Zack took it as a good sign: she was gearing up for a fight.
'Equivalent exchange,' Zack snapped. 'They let us know they know we're coming and we know cause they're letting us know they're coming cause they know we're here. Use your head, Watson.'
'It's Sherlock.'
'Whatever. Um, hold on to my jacket or whatever. I don't got nothing on me... Fuck. Damn. You ready? Ugh...'
Zack takes one final breath and stepped up at the platform-
.
...
A door slams behind him and he gasps in a strait jacket. There are bars on the window of the jittering cell they had thrown him against. The walls have cushions that smell of antiseptic and Zack realizes for the first time that he is claustrophobic.
'RAY! WHERE ARE YOU? RAAAY!' is what Zack wants to scream. But he chokes around the dart in his neck. Someone slips a gun through the bars and Zack worm-jumps away in time. He couldn't afford to have even more druggy lethargy; that's one more thing he must fight asides fear.
Huh? No, what is he thinking? He had planned this for months, months because this country's justice system is about as useful as artificial beaches in the monsoon season. By keeping still. Observing. Focusing all his attention into his sense of hearing. He remembers being so in awe of Ray's talent of gathering information and figuring out how to use it in his first few days confined. And then there was no space in his mind for appreciation anymore, just hard strategizing. His head had hurt for days until his thoughts numbed even that.
Except...
No! Don't think anymore! He should just GO.
Zack rips up a portion of the padding on the floor and slams his head down as hard as he could. At most he would bleed from ruptured skin, it won't affect his thinking or reflexes at all. Lie still and wait for it. Someone looks into his cell and stops the car, someone is opening the door. Zack kicks to launch at them and rip their throat with his teeth; a convenient gunshot breaks a portion of his suit and cuffs so Zack kills the second person with his free bare hands. He takes the driver's keys, puts it in the slot and twists, he steps on the gas, shakes off the police. Coughs up blood, and even he knows he wouldn't have enough time left like this. Crashes into warehouse shop of farmer's tools and grabs the nearest scythe. He asks a lady shaking in her pants about the Isaac Foster case and where they took the girl they said was his victim to. She couldn't answer beyond shrieking her head off over the blood on his lips and hands and everywhere, and he wants to kill her so much but he doesn't have time. He backs up the car.
An explosion: a strong flick of a finger at the back of his head that forces him to blink...
He is back in the van, mouth full of Ray's name again. And he realizes the dart hadn't always been there, only piercing through his skin in the middle of his bellowing.
What?
The second dart hits Zack and stuns him. No, he refuses! It won't work on him! He should just do things the way he planned; the medicine will NOT work on him. Teeth to the cushions. Head on the floor. But he has nothing but the tranquilizers to blame when he bites the warden's throat off but doesn't turn away quickly enough to dodge the other's bullet, straight into his temple...
He screams Ray's name but instinctively lays flat, watches the second dart clatter an arm's length away from him. He fights to stay still. There is one in his neck. Do they have... side effects no one bothered telling him about? Aren't they just supposed to make you sleep, not dream?
What the hell is going on?
Zack had tried a variety of drugs before but decided for each one that the crash after the high wasn't worth it. It addled him out of his natural agility—he had lost a handful of potential prey from jitters, vertigo and/or overstimulation, and it pissed him off enough to almost break his knuckles over a brick wall every time. But none of them had ever made time seem to loop like this. "Trippy" doesn't begin to cut it. What is he even doing thinking right now?! Are those the drugs too?
Enough! Feign death, kill a warden, free himself and kill the other, get the van, grab a scythe, stem his bleeding stomach the best he can, find Ray's asylum and drive there... Zack crashes the vehicle, unable to hold his head up from the weight of blood loss and sleepy medicine on his head. There's fire everywhere on the road but even his fear is not enough to get him to his feet and run... But he thinks of Ray and
screams her name, again he catches their trap on the skin of his neck and in his panic, he launches at the bars and tries gnawing them off. He smells the gunpowder straight off the shot that fires right between his eyes and for a slow split second it gets him high like snow... nauseous like the smell of that very first tipsy business man he had ever murdered
Zack wakes up. He burns with rage and the fear settles in his stomach at a suicidal pace. He thinks maybe he has pissed his pants this time around. (He pauses in the middle of a panic attack. Oh yes. Definitely. Way to go, Zack.) Fear roots Zack down rather than spurns him to run, shackles him better than any rope or chain. The opposite of anger's effects. And now, narrowly missing the brand new tranquilizer dart, Zack is being torn apart—there is raw terror, there is mad despair, so which should he heed? His feet, curled in on itself and paralyzed, will surely tear from the rest of his body struggling to run, run, run. Any minute now.
"FUCK! FUCKITY FUCKING FUCK FUCK FUCK! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!"
They shoot him with an actual gun.
...
Zack stumbles through his plans again and again and again and... Zack loses count. Something goes wrong and he shrieks on the floor of his padded van and starts over again. The good thing is he eventually pisses all the fear out of his system. The bad thing is by this time his wrath has descended from an effective peak and drains him in the process. He... he knows somehow that it's been a lifetime of trial and error. How long is a lifetime? Who the fuck cares, that's how it feels like. He understands why some old fogeys live their days like they're waiting at a bus stop with nothing better to do than sit and breathe. Zack had thought it was pathetic. Thought he would never learn to relate even if, by his lucky stars, he got to that age. Zack had no lucky stars to speak of whatsoever, except maybe the feeling of death sticky on his fingers. But anyways, he might have a little bit more sympathy for those people now.
Zack curls up in his rattling cell as was expected him. Maybe he should... ugh, what could he do asides trying to change his fate by escaping certain death and aiding his friend? Nothing else, that's what. No one was killing him and getting away with it, god damn it! But maybe... maybe he should change how he was doing it? Obviously, the plan he had been developing for months wasn't working. But no one's hurting him now and there will probably be time to come up with something—anything—until they do. And if they succeed in ending him, he could always pick up where he left.
Ugh. Zack hates thinking. He almost hates it as much as incarceration, specifically the interrogation part of incarceration. But he studied to think specifically for this day and moment—security is weakest in transit because they were all expecting he'd be dead in a few hours anyway. And legally too: no paperwork necessary. No unnecessary bones to break bending backwards to make up excuses, to lie. Zack hates liars. Zack has a specific, stronger hatred for liars who will use him to justify their lies. He isn't about to let the likes of those shit-suckers beat him, cowardly, fibbing sons of bitches!
But so far nothing has worked. What should he change? He tried waiting before acting longer than he had ever done in his life, even went beyond the end of his rope multiple times. But the results were all the same—he would mess up, die and wake up again. The furthest he got was the first time he crashed the car to the setting sun. He can't remember a time when he was more so helpless, other than being set on fire. Or...
In jail, Zack learned how easy it was to be killed in an unfair fight, and that was a good how many months of being helpless- But no, he couldn't call his interactions with the police "fights," not when he was handcuffed and bare fisted. The assholes had tasers, batons, hoses that pumped insane amounts of water insanely fast, pocket knives, mop handles, hard-ons, the power to starve him if they so desired, and shoes that stomped and kicked. And bare fists sans the handcuffs. Zack has a physique like a sponge in that while his body is adept at absorbing hurt just like everybody else, it fails to cause him any lasting damage. A good scream and a good bleed would let it all out and then he'd be back on his feet for vengeance. Anyways, nothing they did to him was the worst he had to go through ever. He had to thank whichever admin was dumb enough to forget setting him on fire to the pile of shit he had to go through. Or better than thank, tell them what they wanted to hear.
(He had confessed to everything they accused him of: battery and assault, murder, attempted murder and the like, god knows how many more there were. But there was one thing he refused to lie about. Zack had no sense of arousal whatsoever—his mother's boyfriend raped it out of him an eternity over when he wasn't even old enough to know what the act was called—and denied every time that he had ever laid a finger on Ray or kidnapped her.)
In any case, Zack learned to be patient much longer than waiting to strike down a stalk-ee these past months. It had been an excruciating lesson but a simple one: if he did anything to upset them, they would hurt him more. If they hurt him enough, he would die. If he died by someone else's hand, he would never forgive himself; if he died before fulfilling Ray's promise, he would never kill again and existence would be hell. Zack had to keep imagining the future to accept the pain of the present. It had been such a novel idea, so stupid dumb and, when he got used to it, practical for existence in jail. Self-restraint, he remembered Danny describing it. "Holding back. Not acting based on your feelings immediately, letting time change your feelings and reaction to the stu... Stimi..." whatever. Thing that made you feel that way.
Zack reckoned waiting for the future was going to be the death of him. It took him several days to come up with something more useful. Zack learned to listen and observe—where was he? What was going to happen to him? Why were they doing this? What would they do after they finished? Was Ray alright? Where was she? How was she? Is she... still alive? He had no idea how much easier the process would be if only he knew how to read but he made do anyway. He reckoned this was just a more complex form of work: his goal was still to kill and avoid getting caught in the act.
To be fair, he had observed and made decisions ahead of time for nearly all his kills even though he had no idea what he had been doing. But it was much more difficult to hunt if your target is not in front of you but a few squares ahead on a calendar you don't know how to read.
The, the car is stopping right now. Someone is opening the door, should, should Zack move before they carted him off? Yes. YES. He bites off a man's nose and another's ear but the gunshot that rips a hole in his strait jacket is followed too soon by so much more and Zack hits the ground
screaming Ray's name. Notagain,Whatthehellgetdown. Shit. He's pissed. He just pissed. He should really be spitting profanities at the top of his lungs rather than letting it settle so hot in his chest, but for some reason, it hits him: he might not wake up again the next time. He's played video games before. Everything has a limited number of resets... don't they? Fuck. Maybe he hit a revolution, whatchamacallit, but maybe that's just his brain stinging from overuse.
Wait.
That... isn't part of his plan. All of this. You know, howling like a banshee every time he "woke up" or whatever the fuck was going on. Making noise during his escape hadn't exactly been integral to the process as he wanted it to play out. He would laugh with delight during his hunts, sure, but police who haven't caught you yet are nothing like those who already have. The former is tad easy to run from even if they hear you (concerned citizens don't even count to Zack anymore) and the latter could do real damage to a hunt and all future hunting trips ever. Even in the earliest versions of his plans, Zack knew his success was probably going to rely on his ability to hold in both anger and joy until he was safe and sound somewhere—then he could cuss and whoop and yell as much as he wanted.
But every time he loops back to the—beginning? end? end of the beginning, beginning of the end? Whatever—past, his panic would already be in motion. But why would he start screaming Ray's name in the first place? It tires him to remember now, he had been through (years and years and years of) repeating his failures after all. But Zack succeeds eventually if you could call coming up with the equivalent of morning afterimages from last night's dream...
He had been dreaming (he couldn't bother to look for a better word for it now so he won't). He frees himself at the expense of a hole on his side and rushes to find Ray before he bleeds out... actually succeeds. He leaves a trail of corpses to Ray's asylum, jumped off the roof of the van to vault the stone wall, kills more people, and then breaks the bars to her room and plunges the blade into her nape. Which she survives, bleeding and smiling. He lifts her up because she's so weak and helpless, the imbecile, and they fly off to the moon for a well-deserved nap. That's all he remembers, really... so why would he scream in terror every time he died?
Must be from the pain of dying. Yes, that could be it. His mouth would react before his nerves could even process the horrors of a full and permanent shutdown. And he said Ray's name every time because, well, she was what he wanted to go on living for the most. Zack learned from previous trials how to feel for the first dart as it pierces his neck. He realizes now that no matter how he dies a few moments prior, he is frozen a second into the mirage for every single turn: the tiniest moment of paralyzed helplessness. And that is all it takes for the first tranquilizer dart to hit him, a split-second. And there is absolutely no way to avoid it.
He wants to spit, to scream, to smash something, anything to smithereens. But Zack bites his tongue. Now that he has realized this, how could he change it the next time he resets?
He tastes blood in his mouth when someone calls him by name from beyond the bars. Zack waits with wide eyes, heart pumping. They might kill him out of impatience. He gets up with some difficulty in the sweaty cocoon around him and leans into the opening.
Father Abraham Grey looks at him in the dash mirror. "Hello, Zack."
The car sways on the road to nowhere. Zack doesn't know what to say. "You. You're dead."
"Your time is up, I'm afraid. Can you tell me why?"
Zack could feel the first effects of hyperventilation in his lungs now. "How, hah, hah, how the hell am I supposed to know?"
"You do, Zack. You just refuse to acknowledge it."
"Well, fuck yeah I do! That means giving up!"
Grey says nothing.
"Are you behind this? Are you, is this your revenge for us b-burning your church down? Are you upset?"
"I am here because you require me to be here now."
Zack's heart is rattling in his chest and the rest of his body shakes with him. If he pushed, he thought, he might be able to push his rage out as shit. Or something solidly similar. "What the sock-fucking cock does that mean?! I don't need you. I need Ray. I need to make her smile and kill her, and I need to stay alive so I can keep killing people. I need to keep my promise. I need to carry on. Where is she?"
"In an asylum, where they believe her to be mad for her attachment to you. She had been begging her, uh, caregivers to defend you from today's sentence as witness. To no avail as you may remember."
"They want me dead. It wouldn't have made a difference. The truth is all I have and nobody wants it."
Something moves behind the whites of Grey's eyes. "That is remarkably sharp of you Zack. Well done."
"...You're mocking me, aren't you?"
"There is no need for that."
Zack has to agree that there isn't. "All this time since I... How long have you been here?"
"Long enough."
Zack wants to break the bars over Grey's head one by one (there are four) but the person on the passenger's seat might kill him so he doesn't. This whole self-restraint business is going to be the death of him. "Why are you here? What's happening to me?"
"Like I said, Isaac: I am here because you require me to be here now. As for your second question, your plans refuse to carry themselves out because you are bound to your fate. It would take much more than a mortal to change it—divine intervention, perhaps. And while you had been my angel, you are not exempt to the laws of common men out of my jurisdiction."
"Bound to my what?" Too much all at once. It's not that Zack didn't hear. It's that he refuses to believe it.
"Today, you were tried for the kidnapping and assault on Rachel Gardner, and the murder of 64 people (including, of course, our three colleagues). You have pleaded not guilty for the first two crimes and the first two crimes only."
"I do not lie."
"They have charged you as guilty for all three. The sentence is death by lethal injection, to be carried out immediately. "
"Call that a trial when they just wanna hear themselves talk. Their mothers ruined a bunch of perfectly good assholes growing slobbering tongues in their mouths. I almost fell asleep."
"You shall, soon. And you will never wake again."
"Because... I deserve it?"
Grey stares blankly. "If that is your answer."
"That's what they said. Frankly, I don't get how any of this is my fault. People think it's right to keep people alive to hurt them, I think it's right to kill people to do the same thing. I'd get it if they killed me and someone tortured them back, but how come I'm the only one getting 'justice'?"
"It is not for us to ponder the ways of fate."
"You know what, Grey? Fuck you. Now, if you could kindly crash the car over at Ray's place and help me out, there's a good lad."
"I do not believe I made myself clear. Zack, this is the last time you are given the chance to die. You could either attempt an escape now and inevitably perish by someone else's hand. Or you could allow them to lead you away to the execution chamber and ask that you apply the injection yourself."
Zack looks at Grey for a long time. He doubts he (Zack) had ever spoken so much in such a short span of time but it has been a strange day. He feels... empty. The emptiness is so overwhelming that he decides it's easier to listen to the voices in his headthan to drown in his feelings for once.
He is going to die. To not win against those smug, happy liars in suits. He is never going to twist their faces into terror the way they did with his. Never going to kill anyone ever again, period. Never going to keep his word.
The car slows to a stop but Zack has never felt more nauseous in his life. "Is there... really no other way?"
"No. The purifying fires will not be denied."
"Why... why do I suddenly get a big fat zero—nothing , now—and not unlimited lives like before?"
"Because you have come to realize for yourself that judgment is inevitable. All that is left is to experience it for yourself."
"If I hadn't, would I still die?"
Grey waits.
The last time Zack had... lost to anyone had been to the heads of the orphanage when he obeyed all their whims in fear of banishment from his trashcan dinners. He made sure they never won against him again. And it had always been a goal at the back of his mind to do in the one who made him look like this—splotchy-skinned. He thought he had time to look for him, all the time in the world. Now...
It's a stalemate. Zack will lose so much and there is nothing he could do to prevent it. But he could still stop them from taking one last important thing.
"I'll do that. What you said about k-killing- taking my own life."
"Wise choice. You know, I was very fond of you, Zack. May God take you justly into His divine will."
"Fuck off, Grey."
"Fuck off I shall, then."
Zack takes his eyes from Grey's in the mirror to actually look at the back of his head. There is no one in the driver's seat.
Someone opens his container and he asks them to take off the straitjacket, he'll walk there. They watch him for any signs of deception and comply. Zack feels his body steam into the cold air and tries to clutch at his handcuffs. They tense at the motion but he does nothing more.
The walk is long. Maybe not if he still had a goal in mind other than preserving how sane he looks to others. He should think rather than give into the fear; that would mean a win for them. He thinks... he thinks... well, he can't think, actually. Except he has to get through with this. Past the hollow pit in his gut more potent than even hunger. Past the little boy's voice screaming muted in his head. His legs are jelly but he tries not to shake. The press clamor at the shut iron gates the way they do in all his trials but they are kept far from him as always. At least, Zack mutters, he'll be rid of them forever.
They go down into the cold in an elevator. Zack hates elevators. He hates them almost as much as the two metal rings nuzzling his sides and the hands vice like on his arms. Really, there's no need for that. The churning in his stomach evolves from a washing machine to a high speed blender. But even vomiting might incriminate him further so he will not risk it. Ironic how he is now the epitome of blankness on the way to his grave after living 20ish years based on impulses.
A hallway at last, then a cold room that smells artificial. There's just enough space for a folding chair, a table for one and a couple of guards. Someone asks him what he wants to have. He has to ask more direct questions to ascertain they are about to feed him his last meal.
Zack should... probably try to be sentimental but he keeps getting distracted by the chill where his sweat has dried. He thinks of peperoni pizza setting his mouth on fire and realizes thinking too long might trigger them to shoot. He asks only for a liter of coke: anything solid now is going to make him throw up.
He chugs it all down and is glad he couldn't focus on anything except the taste. Someone asks if he would like to speak with a priest before "moving on" and he says no thanks, priests scare the living shit out of me. Wouldn't want to go before my time.
Then it's back to the hallway with the same smell, stronger this time. Is Zack imagining things or are they clutching him a little less tightly? A turn to the right, then a door. A door with a heavy, heavy lock that clunks into place behind them. The room has no windows and not too much light. His death bed is metallic with black fastenings where his limbs would be.
"What are the straps for?"
They say people tend to panic in the last moment and make a mess.
"Oh. Well, I won't. I swear I won't. Please don't strap me in."
The people look at each other. Zack reckons he's been a good boy because they agree for some reason. He sits on the edge of the bed and misses the food processor in his belly. Now there's just nothing but swooshing air. He clears his throat.
"Doctor. I'll do it."
They stop their ministrations.
"If I do anything funny, you can put the gun to my head and kill me. But I really wanna be the one to off myself. No one else. Asides from all of you letting Rachel Gardner—that girl you said I hurt—kill herself or helping her do it, that's my death wish."
The doctor says nothing so Zack keeps looking at them with mismatched eyes. He remembers long ago it had been possible to communicate with his mother just by looking at her, that depending on his expression, she would feed him, bathe him, even hold him warm in her arms. That was before looking at her began to mean a beating and a shriek, as it had been until the end.
The doctor hands him the syringe. A clear inconspicuous liquid. This should be the point where his rage and indignation overpowers all else to fight for his life...
Zack watches his arms perform the tasks he assigned them: rolling up his sleeve, clenching his fist, slipping the needle in and pushing the poison with his thumb... He pulls it out without making a face at the mild sting. He thinks of Ray. She might kill herself the same way now that he wouldn't be able to keep his part of the deal. But where would she access drugs? Probably... nah, best not to think of it. Ray would find a way, she's Ray. And even if she isn't, she could still make ropes out of handkerchiefs or some other absurd thing, and knives are sold to anyone everywhere...
His knife...
The realness of it all kicks in. He is going to die. He has taken his life, the last of his possessions. And now he is dying, and they had better not shoot him before he finishes, cuz that would be the last straw and he might... just... cry...
For the first time in so long, Zack realizes he has lied. He said he wouldn't make a fuss but now he struggles to keep his soles to the floor. He shakes his head as they make threats but couldn't bring himself to speak; they should see he isn't being an ass about this: If he falls, he falls by his own volition, not by being comfy on a bed. Does he regret not having killed his...? No, that man and that woman don't deserve his dying thoughts. Does he regret not being to kill anymore, period? He couldn't really envision the joy of doing so right now even with a decade worth of memories, but there is a flash of the old man's face—would he greet Zack when they meet? Will they? But, but, but Zack isn't quite there yet, he's still breathing and he feel his heart in his chest and down to these final moments, he could think of only one reason to not want to leave...
'Tell Ray,' Zack chokes around the heat of his throat, the heat of his eyes, his stomach and heart and cheeks, 'tell Ray that I- I-'
He couldn't breathe. His legs give way. The last thing he is going to see is someone else's black pants, black socks, black shoes made of a dead creature's skin bereft of blood like his, his white shirt for the trial look smart Zack you'll need it when you meet Jesus oh and the trial too. They look down on him and don't move cause what's the sense he wants Ray to bleed, he wants Ray to smile...
His heart hurts at the final pump of blood and continues to hurt even more.
Things go numb. He is within his body but outside time. Everything smarts in the absence of life—no blood, no air, no nerves, no strength, and his flesh curls in itself to make the hurting smaller. Each inch his cells regress to death is a nightmare incarnate. He cannot think; he is nothing at all. He is only pain and a dead man with a dying body. Eternities pass in his state. He is eternity itself and there is nothing but horror: it is all he has ever been and will be.
The last thing to go is his sense of pain itself and when it does...
...
.
'ZACK!'
Zack blinked. He was lying on the floor of the execution chamber. Doctors, gunmen, guards, priests nowhere to be found. Something small threw itself at his ribs and he wheezed.
'Zack! Oh, Zack!'
'Pipsqueak! Watch it!'
'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry...'
For the nth time that... night? Week? Lifetime? ...Zack remembered he didn't need to breathe, he had been dead for who knows how long and everything was back to how it should be. But panting felt like the normal thing to do so he kept at it until he was grounded.
'What, what for? And where the hell did you run off to?'
'When you, when you stepped into the, the ambulance, truck, something, something pulled me back. When I blinked, I was in the city jail archives.'
"Where's that?"
"A place where, where all files on criminals are kept."
"Why the hell did you end up there and not with me? I told you to hold on to my jacket."
"I don't know, Zack. And I did."
The clamp on his gut was gone; he couldn't really tell it was there until it wasn't. As annoyed as he was over all the unnecessary trouble he had to go through, Zack supposed he had to be thankful to whatever it was that brought them together again. 'What have you been doing?'
Ray looked nothing short of shell shocked. 'Watching videos.'
'Pfft, that's all? That's all? I have, what, died more than the highest number I could count up, to which is...! anyway. I killed myself, Ray—shot up rat poison here,' he jabbed a finger at the crook of his arm, 'and had to go through my whole body shutting down. It was even worse than burning. And all you had been doing was watching... what, prison porn? I hope the fuck not, creep. You deserve a beating just so we're even. You mind?'
Ray bowed her head to weep.
'Hey. Stop that. I was jo-'
'I saw everything, Zack. I read your files, talks with your lawyer, the trials the, the interrogations... And then, ah, I ran out of files and the door led me here.'
'Then what the hell you crying for?'
'They, they h, h... h-hurt you. For things you didn't do when all you did was save me. For, for lies, Zack.'
Zack stared at Ray shaking with... empathy, wasn't it? Who taught him that word? Something about feeling other people's feelings on their behalf. The lack of which apparently led him to kill like the freak he was. Huh. He had always thought emotions were a stupid thing to have and can't even begin to imagine what a pain it would be hauling around other people's too. He supposed even a genius like Ray wasn't immune to being common. If everyone had to have it, it should at least come with an on-off switch...
'Ray, can you, ah... explain why you're doing this? I'd look for the answer myself but my brain's just been fried through eternity.'
'I... I...'
I... I. Wait. Zack breathed through his nose. 'Do you think they hurt me because of you?'
Ray's head shot up, eyes wide. 'I- I'm not making this about me, Zack.'
'I didn't say you were. And while we're at it, neither did I when it was happening. Not to anyone, anyway.'
Ray looked mildly ashamed. 'Zack...'
Considering everything... ah, whatever. But did she have to act up now? 'Ray. They hurt me because they wanted to. That's all. You're not that important. And don't start about how I had to get myself caught so they can get you to a hospital that night. They didn't have to catch me to do that. And before you look for ways to twist this around, let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.'
He opened the door to, surprise, surprise, the elevator they left who knows how long ago. Zack can't bring himself to care. The grills shut behind them unthreateningly and he punches the lone button on the wall. The execution chamber disappears above them.
He wanted to... ramble, somehow. It was an itchier desire than bloodlust but probably only because he wasn't used to feeling it. At the same time, Ray was pissing him off, and if he tried talking right now it might annoy him even more and... ah, fuck, it hurt to think and feeling was a pain. He had just survived an infinite number of deaths. The devil should cut him some slack.
Zack scratched his neck, bounced his knee and tried to keep gritting his teeth. Ray for some reason looked incredibly put together all of a sudden.
'I,' she ventured. 'I do not pity you, Zack.'
'Try it and I'll kill you. Or keep you alive, whichever's worse.'
'Of course. I just... I'm sorry you had to go through all of that. So much pain with... well. Not much to show for.'
Zack... froze. Probably. 'Say that again.'
'Hm?'
'What you just said.'
'Er, "I'm sorry you had to go through all-'
'Sorry'?
Zack's throat hitched a little. He's not scared or angry with what had happened anymore since it was all just a lie anyway. He didn't get the point of the entire exercise except maybe for punishment, but it's not really punishment if it doesn't last forever, does it? No use kicking a dead man awake. But Ray is and she just told him...
'Um. Yeah. Let's not... uh... I wanna break something. But I can't, can't I.'
'Er. I guess you could. Rip your jacket to shreds?'
'Hell no. Might need it. These don't come cheap, you know. Brat.'
'Um.'
'You, uh, you wanna hear about how I got here? Like really got here?' Say yes, damn you, otherwise, I'll...
'Oh, yes. You did it without help, didn't you?'
Zack felt a smile coming.
'Yeah. What's it called when you do something big you always knew you had in you? Proud, yeah? Well, I don't think I've been prouder than busting you out of there on nothing but my dumb ass.'
'Me too. Tell me everything.'
In real life—in the real past with the two of them breathing and apart and all that—the plan succeeded almost as perfectly as Zack wants to. He had considered he probably couldn't avoid getting injured along the way and he did: a bullet to his stomach as he struggled with his wardens hijacking the car. But unlike in the "dreams", he wasn't tranquilized and even asked a passerby for directions to Ray's before leading the police on a long chase down the high way. Considering how he got out with his limbs intact, his formerly nonexistent driving instincts had to be pretty good.
'...then I vaulted the wall from the roof of the van, sniffed you out and you know the rest.'
'Amazing... all without reading. I couldn't have managed myself.'
'Yeah, you would've went poof at Phase 2. Dead as, well, us.'
They had cozied down and sat cross-legged on the floor of the elevator. Their descent showed no signs of stopping, and he had let her hold his hand again sometime ago.
Ray ventured mildly. 'I... I suppose I shouldn't ask how you got here here, then.'
Shit. Was he that obvious? 'No?'
'I won't. I just... Zack, I just want to know I hope it didn't hurt.'
He bit his lip. 'I mean me too, but... why?'
'Why what?'
'Why'd you hope I don't get caught? It's not you getting pegged by life.'
Ray looked mildly surprised. 'Well. Can you explain why you get angry when people feel emotions? How happy you feel when you take that away from them forever?'
'Uh... I don't have infinity like last time to think so I'll say no.'
'Huh?'
'Don't change the topic, idiot. Get to the point.'
'Oh. Well. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's just something I can't avoid for... a lot of reasons hard to explain. I... probably shouldn't enforce them on you, though.'
Zack frowned.
'Can't avoid feeling someone else's hurt? Are you insane? That's impractical as fu-'
They didn't notice the light change and startled at the brakes kicking in. Zack was up and ready, snarling with his hands balled into fists. It's so hard not to scream and threaten invisible things when it's all you want to do... Behind the elevator grills was a cosy room well into the afternoon, with a stern-looking desk at the center. He felt Ray trembling.
'Wassup?' he whispered. 'You sense something? Step back and I'll-'
'No,' said Ray. Her voice shook from somewhere deep, before it left her mouth and made noise. She gripped his jacket tighter. 'This is my therapist's office. We're back in my asylum.'
to be continued
A/N: on god. this is two years overdue. i was only worrying about the introductory chapters to my thesis then...
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