A/N: Incidentally, last chapter was actually the first one I wrote for this book in the series. The preceding chapters were all written several months into the project, after some pretty significant things decided they wanted to happen later on.
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17. Zack – Captive
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Nothingness swirled like blankets of dark. Black upon black; shadow in shadow; murky depths plummeting down and up and out and in and everything in between. Brief pockets of light were exactly that: brief and painful and no … no … no …
Something hit from time to time. Numbness gave way to things. Emotions? What were they? Swirls of something sparkly and different. A variety of swirling that wrapped and caressed but ultimately left. Only the darkness was eternal. Emotions cut in from elsewhere, calling in thin whispery voices for him to swim to the surface, but the depths always pulled him back in the end.
No …
Who was that? Himself? Someone else?
Have to … got to … get out. Have to … save …
Threads of thoughts from before the darkness clung like spider webs. He reached, but his grasp came back clotted and unsatisfied. He was supposed to be doing something. The thought grew, cajoled by the whisperings. He was supposed to be … not in the darkness. Out in the bright, shining, painful light, where things hurt and he hurt and everyone else hurt and screamed and burned and bled and died and no … no … no …
… he lived each day to its fullest because he knew he wasn't just living for himself …
What?
… never let anything get him down … knew his life wasn't just for him anymore …
Who?
… had to go on living for each life he'd taken, make sure every day counted, otherwise it would've been a … a betrayal …
Familiar. So familiar. Reaching … reaching …
… all their hopes and dreams … their futures … they were his the moment they stopped breathing. His life was …
Fading. Come back! Come back, please! The darkness grappled, tugging, pulling, sucking back into its own depths like a cannibalistic whirlpool. He sagged into its embrace.
… his life is their legacy …
Come back. Please … come … back …
… Their living legacy…
The words followed him, wedging in him like a single speck of light as a swirl of numbing nothingness closed over him once more.
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To Be Continued …
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