Chapter 12
Door 1
"When can we get our memories back?" Willow asked. Usually when they went somewhere, it was outside with beautiful scenery. This time, they were in a cozy sitting room with plush seating.
"Not for a bit." Mara said.
"Can't remember why we're here in this world." Eddie mumbled.
Mara sighed. "I'm not sure we ever really knew. I mean, I doubt it but I can't be sure because I can't... I can't remember."
"Did we write it down?" Patricia asked. Mara looked through the notebook and shook her head. "Nope. We theorized who may have brought us but never why we're here."
Patricia said. "Well what's stopping us?"
Eddie pointed to his head. "We're missing pieces. Can't get the full picture."
Willow shrugged. "We can try."
Mara yawned. All of the acting- acting happy, acting like she had no memory- was exhausting. She pulled out her pen and went to a blank page. "Okay, so what do we know?"
"Wherever the location of the four door room is, we likely didn't go there by our own free will." Eddie put out.
"So we were kidnapped?" Willow asked.
Patricia looked thoughtful. "I think I was once kidnapped. Don't remember the details."
Mara wrote down kidnapped.
Patricia continued to think. "Wasn't someone else kidnapped?"
"Well someone was certainly missing one year." Mara remembered. "Happy... Cheery.."
"I feel none of those things." Eddie said. Mara shook her head.
"Her name." she flipped and looked at the list of names on the page. "Joy!" she exclaimed. Joy was kidnapped. Mara wrote in her notes. "Why was Joy kidnapped?"
Patricia shrugged. "Cause she was the one?"
"The One what?" Willow prompted.
Patricia groaned loudly and viciously. "I don't know! The one! The One they wanted! The important one! The-"
"Chosen one!" Eddie exclaimed. "She was the Chosen One!"
"Right!" Patricia exclaimed.
Mara looked confused. "I definitely have no memory of that."
Patricia continued. "But she also wasn't! The Chosen One that is. It was... was... the American!"
Eddie paused. "Me?"
Patricia shook her head. "A girl."
"KT?" Willow suggested."
"Nina! It had to be Nina, we didn't even know KT back then!" Mara exclaimed. "Joy was kidnapped because they thought she was the Chosen One but it turned out to be Nina!"
She quickly scribbled this into her notes. Willow suddenly looked a little more lively than usual. "Maybe we do have the puzzle pieces! They're just scattered between us! What one person forgot, another person knows!"
"What else?" Mara said eagerly.
"You're not the Chosen One but you're something. I... I don't know what but you're something." Patricia said to Eddie. Eddie shrugged and looked at the other two. They looked just as lost.
Mara tapped her pen anxiously. "More. More."
Willow began humming. They all stared at her and then she got it. "There is just one thing you need, in the place of rest you will succeed!"
Patricia and Mara stared at her incredulously. "What does that mean?"
Eddie looked like someone hit him in the head with a frying pan. "Joy, Patricia-you, and the other two! They're... they're... I don't know what they are but they're-"
"Descendants of the exhibition!" Patricia slapped her head. And the guy... the guy who owned the house, name?"
"Frobisher-Smyth?" Willow suggested as Mara was quickly writing things down.
Eddie looked excited. "KT's great grandpa!"
Mara looked at the list. "So if Joy was kidnapped because she was something, and half of the people on the list are some things too, maybe we've all been kidnapped because we're all something!"
She wrote down what she said and stared at it.
"It's not a great hypothesis." She said. "But it's..."
"Something." Willow replied.
Door 3
Mick was on his knees violently vomiting for the third time that week. KT rubbed his back soothingly. They'd been mostly eating berries since they've come into door 3, especially for the past week as there had been very little meat, so the vomit was a horrible red color which made it look like blood. Mick's throat screamed in agony and he blinked away tears.
"'You'll get used to it.'" Mick recalled what Anajah said every time this happened, which was often. "'You're just adjusting is all'. How long is it supposed to take us to adjust? We've been here for a year!"
He wiped his mouth and looked at KT, who looked pale and sick herself. "Is it just me, or is it getting worse?"
Mick laid down on the grass far away from his mess and sighed. "Are we doing the right thing?"
KT sat next to Mick on the grass. "They'll all die if we don't help them."
"They'll probably die either way." Mick pointed out. "When we came, both sides were pretty even. We keep losing people."
KT frowned. "And they probably shouldn't lose anymore."
Mick didn't say anything for a while.
"How do you feel about it?" KT asked. "If this is wrong, you should be able to know it."
"All I know is my head hurts, I'm always dizzy, and I really hate puking." Mick said. "How do you feel about it?"
"I..." KT began. "I think that our intentions are good. We just want to help Anajah. I mean, she nursed us back to..." she looked at the vile that came from Mick's body. "Health."
"Fabian came here KT. Fabian's here. My best friend, who I thought I'd never see again. He came to rescue us."
"And we threw him down a well." KT said slowly. Her breathing became heavier and, fast as lightning, she turned and retched up anything she had left in her stomach. After catching her breath, coughing a bit, and wiping her mouth she sat back down. "My head was particularly fuzzy that day."
"Well... we weren't going to starve him. That's why we took watch the day he escaped. We said we wouldn't get involved but look at us." Mick said. "I mean, it's not just us, Nina too."
"They're feeding her false information." KT said. "She burnt down a hut!"
Mick frowned. "I just don't understand why."
"Because she's been fooled." KT said.
They stayed quiet for a while. "Still remember Anajah's speech."
The speech Anaja gave after that bloody day had been mostly in their native language. While they didn't know what she was saying, the last three lines stayed with them.
"Oni su otišli predaleko," KT remembered. "Ubijene žene i djeca bez krivnje."
"Pridružite mi braćo i sestre, pa njihova smrt će biti osvećen." Mick continued.
"Krv mora imati krv." They said together. Mick chuckled. "It was quite a speech. Got us involved and we didn't even know what she was saying."
KT let out a wet sob and Mick turned to her just as a tear rolled off of her cheek. "I miss home, Mick. I want to go home."
Someone responded, but it wasn't Mick. "That's why we're here."
They looked up, and standing there was Fabian and Nina.
Door 4
It was obvious The Commander knew Amber didn't work on the jobs. It was why he made her go alone. Not always, but sometimes. Whenever it happened, they stuck to the original plan. Amber sat tight, and they showed up sooner or later to handle it for her.
Joy still invaded her thoughts all of the time. She's been there now for nearly two months. She's seen death in every single way, and most of them had been at the hands of her friends. But Joy was on another level that day. She had this look in here eye... it was haunting. Two weeks later, she still thought about it.
But the guilty, broken look that replaced it after she saw how Amber looked at her was even worse. So Amber made an effort to try to show her that she wasn't freaked by what she saw, even though she was. She really, really was.
So there she was, waiting outside of a small house closer to the city than she would have liked. Each house was connected to the other with no space. She could see the client and potential victim moving in the upstairs room by the window. She was not thinking about Joy. She was not thinking about Joy. She was not thinking about Joy's face when-
A knock on the window startled her. She rolled it down and Joy stared back at her. "Okay?"
Amber nodded. "Just... do your job."
Joy nodded and walked towards the house. Jerome and Alfie were right behind her. The way they walked up so casually, it was almost as if nothing were wrong. Joy knocked on the door, and they waited. Amber saw as their client... Mr. Allen Hickory, walked down the steps. As soon as he got a glimpse of what was on the other side of the door, he tried to slam it on them, but Jerome knocked it open so hard Amber thought it would fly off the hinges. Allen ran and they followed. Apart from the occasional bump coming from inside, there was no sound.
Until Joy flew out of the window, shattering glass everywhere, fell three stories and landed on the pavement. Her head hit the step with an ugly sounding crack and Amber knew they'd be down one for a while.
They seemed to be having more trouble with Allen, which was understandable as Allen was very big. Why would the Commander give her this job alone? He probably knew what they'd been doing when he gave her a job separately from the others. She saw in the window that Jerome was fighting him and then was thrown against the wall. Finally, Amber heard the unmistakable sound of a gunshot. No, several gunshots. She counted ten.
Then, radio silence. Where's Alfie? Amber thought. And her question was answered when both Allen and Alfie came tumbling out the door, rolling past Joy and tumbling through her pool of blood. Allen tried to make a run for it, with a phone in his hand. When Alfie stood up Amber gasped. He was covered in blood from head to toe, like in that old Carrie movie Amber watched once. He was walking with a limp, and couldn't run after Allen as Allen got in his car. There was something sticking out of Alfie's back that he tried desperately to reach for but couldn't get.
Suddenly he fell to his knees and Amber saw that it was a knife in his back. His head turned and his eyes met Amber's just as he fell over, and remained still.
Amber looked at the scene. Joy was down, Alfie was down, she couldn't see Jerome but she guessed he was down too. Allen was starting his car.
"Wake up." she said to herself. "Someone wake up."
She glanced at the window. Jerome would wake up. They take gunshots all the time.
But not ten. He'd have to heal every single one. Joy lost a lot of blood, and she would have to replenish it. Alfie couldn't heal if the knife was still in his back.
Amber thought desperately, maybe this one time they can let him go. It was one person, The Commander would understand... right?
"He's a scary man" Joy's words came back in her mind. "We know what happens if we don't do what he says."
"What happens?"
They had looked so weak, scared... tortured.
Amber acted quickly, getting the gun out of the glove box. Allen Hickory pulled off towards town as Amber got out of her car. She ran to the front of the car and Allen pressed on the brakes so hard, she could see the track of the tires on the ground. She went around to the front, forced open the door and pointed the gun at his head.
He looked her up and down, likely wondering who she was and where she came from. However, all of The Commanders' workers looked the same. They were adolescents clad in dark with hard looks on their faces. Allen seemed to be weighing his options. He could press gas and accelerate right there and then, and if he were fast enough he would make it. If Amber was faster, well it was self-explanatory.
Long seconds ticked by, and Amber watched him make a decision. Four sounds followed this decision. The roar of an engine. The crack of a gun. The impact of a crash. And a low strangled sob.