Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.
Chapter Sixty-Five: Hektor Outside Troy
April 25th, 2012 3:00 PM
Relieved, Chloe got to her feet as the end of class bell finished ringing. She took a moment to stretch, shift her bag up onto her shoulder and flash a thumbs up to Steph beside her. The girl's response was a brief smile before gesturing for her to go on ahead. Steph liked to hang about for a couple of minutes after class to go over her homework and Ms. Grant was always ready, willing and able. Chloe lifted a hand as she passed the teacher's desk. She received a warm enough smile in response and then turned toward the door to the classroom. The first one out of it, Chloe might normally have held the door open a second or two and let someone get it for the people behind them, but she did not this time. There were bigger fish to fry.
Someone, it seemed, had been waiting on her. Eliot was dressed much the same as usual, though at the moment he was slouched forward, hands in his jeans and looking straight up at her. Chloe blinked, stopping just outside of the door when it shut behind her. This seemed to be some sort of cue for Eliot, because he stood up straighter, his face the picture of worry and concern and gulped visibly and audibly. Then he approached, one foot in front of the other quickly, right hand outstretched for her. Considering they had not so much as spoken in a long time, Chloe did not care much for the idea of him touching her and raised her hands, palm out to caution him to stay back.
Her general plan had been to get out of the room, go find her girls and scrap all deep thought in favor of helping Max choose her outfit for her Saturday date. After that, an evening with Steph and Pompidou had seemed in order considering how she felt generally tired. She hadn't even planned on thinking too deeply about the whole 'Max and Victoria going on a date' thing. She had not intended to have to stop Eliot in his tracks. Visibly upset, the boy responded to her signal by pausing, face reddening in embarrassment. For a moment he looked down and then shook his head hard. It had been a couple of years since she heard Eliot speak to her in anything resembling a calm voice. Even now, it was tense.
"Chloe," the boy started, sounding as if he wanted to say something but wasn't sure where to begin. When he shook his head a sense of urgency poured into his face. Okay, I'm starting to get weirded out.
"What do you want?" she asked him, cooly. Oddly enough, he looked a little relieved at her response.
"Chloe, you've got to come with me, now."
"Why in the name of hell would I do that?" Chloe thought that to be a reasonable question considering some of their more recent interactions. Probably her favorite had to be the time he and Nathan chased Max off from the wrap party for the play last November as if they owned the place, yelling about 'fucking dykes' like the three of them weren't welcome. Though his voice was all helpfulness and desperation, it made no sense and did nothing to stop her from scoffing at him. If he thought they were going to go off alone somewhere to talk, he was nuts.
"Look," he started, tripping quickly over his words, "I-I don't know what to do. We have to get to them before Nathan hurts her."
"Hurts who?" Chloe's voice came out low, deadly, dangerous even to her own ears, a warning of imminent pain and violence.
"Nathan and Max left the photography classroom together a while ago." That didn't make any sense. What it did do, though, was set adrenaline pumping nonetheless. She felt the urgency of the words in the immediate dropping and twisting of her stomach, in the way her arms grew rigid at her sides and the slight tension growing like a knot at the back of her neck. Chloe looked at Eliot Hampden. Once upon a time a younger Chloe had made a few bad choices when it came to this boy. She had attempted to write those out of her life long ago and him out not long after that. It was insane to her that she had once trusted him that much and now, now she looked at him warning her that one of the girls she loved was in mortal peril and all she could think was that he was lying.
"How would you even know that?" Chloe asked him, staring standoffishly at the boy. His deep green eyes rose to meet hers for the first time in a very long time and she saw simply emptiness in them. Hell, if she didn't know better she would have assumed he was high as a kite. Whatever happened next depended on his response.
"I know because Nathan told me his plan last night, but – but I can't let him go through with it. He's gone totally fucking off his nuts and I didn't sign up for this, I never signed up for any of this. I just wanted to be his friend, I didn't want any of this." This came out in a jumbled rushed mess, self-pitying and more than a little pathetic. She wasn't sure why, but instead of garnering any sympathy from her, the boy's words just made her feel like she was watching someone kick a puppy. Eliot Hampden was a little weasel who had cozied up to Nathan Prescott despite the boy being unhinged and violent and had even come back to his side once after having the shit beaten out of him during one of Nathan's breakdowns. Admittedly, Chloe and Rachel had caused that particular breakdown as a side effect of a petty revenge plot for the two of them ruining Rachel's old jacket, but still.
"Didn't sign up for what?" she hissed at the boy. Despite herself, she was getting angry at his fucking presence. What was worse was that this anger did not motivate her to inherently discredit what he was saying. He sounded genuinely cowardly in the moment, as if maybe he was worried about getting into trouble for his part in helping Nathan in whatever gambit the boy was at work on. He always was a little cowardly shit, Chloe thought as she looked at the boy in front of her. For some reason, she thought it in Rachel's voice.
"Hurting someone," Eliot replied. Chloe swallowed. "We have to stop him."
"I'm getting Rachel and then you're taking us to him," Chloe told the boy, pulling her phone from her pocket as the door to the classroom opened and emitted one Warren Graham, followed by Brooke Scott. The two passed by, giving Chloe concerned, confused looks. Eliot raised his hands to her, as if to get her attention or stop her.
"You don't get it," he told her, more urgently still. "They would have left like ten minutes ago. She's in trouble. We don't have time." Ten minutes ago? Chloe cursed out loud and shoved her phone back into her pocket, gesturing toward the hall. If Nathan had really had ten minutes alone with Max, there was no telling precisely what he might have done. Her anger was beginning to turn to fear. Eliot turned without another word, his face still contorted in a kind of obsequious concern and made for the nearest door rather quickly. I must be losing my fucking mind, Chloe told herself. Then again, she had no choice. Max was the one with the ability to time travel, not Chloe. If Nathan was out for serious revenge, he might have already gotten it. And if this is some kind of prank, Eliot's never going to know what it's like to fuck anyone else, because I'll make sure IT doesn't work anymore.
The brunet with the buzzcut not at all dissimilar to Nathan's own led them out of the hall and into the air of a fairly warm day. Chloe mused on the idea as she followed that the two of them looked like skinhead rejects. She wondered if they realized how on the nose it was that people who looked down on everyone unlike them, mistreated women and in at least one case sexually assaulted people whenever they felt like it were going full on skinhead. Did Eliot even have enough humanity left to see the irony in what he was? Chloe shook the thought from her head as Eliot turned not toward the dormitories or the main path but to the back of the school building.
The thing that bothered her the most about all of this wasn't the idea that maybe Eliot had enough of a conscience left to change his stripes when he realized Nathan was going to hurt someone. It was the idea that Max would have left with Nathan at all. What could he have said or done to make her act so stupid? Why would Victoria or Kate have let her? They wouldn't, she thought, starting to get a bad feeling about following Eliot another step further. The problem was that there remained another option, that Nathan had threatened to hurt Max or someone else if she had not come with him. Since he apparently had no problem pulling guns on people, threatening to shoot someone in the room if Max did not come with him didn't seem out of the realm of possibility.
Eliot had already come to a stop at their destination when Chloe's spidey senses tingled strongly enough that she decided she had played this out as far as she was going to without Rachel. Assuming Max was in trouble, which Chloe had no proof of, Max wouldn't want them walking into a trap. Eliot was paused in front of a small, blank black door set into the back of the building. It did not lead into the school proper but Chloe thought she remembered Samuel once telling her that it was another route into the boiler room, once used to bring coal in from the outside. If Nathan threatened her with a gun, what would have stopped her from rewinding back to this morning at breakfast and warning us?
The boy did not seem to realize at first that he had lost her trust, or that she was kicking herself for being stupid enough not to come to that final realization before even leaving the building. Outside it was a beautiful spring day. Behind that door, Chloe thought, was some kind of hell. Eliot stood transfixed, staring at the door for a second as if it held all the secrets to life and the universe, as if he could open it with his mind. Just as he reached out for the handle, Chloe turned and bolted. She knew instinctively that she was faster than Eliot, that she could get away, go find Rachel, Max, Steph and put an end to whatever was happening here. What she did not know instinctively, what she had not expected was that Nathan was not waiting for her downstairs in the boiler room. When Chloe turned to run, she caught sight of the bright green grass, the few spring flowers spouting and the leafy tops of trees before she saw scarred, pale skin and a familiar looking buzz cut. She was glared at by one organic eye and one artificial one and then she felt pain and shortly after that, very little else. Chloe's eyes closed.
When she opened them again she was not on school grounds and it was no longer the bright sunny day she had been considering only moments ago. Instead, the familiar and comfortable sight of her back yard, the one in which she had countless memories of sitting out back, smoking while Pompidou ran and played, was the first thing she saw. Judging by the light in the area around her, it was somewhat near dusk. The first thing Chloe did was to sit up and pick a blade of grass from her hair, wondering tiredly what had happened to her beanie before the ambush she had just been a part of came back to her. She rolled over once onto her stomach to look behind her. There was no sign of Nathan or Eliot and certainly no sign of anyone else, either. Slowly but surely, she pushed to her feet. At first, she thought that something was wrong with her eyes: the world seemed to be a little hazy.
Did I get hit over the head? Chloe wondered to herself. The grass seemed poorly defined, the fence around her like a real life low res photo. Chloe turned toward the house to see that it, too, just looked off. Either way, if she was here there was all the chance in the world that Nathan and Eliot were inside, trashing the place or worse. Chloe angled for the back door, squinting to see through it into the kitchen beyond. Unfortunately the moment she did, the bottom of the door lifted from its position and began to rise up, dragging the suddenly off-color wall with it, more and more of the wall than physically possible. After a second, there was no door. I'm not awake, Chloe told herself as she turned to observe the fence at the edge of the yard change colors and then begin to grow, as if it was a living thing. There was no wind, despite the slight sway of the pale blue grass.
When she reached out for the edges of a dream, her headache only intensified. Most distressingly of all, she could not feel the edges, those boundaries only her brain seemed to be able to observe. Chloe looked down at herself, taking in her outfit and then realized that whatever her motivation for doing so had been, it did not matter. If she was asleep she could gain no useful information, not from something like what she was wearing or even where she was. Maybe her only hope was to find out what the parts of her brain that ached and tried to stay silent and undisturbed were thinking. I was dumb, I trusted Eliot, just a second or two too long. Nathan was behind me, he knocked me on my ass when I tried to get away. We were by the boiler room. I could be down there. I need to figure out what to do. I need help.
Chloe brought help, through sheer force of will. As if she were dreaming, when she called up the people in her mind, they came at once. That was not the right way to put it, either. It was more like they had always been there. She noticed Steph first. Steph looked as like herself as ever, though her left arm was crossed in front of her and her right rested atop it, reaching up to stroke her chin. The look on the other artist's face seemed to say that Chloe had really stepped in it this time. Next came Rachel, fierce, tall, proud. She did not give Chloe any grief when she came into being a few feet away from Steph. Instead, she looked like a soldier awaiting orders with an eagerness that was not playful, was not fun or cute. Max, deadly calm and quiet was at Rachel's side, grasping the girl's right hand in her left. Max was dressed in the long ruined grey hoodie she used to favor and her messenger bag was slung carelessly across the front of her, resting roughly above her right knee.
Max looked ready to pick up a baseball bat. Behind the both of them, the man who she had first seen in her dreams when this strangeness all began was beaming at her from between and over their shoulders. Chloe did not know what this version of her father thought there was to smile about, but he did and it was an oddly comforting sight, or it would be if he and the others weren't all shifting, shaking, distorting oddly like the rest of the world around her. She noticed Kate and Brooke last. Kate's hands were clasped behind her as she stood in her usual warmer weather outfit, a small, serene look on her face. Brooke on the other hand was settled more like Steph only there was nothing playful about the look on her face. This was serious Brooke, this was let's get down to business Brooke. This was, 'I'm ready to roll initiative' Brooke. Chloe knew that she had no need to tell them what was happening because they were all her, simply embodied in the people she knew and loved. That did not stop her.
"I need to figure out what to do. Nathan and Eliot might have me out there. I got caught. I think I'm in trouble." The ground beneath her feet flattened, became two dimensional like it was the floor of some cheap video game jungle. Chloe wasn't sure what else to say, so instead she tried to focus on the wavering phantasms of her friends, her family, her girls. It was easy to tune the rest of the warped, mercurial world out, especially because she could not really understand where she was except that she was not really sleeping, was she? Chloe tried to stay focused on the people in front of her but the moment she considered the thought that she was not dreaming at all, the yard, the house, the fence and even the sky faded away into the background, a background she realized had always been there, pale and translucent over her vision of her back yard. It was the familiar foggy gray haze of that world through which she accessed dreams when she willingly went looking for them. There, she existed with the people she had summoned and that was where she really was.
"They did take you," Max told her. "You're sitting up, somewhere cool and a little damp. Your feet are tied to front legs of the chair. Your arms are tied behind you, too low of an angle. It hurts." Strangely, at this last, the Max in front of her seemed to sound as if she were truly in pain and a little scared. After a second, Steph began to rub at her wrists as if testing whether or not they hurt her. Chloe wasn't sure what to make of that. Is it possible I'm aware of this subconsciously, and so my brain is trying to tell me what it knows about the outside world? Max scoffed at her, as if she could read Chloe's thoughts. Then again, one did not need to read one's own thoughts, did they? "No, one does not," Max insisted, sounding a little frustrated as she worked her left shoulder round and around. The faux messenger bag moved, bouncing with her movement.
"They fucked up," Steph declared suddenly. At this, the girl stopped rubbing at her wrists. She looked down at them as if in delight and as Chloe watched, familiar bruises formed around either one, as if David had grabbed Steph and squeezed at her wrists tightly as he once had Chloe's. "The ropes are just tight enough to keep your hands together but you can totally work out of them. It's gonna take time and effort not to get caught and it could get really uncomfortable, but you've got this." Chloe did not feel as if she had anything. If what they were saying was true – if what she was saying was true – then she was trapped somewhere cool and damp, like say, an old boiler room with at least Nathan Prescott, maybe Eliot, too. The forms in front of her began to fade as Chloe shivered in fear at the idea of being at the mercy of either one of those boys.
"You have to stay strong, kiddo. If someone noticed you go off with Eliot, you'll be okay. You just have to stay strong until they come looking." Chloe tried to focus on her father's voice but it sounded oddly distant and possibly even wrong, incorrect. Still, the focus was enough that everyone arrayed in front of her stabilized, or at least as much as ghosts swaying and spreading out like ectoplasm blown around in an invisible breeze could stabilize. Her father's shade was not the only one who had something to say on the topic.
"You know we'll always look for you," Max promised her. "We'll find out soon one way or the other and I'll use my powers. You'll be back to us at any moment." Not if I die. You can't save someone from death, remember? The thing was, Nathan was sick and vindictive. She had a feeling that even if he intended to kill her it was going to be after doing all manner of unpleasant things. Then again, maybe if she screamed, someone would hear her and come running. If he doesn't have me gagged.
"He doesn't," Rachel promised her, trying to make her tone comforting, calm, as if they were talking about the weather and not the state of Chloe's waking, kidnapped body. "If I have to burn the school itself to the ground, I will get you back. I would do it in a heartbeat." That sounded to Chloe like the truth, as everything else they had all said so far had done.
"Rachel is way more dangerous than even she knows," Brooke suddenly chimed in, as if to support what the blonde had just said. "She can do great things. Terrible, yes, but great." Chloe sighed and turned to take a look at her assembled self.
"If you could not quote Harry Potter at me at a time like this, that'd be great. This is serious."
"That one's your fault," Kate told her, in a voice that sounded almost like a hum. "We're you after all."
"How can I stall for time?" she asked the lot of them.
"Talk to them," Steph told her. "Get him talking. Even if he's angry, getting him to talk will buy you time. He likes to talk about himself."
"Absolutely," Max agreed suddenly, sounding that familiar 'I'm Going to Step up to the Plate' kind of eager. "Just let him rage out."
"Everyone likes to talk about themselves when they think they've won," her father chimed in from behind Max and Rachel. "Nathan most of all."
"You can play Nathan. He's shaky, unstable. You and he may be alone down there, but to him, you're probably one of a couple people pissing him off. He's been hallucinating, talking to someone since he got you down there." How much do I know subconsciously? Chloe asked herself. "And yes, Eliot's not there. It's just Nathan and whoever or whatever he sees and hears."
"He might drug you," Brooke warned her. "If he's got the stuff and it looks like you're a handful but you have to be like Max. you have to fight it .You've got to get your hands loose. If you can just get your hands loose, you'll be okay. Just don't slip out until you've got your chance, because he will catch you. He's paranoid as fuck right now."
"And don't forget, he's armed." At this last, Chloe looked back at the faux Max and her rather common sense warning. Chloe did not think she could ever forget the first time she had seen Nathan point a gun at the real Max. I really am not dreaming.
"You never were," Rachel insisted.
"Think about it like this," Max continued the girl's thought as the others began to crowd closer around the two of them. "There's a silver lining."
"What's that?"
"If you get out of this you get to try to figure out what the hell is happening right now. Sounds like a new part of your ability." Almost as soon as Max answered, Chloe saw movement in the distance, in the hazy grey background. Her head jerked around to follow it. What might have been ten or fifteen feet away in the real world was the thin form of the brunette who had just finished talking, Max. Only, instead of looking like the Max in front of her, the girl looked like the Max she had eaten lunch and breakfast and had English with. She was definitely dressed in the same outfit: a pale tee and a flannel overshirt stolen from Rachel, a pair of ragged jeans and her hippie sandals from Los Angeles.
This new Max did not notice Chloe or the people arrayed in front of her. While much about her was kind of blurry and hazy like the people in front of Chloe, she was solid, a single shape and she seemed to be gliding in the void, arms outstretched and eyes shut. A few seconds later, a few 'feet' further away from Chloe, this Max vanished. As to how far she had floated, Chloe could not really guess. It was hard to measure distance in a world without any real points of comparison, without anything by which to gauge size. Every second she was distracted in here was another second that Nathan was left out in the real world with her body, but this was the first thing she had seen in the void between dreams which did not act as if it had come from her own mind. She did not know what it was or why it looked like Max. To be fair, before today I've never seen anything in here.
"What the fuck was that?" Chloe asked the others. Her father shrugged, an almost mindless look on his face. Of course they wouldn't know: she didn't. Almost the same place she had first spotted the other Max, three more forms came into existence. Like the first one, they did not interact with her or the shades in front of her. They did not seem to notice her. Max, the same Max was one of those three forms. Her hands were outstretched to either side, head bowed in an almost uncanny mimicry of prayer. Holding onto each of her hands, as well as each others, were a Chloe and a Rachel. As far as Chloe could remember, at least she was wearing the same outfit she had put on that morning, right down to the dark beanie covering most of her bright locks. That other Max's mouth continued to move as if in prayer and then she stopped talking, shut her eyes and was still. She could not say she remembered for sure about Rachel's outfit, but it looked about right. The three of them hovered there on the spot for a second before again, vanishing into the background of the grey dream haze. The cool confusion Chloe felt was cut through by a snarky voice in front of her.
"Guess we get to figure that out too," the shade of Steph snarked.
"Do you guys think you, the real you, know how much you mean to me?" Chloe asked them, getting the feeling that she had nothing more she could do here except wait to see more apparitions in the darkness which she did not understand and which made her uncomfortable. There was no use to it. No matter what she did, the outside world was going to continue to spin and she was going to remain at Nathan's tender mercies unless she did something about it. Chloe wished she could see what she was walking into, but all she had were vague impressions: the smell of mildew, goosebumps, the sound of Nathan's voice. She wasn't sure where she was getting them from, but they were there.
"All of us who can know, kiddo," her father assured her. Knowing what Chloe knew, sensing her decision to vacate this null space, he raised one hand as if to wave goodbye to her. It was so casual, so like the day he had walked out of her old home, walked out of her life for real. It was as if he really was just going to the grocery store. Or, in this case, as if she were. One by one, the phantasms before her visibly relaxed, closed their eyes and faded into the void. Chloe knew what to do. It was not much unlike pushing to the surface of a dream to become part of it, only in this case as Chloe began to almost swim up through the ubiquitous fog of the world around her, she did so with the intent to return to the waking world.
Her eyes snapped open but she could not remember making the decision to open them. It was a kind of instinctive response to the idea that she was trapped somewhere with Nathan Prescott. The light in the room was not strong enough to suddenly overwhelm her or anything. In fact, if anything she was being kept in a dark room. Lit by one exposed bulb over head, the room consisted of an old cement floor, rusty pipes, wooden beams and a whole lot of cobwebs. A set of stairs led up, but Chloe did not turn her head yet to see where as, judging by the sound of Nathan pacing back and forth, mumbling, he had not yet noticed that she was awake just by lifting her head. Instead she slowly lowered it and took stock of the situation. Her hands were tied at the wrists behind her. Those arms, stretched down below her back, were wrapped around what seemed to be an old, wooden chair. She did not dare move to see how sturdy it felt. She could hear water rushing through one of the pipes she had seen before. Speaking of water, the whole damn room smelled of mildew.
"None of you get it. None of you understand what's going on, I am a genius, and all everyone wants to do is mock me, belittle me, order me around like I'm some sort of punching bag." Chloe wondered if Nathan was on the phone with someone he felt owed him something or if he was talking to the same things he had been speaking to on the fourteenth, in the girls' restroom. It had certainly sounded as if he had an antagonistic relationship with them and the chip on his shoulder was larger than the entire state of Oregon. That much had always been obvious. Chloe twitched her left knee, hoping it would look fairly natural. There was definitely something in place to keep her legs still. Her knees didn't hurt despite her ankles seemingly being tied to the chair legs just as she had predicted in that hazy gray place, it was just the damned arms pulled tight around the back of this chair, already stretched to a point that felt near breaking which kept her in pain. Even if her legs had been free, she would have probably ended up tripping over herself, if she could stand up at all.
A few things clicked simultaneously. First and foremost, the rope around her wrists was thicker, coarser than that around her ankles. The Steph's shade had been right. Chloe could probably work her hands free but it wasn't going to be as easy or as quick as her brain had made it seem before, especially not while trying to be sneaky. Second, there were no other voices or footsteps in the room. Eliot probably was not present. What if he's on his way, right now, to lure Rachel or Max here the same way he did me? Third, her mouth was free. She could get him talking. Chloe lifted her head, opened her eyes and turned her neck as far as she thought she safely could. The edge of something large and metal, like a very old furnace, stuck out behind her. When she turned around, Chloe's eyes flicked to the stairs from before. They lead up half a flight, turned almost 90 degrees and proceeded another few feet up to a door, most likely the one she had been dragged in through, judging by the light sneaking in under the crack at the bottom of the door.
"See, she's awake," Nathan told someone or something to his left. Chloe could not see it. The haze of her unconsciousness had all but lifted, though her head hurt. Nathan's demeanor shifted almost immediately. He no longer acknowledged any of the phantasms which he must have been dealing with and the hands working against one another in frustration stopped and dropped to his side. He stopped pacing. "Do you know, do you know it's your fault? Do you understand that?" This question was directed at her. Even in the poor light it was impossible to miss Nathan's eye upon her and, more disturbingly, hard not to notice the way he licked his lips before he spoke. "This is all your fault."
What followed was an exposition which floored Chloe. She was not moved by his words, nor did she come to see any imagined error of her ways. What she did learn was that Nathan Prescott had been keeping a mental tally of every offense, no matter how small or how imagined that she, Max or Rachel had ever committed against him. They had once been forced for English class to read the Odyssey, something which Rachel had adored and Chloe had found interesting if taxing at certain parts. One of those parts was referred to as the catalogue of ships, a recounting of which king and which kingdom had sent what ships and what men. Even reading it had put her in the mindset of listening to someone utterly drone on. What Nathan was doing now was not the same. Every word he spoke was laced with anger, passion, hurt. He believed everything he said, no matter how outlandish. Seconds passed into minutes. Chloe hadn't had to say a word to get him talking, he had been waiting for this moment. The vast majority of what came out of his mouth was nonsense, it existed within his own imagination. Some of it, of course, wasn't. For example, Rachel did have powers and had taken his eye, though he left out that it was an accident resulting from interrupting him sexually assaulting their girlfriend.
For her part, she did not stay immobile after the immediate dumbfounded surprise passed. Every time Nathan returned to pacing, looked away from her, stopped to go off on a diatribe to or against someone that only he could see, Chloe worked against the bindings on her wrist. All she really got for her trouble was the idea that the rope was very old and some very upset, abraded skin, but she tried. It was more than possible for her to slip out of these bindings. She knew it, but it was going to require more time and effort than she thought she could give it with Nathan so close to her. Dark thought, Chloe told herself, swallowing, if you rub hard enough, you're going to bleed. If you bleed enough, it might help you get out. Her already sore wrists throbbed out their complete and utter resentment of her plan, but unfortunately for them she was in charge.
"Do you get it now?" he asked her, all but spinning on the heel of one boot to glare at her. Chloe made sure to slow and then stop the movement of her wrists, straining against the rope. Chloe shook her head as he stared at her chest heaving and wildeyed. She did not get it.
"Half of that shit was in your head," she hissed at the boy. "Listen, you know you're not well. You could still release me. I could still walk away and say nothing. There's no proof that anything happened, so you can let me go and you'll get off free and clear. Why don't we just do that, Nathan?" Chloe couldn't tell whether he was infuriated that she didn't agree with his minutes of rambling or that she would suggest he let her go, but the boy growled, grabbed at his jacket as if to pull it off and then stopped. Chloe knew precisely why he stopped, too, because as he pulled one side of the jacket wide she caught the glint of the poor light above them on metal inside the jacket.
"Why would I do that?" Nathan asked her, seeming to come to his senses a bit. Either that, or he was pretending with his low voice and soft, cloying tone. "Right now, you're the one outsmarted. You're the one full of shit."
"Seriously," Chloe hissed. "Half of this is in your head and the other half is shit you bring upon yourself. Do you actually blame people for defending themselves from you?" She desperately needed him to start raving and soliloquising again if she was going to get free. He returned to his angry, manic state almost immediately, pacing the same five or six steps, talking to her but never looking her in the eyes as if he could not be reminded that she were an actual person in front of him. Chloe returned to trying to pull her wrists from the rope. She might have been imagining it, but she thought the rope was sitting further up her right wrist, as if it had shifted enough to give her a little bit of leeway.
"Oh, I made it up?" Nathan barked with an angry, derisive laughter. "I made up my eye, did I? I made up that stuck up dyke and her freaky fire?"
"I don't know shit about fire, but of course you didn't make up the eye. It was a horrible accident, but why should I feel bad for you? Think about what you were about to do to Max." She thought about reminding him of Stella and Victoria, but she did not know what was going to push him over that fine line from ranting madman to 'willing to shoot.' Victoria had certainly been a part of the equation the first time he had drawn a gun on them. "All Max ever wanted was for you to get help," she decided on continuing with this angle. If she could convince Nathan to feel a scrap of remorse, he might have mercy or at least let his guard down. In the meantime, I'm banking on Long Max Silver and the Dread Pirate Amber to come help a sea dog out. She knew her wrists were already beginning to feel raw. At this point she would rather the blood start to flow, to lubricate her escape attempt, than to continue struggling against the old rope. Remember, choose your moment to get loose. You've only got one shot and he's got a gun.
"Oh yeah, she said that," Nathan snorted. His every word was mocking, dismissive. There was nothing sacred in sight or in mind. "She said that over and over from the first time I met her until that night. Badgering me, harassing me, judging me. You all think you can judge me. I'm Nathan fucking Prescott. I run this place. Hell, I run this town."
"She wasn't judging you," Chloe told the boy, voice rising in some desperation as she had to stop what she was doing because he had come to a stop to see – what? Did he want to see if she was impressed by his boast to own the town? Chloe's wrists were no longer aching as much as screaming at her. Fuck, I think if he looks away, I can actually get them out. Faintly she felt the sensation of warmth and wet on her hand. She was, it seemed, finally bleeding. Escape no longer seemed like an out there fantasy made up by disparate parts of her terrified subconscious. "She gave a fuck. She cared. She wanted you to stop before you hurt someone else."
"Else?" he asked, sounding frustrated and a little scared. "She was the first."
"No," Chloe told him as her eyes began to sting. The stress of the situation, the way his hand had begun to flex toward the left side of his jacket, they were summoning a lump somewhere deep in her throat. Did Nathan really not understand or comprehend that Max had been trying to help him? Did he really not see the hours she had put into getting him help before he hurt her, because that conversation which she, Rachel, Max and Steph had had they day three of them came back to Arcadia Bay from Los Angeles made it clear that Max had put in literal days in the span of two or three weeks just trying to get Nathan to take his medication, to see a counselor, to reach out to anyone who would help him. "No she wasn't. She wasn't the first to try to help you and she wasn't the first you hurt, either. You forget, but I don't. I stood up for you." It was something she bitterly regretted now, but it was no less true and it did not hurt her any less that she had done it and been repaid with this. Her wrists ached and she worried that somehow he was going to notice her bleeding and find out what she had done.
"I never asked for that!" Nathan spat at her, quite literally. She felt his spittle strike her across the chin and despite her sincerest wishes to stay stable, it worsened the emotional strain she felt she was enduring. "I don't need anyone's help." Chloe hated the small hitch in her voice, the small sob.
"You're so fucking wrong, Nathan," Chloe yelled back at him. "Max has been trying to tell me the whole goddamn time she's been at Blackwell but I wasn't listening. I get it now though. You do need someone's help. That's the thing you've always needed the most but they had to stand up to your dad, too. You had to be allowed to get better, to want to get better. I think Samantha was trying to do that. I think that's why you hurt her. I think that's why she had to leave too." Nathan kicked something on the ground which Chloe had not paid any attention to and even over her attempts to keep her tenuous grasp on calm she heard wood or stone skitter across the floor and slam into a wall on the other side of the room. No matter how scared she was or upset she was, she could remember the anger with which she had dropped Nathan to the ground or driven her boot into his chest. There had been no pity there, she had been unable to feel it before. Now, she wasn't sure if she finally felt it, as Max had always done, or if she was just scared. The not being sure was the worst. Her left hand felt warm and wet. It was disturbing to wonder if she had bled much in such a short time.
"You know nothing about Samantha," the boy roared. "That wasn't my fault. She pissed me off. She deserved it. She had to be a nosy, pushy bitch like you and your little dyke whores!"
"I don't think you believe that," Chloe said. "I think it's what you tell yourself so you don't have to feel bad anymore, but someone was there at the hospital that day. She heard you apologizing. She heard you. I know you knew what you did was wrong."
"You don't know shit," Nathan insisted. He launched into a story about the event in question, something which had happened about the same time that Chloe, Max and Rachel were squaring off with Damon Merrick in the junkyard. Unfortunately, he did so by telling it, not to Chloe but to someone else. Someone who must have been standing in plain view for him, but was not for her. "Stupid bitch thinks she knows what happened, wasn't even there. I was there. Sam was bitching and bitching, telling me to talk to a doctor, talk to my sister, run away from home, go to the police and tell lies about my dad." He's got to be twisting that around. There's enough to tell about his father he wouldn't have to lie. At this, Chloe realized that Nathan was not looking at her. While her heart broke for Samantha, a girl who Chloe had pushed toward Nathan because it had been obvious she felt great affection for him, she had to focus.
"She just kept talking and talking and wouldn't stop, wouldn't shut up no matter what I said. I just had to get that stupid bitch away from me. I pushed her back, I'm entitled to my personal space. It wasn't my fault she was a dumb whore who didn't know how not to walk in front of that biker." Stop it, Nathan. Chloe wasn't sure if hearing him hurt because it was about Samantha, who she felt somewhat responsible for, or if it was because he was erasing the idea that there was enough human being in him to reach. Even if she got her hands loose, she was going to have to fight Nathan and she wasn't sure if she could do that with her arms aching, with her eyes blurring from tears or her legs tied to the chair. Please stop. It's my fault Samantha ended up in your path. I'm such a fucking screw up.
"The hair thing was my fault," Chloe spat when it looked as if Nathan was about to turn her attention back to him. "I'm so sorry for that. It was stupid, juvenile, but Max has never tried to do anything but help you." Instead of going off on another rant to this invisible person or thing, Nathan rounded on her and she was forced to stop working her arms against her binds. Chloe felt a bead of sweat roll down her face as the boy glared at her. She thought that the rope was pressing into the bottom of her left palm. She was not quite at the 'one tug and I'm free' stage but she had gotten somewhere. She was also now fairly certain that the blood coming from her was slow, but steady. She had not yet done any permanent damage. Of course I can't sit down here forever, either. And I really can't let him get behind me.
"You're not fooling me," Nathan told her. "Your feminazi bitch released those files. She snooped around, nosy as hell like always and released those files and now I have to take care of you all because you're my problem and if I don't, it comes down on me." Did that mean that Jefferson had told him to do this? Or worse, his father? It was not hard to imagine either option. Nathan's paranoia was beginning to rub off on her. For instance, she was starting to get concerned that something had happened to Max and Rachel. I'm so close to getting my hands loose, but then what? "You're not worth even a quarter of me. If I have to take care of you, so be it."
"For who?" Chloe asked, suddenly, seizing on the idea that he might be willing to expose Jefferson to her if he thought she was already – already dead. Nathan did not answer. He simply returned to pacing, eyes shut, mouth tightly closed and that was when Chloe realized he was trying to work up the courage to kill her. She had to push him. She had to stop him from reaching his kill point. "Did Jefferson threaten you?"
"I respected Jefferson," Nathan hissed, but he did not open his eyes. Chloe began to pull at her left hand a little harder, hoping to feel the rope slide across her palm. It might even be, but it required jerking her right wrist back and forth, shifting that hand this way and then that as if rocking a car stuck in the snow. Slowly the boy's hands rose to press against either side of his head as he paced. It did not look like he was trying to block his ears. It looked almost like he had a bad headache and was trying to placate it. "I thought he was going to be amazing to learn from but he just wanted to use me like the rest of them. Everyone always wants to use me. Just like Victoria. Use me for a couple of years and throw me to the side. No one respects me." A new stream of blood trickled, this time from Chloe's right wrist. The rope once rather firmly around her wrists was now around one wrist and the center of her left palm. Unfortunately, at that point Nathan realized she had not responded and looked back. Chloe grew still and spat the first thing she could think. The tears had stopped. The pity had not vanished, but anger was trying to drown it out. None of them were helping her focus on her escape attempt or what to do when her hands were free.
"Victoria didn't use you. She was the one person who never even fought back when you used her. Then you tried to use her the same way you did Max, the same way you did Stella. None of them ever meant to harm you." Nathan lowered his hands but only to jerk his right hand toward the left flap of his jacket, as if he was going to reach his kill moment and pull his gun free, shoot her right there. "You complain about being bullied, hated, used and abused and everyone who ever tries to help you ends up with you hurting them. Somehow they're the monsters? Look, Nathan, if Jefferson is making you do this shit, he's not your friend. He's not trying to help you. Not like Samantha did, not like Max did, not like I did before."
"Don't any of you dyke whores know how to shut your filthy mouths?" Nathan asked, his voice again rising to a roar. He made as if to grab for his weapon and then his head jerked suddenly to the left. Whoever or whatever was speaking to him said something he liked even less than what she had just said because Nathan reached down, picked up what looked to be an old piece of coal and hurled it across the room where it struck the same wall not far from the last object he had kicked in that direction. He doesn't like whatever he sees over there. Not at all. Chloe thought. What happened if she took advantage of his mental state? She would never do this under normal circumstances but this afternoon trip to the boiler room had all the makings of her final moments. If I push him to breaking he might kill me. He might let me go. He hasn't killed me so far. With that, Chloe decided she could neither let him go off of the rails or get his feet back under him. She was going to have to keep him unbalanced if she wanted to get out of there, half in the real world and half in his own hell. No one should have live this way.
"Shut up," Nathan screamed. She was not sure if that was directed at her or not, but the boy turned away, clutching his head again. She caught sight of his wide, questioning eyes. She thought it possible she had already pushed too far, that he was already coming completely unhinged. I could finish it off by trying to disprove all of the crazy shit he's said today, but that might be the end of me. For once in her life, despite anger, spite, pity and more hatred than she wanted to admit to holding, Chloe bit her tongue, metaphorically. Nathan continued to call, sometimes at a scream, for someone to shut up, but his eyes were turned not on her but into the nearest corner. If Chloe got her hands free maybe she could free her legs in time. She wasn't sure. Chloe dared to look down toward the ground.
The one thing she was sure of was that the knots had been tied behind the legs, making it hard for her to bend enough while still bound at the wrists to see them. It was possible that Nathan hadn't tied them very tightly at all, wanting to be able to easily get rid of her body that evening. That's right, he'd have to wait to get me out of here. Hell, if he fires his gun right now, he'll almost definitely be heard. Frustrated, Chloe disregarded both thoughts as unworthy of her time. First off, she had no more idea as to whether she could escape or not because she could not see the knots. Second, Nathan wasn't thinking straight. He might be willing to kill her and risk being caught. Her heartbeat had picked up and breathing followed suit. She was not sure when it started, but there was a sort of strange awareness in the back of her head that Nathan was ramping up to whatever decision he was going to make. This was almost over, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Chloe was alone down here.
She felt the bloody, ragged rope press into the fingers of her left hand as Nathan spun around. He was not clutching his head anymore but nor was he holding his gun. Instead, he had in his hands a cell phone and he was dialing. Distantly, a part of her brain cheered at the idea that he might have decided to release her, to dial 9-1-1 and turn himself in, beg for mental assistance. She knew as soon as the thought came that it was almost delusional in nature. If there were any guardian angels coming to her aide, their names were Rachel Amber and Max Caulfield and if she were worthy of being at their side, she would be the type to fight and fight to not even need that saving, to be free and in control of the situation when they threw open the door to the room and ran downstairs to save her. I'm not dying here, Chloe told herself, eyes stinging anew. I'm going with Rachel and Max. I'm going to graduate and leave this piece of shit town with its fascists and its cronies behind. Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, or Podunk, Indiana, it doesn't matter as long as they're with me and that can't happen if I let Nathan and Jefferson kill me.
Chloe knew if she gave one good jerk, she could free her left hand and bring her sore arms around in front of her. The question was whether she could get her legs free before Nathan dropped the phone he was now raising to his ear and drew his gun or not. Chloe Price was not stupid. She knew there came a point where one tried even when it looked like it would get her killed, but this wasn't it. If Nathan was truly calling Mark Jefferson, then she had a little longer to live. Max suggested Jefferson was saner, more put together. He would know that they could not shoot her in the middle of the afternoon when students and faculty might still be in the building or close enough to hear. I'm not at do or die yet, Chloe told herself and was surprised by the relief she felt at the revelation, or more by how small it was. It meant she could still escape, but it meant that the ordeal wasn't over yet. She fixed Max and Rachel's faces firmly in her mind and listened to Nathan, slowly easing the rope up her palm, bit by bit as the boy paced to and fro.
"You can do this," someone said, quite suddenly, openly, voice not disguised or lowered at all. Chloe's head jerked around. Steph Gingrich wore a pair of long board shorts, which was uncharacteristic of her, and a dark tee that Chloe thought might have been hers. The majority of her recently longer than usual hair was trapped beneath the beanie atop her head. "You're not alone. Well, you are, but you aren't." Confused, Chloe blinked against a new wave of tears and then felt fresh panic settle over her. He'll see her any minute now. How did she get down here?
"I didn't, Chloe." Steph did not kneel down to her level. Instead she stood side by side with Chloe as Nathan turned for another pass at his pacing, angrily muttering about 'why won't he pick up'. Nathan looked clean at Chloe for a split second and then continued pacing, as if Steph wasn't there. She's not. Chloe looked up at the girl but realized that those board shorts had been Chloe's as well, and the beanie too. Steph was dressed in her clothing, because it was not Steph. It was that familiar Steph shade she had summoned into any number of dreams either for someone to enjoy something she was experiencing with or someone to talk to, to help her parse through what was going through her mind. When the girl pat her on the shoulder as if to congratulate her for getting it, Chloe felt nothing, not weight nor warmth.
Am I going fucking insane?
"Maybe," Steph told her as Nathan drew his breath in, cursed loudly, hung up and began to redial. "You've always been pretty close to three or four major mental breakdowns, yourself, Chloe Price. You've been pretty shitty about getting yourself help, too, even with Rachel trying her damndest to convince you." I swear to fuck if I can just not lose my goddamn mind down here, I'll go to a counselor, someday, somewhere. "Of course, face it, I could just be your power acting in some new way. I mean, that shit today was weird in the void." Focus!
"Right," Steph said, not looking the least bit abashed. "Your brain is fucking weird, just like Rachel's body and Max's well, everything." She couldn't remember for the life of her what was weird about Rachel's body. "You know, going warm or cold all at random, no outside stimuli? Little fucked up. Not what the human body is supposed to do. Anyway, I'm here – or, you're here, or we're here, whatever – to get you out of here alive. You've got your hands. One good pull. You already know what you might have to do." In that moment, Chloe did know. There was no way that she could get her hands free, untie her legs and hurl herself over the uneven broken concrete floor and then overpower Nathan before he could free his gun. She had already tangled once with potentially getting shot and she did not welcome that idea again. So I get him to bring his gun to me. Before he gets ahold of Jefferson. As if the thought was the cue, Nathan began to speak.
"You need to come to the boiler room. I- I'm going to lose my shit here." Chloe had to piss him off, she had to unhinge him, after all. That was her only chance. If Jefferson came maybe she'd live a little longer but he might also drug her and find a way to move her. There was no chance she would survive that.
"I bet Samantha wouldn't put out," Chloe yelled, suddenly. Beside her, Not Steph drew a sharp intake of breath. "I bet she knew you were a cowardly little boy and she wanted a man." Nathan screamed for her to shut up but did not move the phone away from his mouth as he did so. Chloe drew in a breath and at the top of her lungs belted out, "No wonder you have to drug and molest girls. You couldn't even get a pity fuck, which is impressive because you're fucking pitiful!" It happened all at once. Nathan's free hand shot into his jacket like a viper striking its prey and came out with the same gun Chloe had stupidly left on the floor of the girl's restroom because she was an unending, unerring disappointment to herself and everyone around her. Chloe drew a deep, shaking breath as she looked at Not Steph. The girl looked less sure than she had been a moment before but she nodded for Chloe to go on as Nathan waved the gun visibly in the air.
"No, fuck your 'hold on,' man," Nathan spat into the phone. "I've got one of those carpet munching sluts down here like you said to do." After a moment Nathan spun toward her but did not yet lower the gun at her. Chloe decided to bide her time. Nathan was getting more and more worked up by his lonesome. "No, you told me I had to take care of it. Fuck you, don't lie to me. Don't try to make me sound crazy. I've got her here, now get over here before I shoot this bitch here and now." Nathan's phone flew across the room and struck the same spot on the wall to Chloe's left, shattering violently as Nathan screamed. "I said shut the fuck up, Kristine!" This last syllable drew out far longer than natural, Nathan's bulging eye threatened to pop from his head as he exhausted every last bit of breath in his lungs and strength in his throat. He's gone, Chloe realized.
"He's absolutely off-the-deep-end gone," Not Steph promised. "Just like in the bathroom. He's yours now."
"Stop yelling at her you stupid little bitch," Chloe spat, trying to appeal to Nathan in his own language: entitled sexist brat. "Get over here and look me in the eyes unless you're scared of a girl you've already tied up and bitched at for what, an hour? Half an hour? Fuck you." Nathan did turn away from the hallucination that Chloe thought might be of his sister. If Jefferson's coming, he'll want to do something like drug me or something. I'll never wake back up again. She had to take his gun from him and hold him at gunpoint until help came and Jefferson was welcome to get fucking shot if he decided to be dumb enough to come to Nathan's side.
"That's it," Not Steph told her. Now, as Nathan brought the gun down to aim at her, the shade of Steph knelt to the ground and began to all but yell into Chloe's ear. It was distracting, it kept her from calming down and thinking. Maybe, though Not Steph was thinking for her. "Piss him off, make him put that gun in your face, grab it and go. Then do it. Just fucking do it. Because if you don't one of them are going to do that needle trick Max talks about and there will be no Los Angeles, no San Francisco, no New York, no Podunk, Indiana. There will be no long quiet nights, there will be no long loud nights. There will be no chance to talk to your mother, no family dinners with Steph, with Rose, with Sera or the Caulfields. There will be nothing left of you!"
"Fuck you," Chloe screamed at Nathan, Not Steph's words driving her to a new degree of urgency and panic. She had to drive Nathan right over the edge. "Fuck you, you little bitch! Look me in the eyes when you do it, or are you really not a man at all, but a whiny fucking infant crying forever about how unfair your life is? Are you a fucking disappointment or are you a Prescott?" Whatever Nathan's verbal response was going to be, it got tripped up along seven or eight other concurrent ones, nonsense syllables spilled out of his mouth, gibberish. But it worked. He stumbled forward, gun outstretched. "Th-that's it you pissant little fuck," she shouted, almost speaking as incoherently. He had to get angry enough to put it right in her face. Yeah, there was the chance he would shoot her too soon, but at this point it was finally do or die. "Get off Jefferson's leash, you pathetic little lap dog." Nathan's eye focused in on one of hers and Chloe twitched her left arm, hard once as she pretended to strain against her bonds. They fell to the floor, the sound masked by her screaming, "You'll never be half the man your father is." Nathan pressed the cold metal of the barrel to her forehead and then went deadly silent.
"You are one dead dyke," he finally muttered. The door opened at that moment. Not Steph's eyes jerked up to it right before Chloe's did and even Nathan followed suit, clearly jumpy and on edge. Instead of Rachel Amber or Max Caulfield, as Chloe would have needed, she saw the familiar blazer and douchey goatee of the photography teacher. With Nathan distracted, the impulse to grab his gun and shoot them both there and then rose in her.
"Wait!" Not Steph called. Chloe waited. Figment of her imagination or not, the non-person beside her had kept her alive thus far. She had a gun in reach and free hands. Her situation, despite the cold barrel of a killing machine pressed now against her cheek, was better than it had been thirty seconds ago. Jefferson was framed by the light of the spring day for half a second, the same half a second it took for Chloe to decide not to grab the gun and then the man shut the door behind himself and began to descend the stairs.
"Well, well," Jefferson murmured. It was a tone she had never heard in his voice before, both sharp and dangerous but soft. "It looks like one of the flies buzzing about has landed itself in one hell of a spider web but god damn the lighting down here is shit." Jefferson paused halfway down the stairs, straightened his jacket smoothed the sides of his hair and then smiled at her from behind those thick glasses. "That's alright. I'll make it work. A good photographer figures out how to work with the tools he has, remember that, Prescott and next time do better." Nathan did not move the gun, he did not look away from Jefferson but his entire body shook, including the arm holding the weapon. Chloe hoped he did not accidentally pull the trigger. As far gone as Nathan was, his response was only gibberish about being disrespected, lied to, used. The same old refrain. Jefferson didn't seem to pay attention. "Nathan, Nathan, relax. Everything is under control, your control. My control. Our control. That is another thing one must do. Understand yourself, and how to use who and what you are to others to get the shot. Now tell me what's happening here?"
The boy tried to explain, he genuinely did. He was in the middle of such a psychotic episode that anyone listening would have thought the basement to be packed with people, not just his sister but Samantha and Max as well as people who had no name just vague descriptions like 'the tall man' or 'the round woman.' Chloe did not try to follow, she just held still and waited for the sound of Not Steph's voice or for her to see an opening and make her move.
"The jig is up," Chloe finally told Jefferson as he stroked his goatee. This earned a frustrated growl or sigh from the man, she could not tell which.
"The 'jig' is far from up," he said as he reached into his own jacket, "you pathetic, overcompensating little slut." Nathan jabbed the gun harder into her cheek but could not seem to take his eyes from Jefferson as the man pulled something long and dark from his jacket. It was like Nathan was completely enthralled to Jefferson's every word, even as his eyes twitched toward spots throughout the room he had been hurling insults and other nonsense at the entire time the two of them had been down in the boiler room. Jefferson didn't cut through the psychosis, he had instituted himself as part of it, the head of Nathan's psyche. He was, truly, in control here.
"He thinks he is," Not Steph said, and Chloe did not dare look sideways for fear of jostling the gun and setting Nathan off. "He's so wrong."
"We'll dispose of the corpse elsewhere after nightfall," the man mused as he popped open the container.
"It's the right size for a needle," Not Steph advised her. Nathan's neck moved unnaturally, his body continued to heave beneath his jacket, jaw working side to side, eyes shooting around the room. He was like a paranoid David Madsen on steroids. For a moment, the gun fell down her face just slightly. Chloe knew the command was coming before it came and so when Not Steph screamed for her to move, now, her hands were already on the gun and Nathan's limp wrist. Jefferson froze in place as Nathan stumbled a step or two back, thrown off guard by the sudden robbery of his firearm. Then, as if nothing had changed, Mark Jefferson laughed derisively.
Nathan no longer an immediate threat, she leveled the gun on the boy and turned her gaze toward Jefferson. Her wrists ached, screamed in protest as blood dripped down along either arm, onto her shirt, into her lap. Jefferson took a step forward, apparently deciding she would not do what she was clearly threatening to do. He was wrong. That step forward was the last one Chloe Price, in her sudden fiery panic, shaking arms and raw, screaming throat, would put up with.
"Shoot or die!" Not Steph's voice rang in her ears shortly before what sounded like a small explosion erased everything else from them. Jefferson did not take another step forward. Instead, suddenly grasping at his gut, he stumbled back. That was when Nathan moved. Chloe did not know whether he was trying to back away from her or charge her down but her left hand jerked the gun sideways and she pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. Nathan collapsed immediately, unlike Jefferson. He bled profusely from his chest. She knew why that chest was not rising and falling, why he was not cursing her.
Tragedy. The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once but it sounded loud in her ears and when Chloe glanced to Not Steph, the girl was gone and a solemn looking Samuel hovered in her place for a second, before he too faded from vision.
Nathan Prescott was dead.
Nathan Prescott was dead and she could not even stop panicking to feel something about it, because Mark Jefferson was still on his feet. Chloe fired two rounds at the man without hesitating. One might have winged his arm or done nothing, but the other flew wide, because a small spray of stone shot out from the wall behind him. Her shaking, blood soaked hands had betrayed her aim. Jefferson looked wildly around the room, mouth open but gasping silently. The bullet was not in his stomach, as she had thought. It was higher up, almost in his chest. The man turned and fled. He stumbled and fell at least twice but Chloe kept her gun on him until the door flew open and the sunlight spilled in. From his spot kneeling on the stairs, Mark Jefferson lifted his head and might have spoken a word but it could not be heard over Chloe screaming and crying as she kept the gun trained on him.
Much as Jefferson had been framed by the sunny day behind him moments before, now too was someone else. Max Caulfield, her face twisted in absolute terror, looked around the room once before Jefferson leapt to his feet, bolted up the last three stairs and shoved her aside. Max did not chase the man, she merely stood rooted to the spot with eyes as wide as her face could possibly allow. Chloe screamed at her, the same scream of panic and anger and hate and rage. She did not know what these emotions were meant to convey or who they were for but screaming, drawing breath and screaming again seemed to be the only thing she could do beyond holding onto the gun, keeping it trained on what some part of her knew was a corpse. Max was bathed in the sun, in all that was safety, joy, freedom and the most exquisite pleasure and she could not move from the sight of her girlfriend drenched in blood and death.
The gun clattered to the ground as her lungs gave way once more and she stared at her bloody hands.
"I killed him, he's dead. Max, help. Max, help! Max get me out of here. Get me out of here right now!" The girl's face broke, as if it had been stone shattered by the sound of Chloe finally finding words again, despite the fact that Chloe had barely any understanding of what she was saying. She could see the tears in Max's eyes even from there, everything about her angel came through in sharp detail. The girl raised her right hand. Chloe froze in place and watched with dawning comprehension.
"I'll stop this," Max promised her, voice hitching in the back of her throat but words resounding like the law of some old, long dead goddess. "It's going to be okay. I'll stop this." As the girl vanished into thin air, letting in the light of the day and the sound of the rest of the sunlit world Chloe realized that this was the Max she had seen running through the grey void earlier that day. Max was going back in time.