innocencewalker
We spent a good part of the night emptying our clothes of sand. After three days of traversing through the desert, it was inside of everything. I tried to sneak away to dust myself off, and soon after slipping my shirt and pants off I felt a cold hand against my back.
"Boo," Nathaniel said, and then he was on his back, my knee in his stomach, the air rushing out of his lungs.
"This puts us in a dilemma," Nathaniel said as he swung his sword around, treating it as a toy more than a weapon. I wondered what it felt like, in his hands. I had never touched it before, and prayed that I would never have to.
"No it does not," I countered, and then took a step forward.
Nathaniel just sighed and followed me. He knew that I would always act first, think later. Dilemma or not.
"If you think you are going to get away with this little stunt, you are dead wrong," I was breathing hard, anger and rage fueling my emotions, spilling into my muscles and running up and down my nerves.
I hated her. And she knew it. She wanted me to strike out, to attack. Then she would have an excuse to fight me and it would be no one's fault but my own.
Haddison always sent one of us up to the surface to retrieve his packages. He never went to the top himself. I sometimes wondered when the last time he it was that he saw the sun. I always wondered if he was scared that they would find him if he took a breath of air that was not recycled by a pump.
I always wondered if he was happier down there, deep in the earth.
Maybe down there he couldn't remember my mother. And the terrible way she died.
We stay in the local lodge, which masquerades as a tavern on the edge of town. Nathaniel tells me that he used to live there, in the basement. I wonder if that's why he was able to grow so accustom to living in the underground lab with myself and Haddison.
He tells me that's where he met her. That she runs the place.
When I find this out, I no longer wish to stay.
Haddison left me to monitor the strange chemical concoctions that he'd left on the high table in the lab. I often found that when I was left alone with these bubbling mixtures that I wondered what compounds had gone into creating them. I wished that I could shrink and float around inside the bubbles, dancing between the atoms.
These were the only moments I let foolishness enter my mind.
"We can name it the 'great quest to save humanity'," Nathaniel laughs, using his fingers to make quotes in the air as he speaks.
The others join him, but none of them know how deep his words run.
Only I know that it will take more than what we have to save us all.
His smile falters when his eyes meet mine. He's putting on a show for everyone but me.
I'm calling out his name, calling out for him to stop. I know that he can't, and the volts and jolts keep coming.
It's torture, this shocking electrifying mess that we've gotten ourselves into.
Tears fall down both our cheeks. When it's all over we're both going to be so broken.
I call out to him, telling him to do what he must. If it will save us all in the end.
The bodies pile up around us and I cannot stop to even cry over them. So many fallen. So many of them could have been myself, Nathaniel, Walker even... but we were lucky. I wonder why we always get so lucky.
I keep searching the piles, hoping that I wont spot my father's face.
I pray that we continue to be so lucky.
There's a space behind us. Vulnerable. I know that I can cover it, keep us safe, but i can't take my eyes off her.
She's always there, distracting him. Distracting me.
I want to shove her in that space, let her receive the brunt of the attack.
I want to put her in the space behind us.
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