Target 84 (13 page)

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.
”―
Gloria Steinem
Why’d I leave?
She must know
why
I left.

“Killing a man. Jesus, it seemed like too much. Taking away all he was and all he would ever be. It felt wrong, bird, and it was eating me up, it was going to kill me. And I kept asking myself all the time, how did I buy into this shit for this long?” I tell her. “I was pissed off, and nothing I ever did ever took that feeling away. I got out of there and it was a different kind of nightmare. I had nowhere to go. No identity. No money. I killed two people, Greta, I
killed
them. And it didn't make me feel any different. It just got me more lost and I'm tired of being pissed off. I'm so tired of it,” I admit.

I have never told
anyone
about Ravenbrook. Not a single soul. It feels good to get it out. It feels good to know that on most levels, she understands my words. They make sense to her.

“But, how Bentley? How are you not dead? All the security cameras, Dee, the fence. How?”

“I was terrified but I couldn’t stay. I’m a killer but not by nature. I know it’s part of me but I couldn’t shut off my emotions. I
felt
. I disabled the alarm to the cafeteria door. You know, for a moment I considered going back for you. I knew I shouldn’t leave you there. I watched the spotlight sweep the yard. Once. Twice. I counted the seconds between patterns. Then I ran.” I shudder involuntarily, remembering those first twenty-four hours. “The wall has a small hole that I managed to make large enough over time for me to fit through. It was hidden behind bushes, but some invasive plant had fractured the stone, it was crumbling. I don’t know if you remember but I was on landscape and hall monitor teams.”

She nods her head.

“Eventually, we got to the disabling alarm portion of our classes, which was the last piece. I had the hole. I had the skill and I had the motivation.”

“I was sure you were dead. Dee went on such a rampage afterwards. ‘Twelve will be found!’ I was so scared. It was strange learning your name after you were already gone. You were the only thing that held me together my first year there. It was...it was torture for me when you left.” Her voice is so muted I almost can’t understand what she’s said. Beneath the cool façade she puts up, her vulnerability in this moment stirs my protective instincts like nothing ever has before. “I hated you for leaving me.”

“I didn't know if I’d make it. I couldn't risk bringing you. I couldn't fathom knowing I’d signed your death sentence if I was unsuccessful.”

“You never came back,” she barks.

“I was a kid, Greta, just like you. I don’t think you understand what it was like once I was free,” I snap at her.

“Tell me then.”

Glancing around the dilapidated room, I struggle to find the words to speak the truth, to explain the horror.

“Not here.” I turn my back to her, prepared to leave. The sound of metal scraping against the floor disrupts the thick tension of the room. A moment of panic takes over. I shouldn't have trusted her. I spin around, reaching for the pistol holstered at my hip. She stops a foot from me, eyes wild.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she states. My hand remains on the grip of my gun. Her hand comes up slowly as she places it on my cheek and inspects me again. Her thumb swings lazily back and forth along the stubble of the apple of my cheek. “It just seems so impossible,” she breathes.

“What?” I ask, relaxing my hand and letting it drop to my side.

“That it’s you.”

“I never expected this moment. By all accounts, it is impossible.” She nods her head in agreement and drops her hand.

“Do you want to kill me?” she asks. What a peculiar question to ask. Yet somehow it makes sense.

“No. I’ve killed. I’ve wanted to kill, but I don’t
need
to kill. I don’t crave it. It never sat well with me. I just acknowledge that the skill lives inside me. That I’m just as good as I am evil. It’s a choice, Greta.”

“You think we’re all evil?” she asks.

“I think Ravenbrook is evil. I think they ruin children.”

“They do. It was awful, you know. What happened. Graduation.” She slinks back towards the cot. “I held out for so long. I kept to myself like you told me. I just followed the rules. I was a perfect student.”

“What happened at the Cave?”

“You don’t want to know.” She shakes her head vehemently. “You’re lucky that you escaped before graduation.”

I walk to her, sit on the cot next to her, and tilt her chin up, bringing her eyes to mine. A deep and primal yearning burns under my skin. I want her. I want to go back and change history.

“Remember, little bird, they only want one thing. Maybe they want it more than once, but it's still only one thing. Obedience. Tell me. I do want to know.”

Her
molten-blue, fiery eyes harden to sapphires.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.
”―
Socrates
Twenty-one looked like he would enjoy hurting me. The moment I’d been dreading for days was finally here. They were losing it. Mental capacity was long gone. They’d been broken. But maybe I still had a chance of surviving this. I took a few steps to the side and crouched, reaching down by my feet. I straightened, holding a three-foot length of steel pipe with a jagged chunk of concrete stuck to the end. The Cave. Our final test for graduation.

Fear threatened to swallow me whole, but I knew I didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting out of there unless I stayed calm. My face contorted with terror as Twenty-one and Thirty started to lose it. Thirty pulled a knife from the waist of his pants. All hell broke loose. Tension buzzed in the air, arms and legs thrashed against the floor in front of me. Twenty-one and Thirty on the ground, Twenty-one on top, elbows flailing as he drove punch after punch into Thirty’s face. Thirty is cowering, trying to ward off the blows. His face smashed against the floor. Hard.

Thirty scrambled to his feet clumsily. I backed up a step, watching. Twenty-one’s fist clutched a handful of hair at the back of Thirty’s head, yanking his neck backward. He pulled the hand holding a blade away from him and twisted it up behind Thirty’s back. Lifting him and stepping back, he held him off the ground. Thirty’s expression was serene. How odd. Was he giving up?

Shoulders flexing, Twenty-one yanked Thirty’s wrist higher and higher between his shoulder blades until a terrifying tearing sound echoed through the cavern, followed by a liquid pop. Twenty-one dropped Thirty to the ground and turned to me. His eyes were frighteningly wide with hate. His lips pulled away from his teeth. My mouth pulled into a snarl matching his. He was full of emotion. He was functioning on it now. Like a wild animal, instinct ran rampant through him. This was his mistake, I realized.

“You,” he said, his voice rising, harsh and strident at me. I lifted the steel pipe in front of me and kept my feet planted where they were. I breathed. In. Out. In. Out. Focused.

“Twenty-one, don’t. Don’t do this. They win. If you break. If you lose it, they win,” I pleaded, trying to appeal to his rational side. Thirty wasn’t moving. I worried that Twenty-one took it too far. I feared that he would do the same to me. An icy, detached calm spread through my body, down my neck, arms, and legs. My focus tightened. Senses sharpening, my fear was under tight control.

Point of no return. This was it. He lunged. I swung and, before connecting, shut my eyes tight. The thud of the concrete chunk connecting with him sent vibrations up through my arms. They kept moving, though, following through with the motion of my swing. Like a ballplayer.

I collapsed to my butt and scuttled backwards, eyes still closed. I didn’t want to see that there was no one left. The pipe clattered on the rock floor loudly. I didn’t want to see what I did just yet. Two arms wound under my pits and hauled me up.

“She’s ready,” Dee said from my left. A grunt from behind me sounded approval. I was lifted and carried away from the cavern, my eyes glued shut still.

“Mother fuckers!” he cries out as I finish recounting the details of my graduation ceremony. His deep voice stiffens my nipples even as a thrill of fear jolts through me. “They pitted the class against each other.” The disgust in his voice sends a shudder through my body. His arm is wrapped around my shoulders, but I don't know when that happened. Tears, unwanted, stream down my cheeks, plopping on the floor with fat splats.

The horror of that day is inescapable. The classmates you spent seven years with became your enemy. Every man for himself. They weeded out the ineffectual assassins with Darwinism at its finest, one’s will to live. He stands abruptly, releasing me. Pins and needles rush to the spot where he’d just gripped my shoulder.

In my heart, there is nothing other than blackness. Life is a dark, dangerous place that affects us all. He is so beautiful and chaotic, pacing around like a psycho over
my
pain,
my
suffering.

It’s not logical. He’s not selfish like I am. He’s allowed himself to care for others. It awes me.

“You’re normal,” I blurt, instantly wishing I could retract my words. He ceases pacing and drops to his knees in front of me. His eyes search mine. I don’t know what he’s looking for, though.

“I am far from normal, Greta. I had nothing. No one for a year after leaving. I survived in a beat-up shed in the middle of the woods. I wandered into town a few times, but people wouldn’t help me. I didn't understand society. It was hell. I was free, but I was in hell. I killed animals to eat. I drank out of a river for water. I was feral. By the time a girl discovered me, I’d almost forgotten what being human was like. If she hadn’t dragged my ass out of the woods and into the world, I would still be there in that shed
surviving
or worse, dead.”

“No no no,” I stutter. “You have feelings! You care when we’re not supposed to
care!
People die for caring!” I shout. My stomach growls loudly and the room spins and tilts.

I blink. Once. Twice. Three times.

I hear my name being called repeatedly. I open my eyes wider to accommodate my failing vision. Everything is crashing in on me. The only way I know how to survive has been dissolved like an aspirin floating in a glass of water.

It’s all a lie. I wanted out. That was reasonable, but the rest, it’s all been a lie. There is no truth in my life. The last truth that existed was Bentley as a teenager, as Twelve. Bentley leans in to me. He’s close enough for me to feel the heat from his body. I’m freezing and then an old, familiar warmth sizzles inside me.

It’s
him
. He’s unraveled me and saved me. Who am I? I wonder,
open-eyed yet fast asleep.
Who am I?

My brain pops in my ears. It sounds loud inside my head. So incredibly loud, but everything else shuts off.

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
”―
C.G. Jung
I catch her as she collapses into my arms and set her on her back on the cot. I should have known. You can’t erase decades of brainwashing in one conversation. How foolish of me to think she could process it all. Her body has shut down to self-preserve. She’s had limited water and food for four full days now. I shouldn’t even be
trying
to have a rational conversation with her in this state. I leave her resting on the cot.

At the hotel I shower away the grotesque images my brain conjured up at her recounting of graduation. My fists clench, needing to punch something, punish
someone
. Toweling off the beads of water that cling to my skin, I mentally remind myself to grab the hotel bathrobe for Greta. She was lucid enough to point out that I wasn’t going to bring her out of the warehouse looking like she does. I dress, pack the robe, and leave, hitting the drive-thru on my way back to her. She needs to eat.

The rain outside falls in sweeping sheets. I’m drenched from the run from the car to the building. Icy water runs down my face. I shake off what I can before unlocking the deadbolts to her room. I stride purposefully towards her. She’s lying on the cot still, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Her head rolls to the side at the scent of food. Sitting up, she tucks her legs under herself Indian style and leans her back against the unforgiving wall. I drop the bag with the robe to the floor. It hits with a soft thwack as I continue towards her. Setting the bag of food at the edge of the bed, I sit myself at the end furthest from her and nod. “Go slow so you don’t vomit.”

She dumps the contents of the bag into her lap. As she unwraps the burger and takes a small, dainty bite, she moans with pleasure. Even in her bruised, broken state, she’s beautiful. She was a good-looking child but she’s grown into a stunning woman. Her chest heaves with her breaths as she forces herself to eat slowly. “Thank you,” she says between bites. I nod but keep silent. Her swollen eyes, lips, and cheek need to be cleaned up. Every few bites she winces.

Guilt,
falling as softly as the rain,
drowns me for what I’ve done to her.

“It’s okay,” her voice calls out. I snap my head to hers, my eyes open wide. “It’s okay. I get it. I would have done the same, plus, you have some bruises too.” She smirks. It takes a moment for my brain to catch up with me but upon doing so, I laugh. A deep, full belly laugh that aches.

“It’s okay, but it sure as shit isn’t funny,” she grumbles. Letting my laughter die down, I make sure to have her attention before speaking.

“It’s funny because you’re right. It’s funny because no one else would have thought it was okay. No one else thinks like you do, or like I do. It’s funny because I get you,” I explain. She cocks her head sideways like she’s trying to determine if I’m being a smartass or not.

“Yeah, you’re right. Other people wouldn’t think any of this is okay,” she answers with a small smile. Finishing her burger, she waits a few beats before starting the fries. “Next time this happens, don’t bring me shit to eat, this stuff will kill you.” She shakes her head at me seriously.

“All right, bird, next time, I’ll be sure to bring a salad.” I chuckle.

“I’m serious. I
never
eat this crap. It’s going to wreak havoc on my insides,” she complains. I throw up my hand in surrender and she finally smiles at me. I watch, content, as she finishes the last of the food, sucking her fingers clean with a pop sound at the end of each digit. My mind wanders as I watch. I want to be those fingers. I shake the thought and stand.

“I brought you a robe. I'll bring you to my hotel room once you’ve changed and you can charge your cell there.” I hand the bag to her and wait.

She turns slightly away from me as she sheds her clothes slowly, dropping the dirty items to the floor at her feet like the pelt of a fresh kill. Standing in nothing but her lace bra and matching indigo blue panties, she turns slightly and kicks her blood-crusted clothes away from her. Her back, from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, is tattooed with an ominous, black raven with its wings stretched wide and a dagger in its chest. Her eyes flash contempt at me, watching her. A cocktail of anger and lust flurry my gut from her gaze.

“It’s a reminder,” she states.

“I didn’t ask,” I return.

“You were staring,” she pushes.

“Who wouldn’t?” I answer.

She scoffs. It’s difficult to keep the fact that she’s a trained assassin in the forefront when she’s standing there baring her feminine allure. Bared like this she looks soft, her skin milky and smooth.

“See something you like?” she huffs over her shoulder. I inch closer to her until my lips are near the shell of her ear. She stands stock-still, only her breath giving away her nerves.

“Yes,” I whisper. Giving in to my desire to touch her, I brush a snarled lock of blonde hair from her shoulder and trail my finger deviously slowly down her robe-clad arm. Her breath hitches as I let my hand wander lower to her hip, thigh, knee, and finally calf.

She’s fighting what I’m fighting. This insane desire to be with her. To be inside her. To know what it’s like to be with someone who understands your past, present, and future without trying. Pulling the key from my pocket, I unlock the chains from her red, angry ankles. For now, I keep my dick in check by keeping it in my pants. Walking with her arm tightly grasped in mine, I lead her out of the room.

The rain has finally let up, leaving only the damp asphalt and sparse puddles as proof it was ever here. Checking all directions to be sure no one is near, I lead her to the rental car. I open her door, help her sit, buckle her in, and finally jog around to my side.

“Thank you,” she says quietly. The rest of our trip is spent in a comfortable, but charged, silence. Tension breeds like bacteria in a Petri dish between us, a silent game of who will give in first.