The Wanted (16 page)

Misery had been following me. I had been uninvolved and uninterested in everything around me.

No more.

As I packed up our gear, tumbling the bloodied gauze and dirty needles into the plastic sheeting,
she
came back to me. I tied a knot around the top and shoved the waste into a hole at the bottom of a tree, my hands scraping on the charcoal and coming back all black and slimy. I hadn’t thought of
her
through that whole process. And I was ashamed to say that it felt good to forget.

“You coming?” Elise asked, turning around with Ermil’s arm over her shoulder as she supported his weight.

I smiled a genuine smile at her. “I’m coming.”

She seemed surprised but she returned my smile with a toothy one of her own, her freckles pushing high up under her eyes.

The sun rose over the peaks to our right. Shafts of light slipped through the crags of rock and poured through the brittle trees as I jogged to catch up to them. I slung Ermil’s other arm over my shoulder, and Matt took my pack.

We did a good job last night. Apella would have been proud of me.

We saved someone’s life. That had to count for something, push the peg forward one short inch.

I left any other feelings behind, jammed into that tree with the blood and contaminated instruments.

ROSA

I wish I could hate you. I want to hate you for leaving me here.

I HATE you.

I love you.

I love you.

The door eased over the carpet. My face pressed against the floor, my knees folded over as if I were praying. I focused on the tiny little threads, bending, waving like red grass as the wood swept over the top. I would hold my heart hostage to lie in grass right now. I wanted the frozen spikes digging into my back. I wanted the melted snow to seep into my clothes.

I didn’t want to feel dead, to relive dying.

A polished shoe wedged in the gap and Red’s legs, body and face appeared. She glowered from her position above me. I hadn’t moved in hours. It had taken me this long to remember how to breathe properly, to pull myself from a very real nightmare.

“I have to take you downstairs,” she whispered regretfully, her countenance changing. Pity grimed the corners of her mouth. I had no energy to dislike her face. I was stretched past caring.

I turned my forehead to the carpet, rubbing it back and forth slowly. “Where’s Harry?” I murmured, my lips picking up pieces of carpet fluff.

Red’s voice was warmer than I expected, but disappointed as well. “Harry has been repurposed. He, er, wasn’t suited to this position. You need to get up, Miss Rosa. I have to take you downstairs again.”

Again
.

I blinked, and tears met the carpet.

“You’ll have to help me up,” I whispered. I couldn’t take another step. I couldn’t willingly walk back in there.

She knelt down, a ladder in her stockings stretched wide over her knee as her weight pressed into the floor. She hooked her arms under mine and pulled me up. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t answer. Most of me was still on the floor.

I love you.

Don’t forget.

Please don’t have already forgotten.

They strapped me down in the chair again. They asked the questions again. I refused to answer them again. They pressed play again.

My soul coiled inside my body, winding round and round in a tight dressing— protecting me, shielding me.

Este’s voice, high and shrill, squawked from the screen, her thin frame teetering in those red heels. “I d-don’t want b-b-blood on the carpets.”

I closed my eyes and listened to the rest. I knew it by heart now. This was unnecessary. These images would never leave me.

“What have you done?” Joseph asked. I opened my eyes, waiting for the screen to go black and start at the beginning again.

But it didn’t. This was the after part. The part I didn’t remember because I was already gone.

A squeal, hard and piercing. Este stood on the tiles, her hands straight at her sides, her fingers anchored to her thighs. So taut, so distressed. Joseph leaned down to my body, his hands shaking. Before he could touch my neck to check for a pulse, a guard jumped on his back, his arms wrapped tightly around Joseph’s throat.

My head shook from side to side as I watched in dismay. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Joseph had been dead this whole time. The bottom fell out of everything. The floor rocked, the air swirled, and I knew I was going to be sick. But I couldn’t stop watching.

Joseph’s hands scrambled behind him, batting, grabbing, scratching at the guard. His eyes. They weren’t
his
eyes. They were hollow, angry, absent. He got a grip on the guard and threw him to the ground. I watched as the guard skidded backwards over the tiles and his head hit the wall. I would have heard a crack, if there weren’t so many other noises fighting for attention. Guards were coming at Joseph from every direction. Clawing, hitting, trying to pull him to the ground, but he was like a raging bull, his strength inhuman as he fought them off.

When his face flashed towards the camera, his eyes were still empty, and my body shuddered like a rickety shed in a storm.

A guard lifted the knife from the floor and held it out in front of him, my blood spitting from the end in splatters as his hand shook. He lunged at Joseph’s side but accidentally slashed at the forearm of the guard holding Joseph by the waist. That guard dropped to the floor, screaming, gripping his arm over an open wound that was spurting blood like a sprinkler. My stomach crept up into my mouth at all the blood, the violence that seemed endless. The guard with the knife didn’t seem to notice what he’d done and lunged at Joseph again. I gasped at the disconnection of these men grappling at each other, fighting for their lives, and Joseph, a body separate to his spirit, a hulk, a mass of rage.

There were two guards down. Este’s piercing-as-a-bullet squealing was a constant musical backdrop to the scene.

A shot cracked the air, and Joseph ducked down. But it was nowhere near him. It came from somewhere else out of frame. The squealing ceased like someone had pressed the mute button, and Este lay across the couch like a dismantled puppet.

It dazed the men for a second and then I lost them all in the mesh of muscle, weapons, and blood. Joseph held onto a guard’s hand tightly or around something… something black. I dug my nails into my palms, my body leaning forward and nearly pulling my chair over. I was a bird ready to take flight, straight into a wall.

Crack, crack, crack…

It didn’t sound like it should. It sounded like a whip, like lightning. I could almost smell the singe, the burn, and see the scalded earth. But it was not something natural; it was something men made to undo men.

I searched the pile of bodies, slumped in a circle around him. Joseph was covered in blood. He was breathing like he couldn’t get the air in quick enough, hunched over as if he were a seed that wouldn’t grow. The gun lagged in his hand, and then it dropped to the floor with an isolated, lonely clang.

What did I make you do?

I pulled at my restraints, thinking I might scream but knowing no one would come to my aid.

“What have you done?” Deshi asked in the screen, in a video I was struggling to believe was real, as he stood behind the bodies.

Joseph was lost. No color in his beautiful face save the color of others’ blood. He moved to my body, silent and motionless through the whole thing, and collapsed. I watched and felt every punch, every splinter as he beat the tiles over and over again with his fist. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to cry out, I wanted to reach inside the screen and hold him, but I couldn’t. I was lying there dead, and he was broken.

I broke him.

Everything shattered. A million tiny shards of ceramic the color of gold and dust rained over me.

I let out a moan. A shallow sound that was nothing.
Nothing.

Mr. Hun pushed the door open. My eyes squinted at the light from the garage that didn’t belong in here. I wanted to steep in darkness. Disappear.

His voice was soft and sure. “See, dear. You’re protecting a murderer. Are you ready to talk now?”

My chin touched my chest, and I exhaled my soul in one breath. They would get nothing from me today.

I was done.

ROSA

I fell in the hall on the way back to my room, my limbs so wobbly I could barely stand. They folded under me like poorly made chair legs and crumbled together. Red sighed and nudged me with her toe. I felt like any touch would disintegrate my form. I was a case. Inside me were dust, un-smelled air, and waves of sadness. I pulled my legs under my body sluggishly and whimpered at her impatient prodding. The pain I felt was scattered over my skin, like a lagging electric shock.

I could feel her body warmth closing in, looming, ready to grab me and jerk me up. She’d had her one sympathetic moment. That was probably all I was going to get. Besides, they were always watching and she couldn’t show weakness.

A cough.

“Let me take her, Mrs. Kelly.” A calm voice, slow like lava, but warm, bordering on hot.

Red’s foot tapped once in front of my eyes, and then disappeared.

Lips close to my ear whispered, “You need to get up.”

I can’t.

“Get up.” Strong fingers found my chin and forced it upwards. “Now. He’s watching you.”

Okay. Move your limbs. Pull one part in front of the other. Follow the thread of life left in you.

I heaped myself towards my door, moving like a kicked heap of wet towels.

Denis opened the door and walked straight into my bathroom. Pulling myself from the floor, I went inside, closing the bedroom door behind me. I heard a slight metallic clink, and then the taps running. Without even looking into the bathroom, I seized and shuffled into the corner with fear.

His concerned face appeared in the bathroom doorway, and I pressed closer to the wall. When he saw my expression, his eyebrows rose in alarm and he pumped his hands in front of him.

“No. I’m not going to hurt you, I…” He ran a hand over his close-cropped, spiky hair and sighed. “Have a shower, Rosa, take some time,” he urged seriously.

I just stared blankly, not understanding anything. My mind was walled in on all sides by screens playing violent acts over and over. Then he checked himself, checked for cameras, and leaned in, kissing me briefly on the forehead.

“Let this be the last time you allow him to hurt you,” he whispered, his breath a flush of peppermint on my aching skin.

Tears cascaded over my eyelashes and flooded my cheeks, a waterfall of disbelief.

He pulled back suddenly, as if he’d surprised himself, and backed away from me, opening the door behind him and slowly leaving the room. His eyes intense. His face finally showed some emotion—concern, but also… a challenge.

I waited until the door clicked and then rushed to the bathroom. Sitting on the basin was a candy-colored music player, the white earphones wound in a circle. The song was paused.

I traced the title with my shaking fingers, my head splitting with bullets and blood. ‘The Work’ by Catie Wings. It didn’t sound like a real name.

I placed the earphones in my ears and pressed play, looking up at the girl in the mirror. She looked harrowed, hollow, wide eyes in a thin face, eyes as large as bowls and just as full. Full of more trauma than she could handle and struggling to get back to herself. To remember herself. I gripped the sides of the sink and listened.

If this was more torture, that would be it. I would wash down the drain.

The music was haunted. A floating voice sailed in the spaces between what I’d learned was piano. A dull thud. But then the vulnerability, the stress of the first words, hit me and I dissolved. My fingers slipped and I pressed them deeper into the porcelain. I watched the ghost in the mirror react and tried to recall that it was me.

“Clasp hands, you’ll survive.”

Her voice wavered as if she weren’t sure of her words, the fear in there, the loss of something real.

“I’m on my own, looking in,

On the strife,

On the chaos.”

I couldn’t understand the next part, but her voice had me anyway. Something was over, she sung. It was about things that were out of her control. My tears fell into the basin, just water.

Insubstantial water.

Powerful water.

I can do this. I have to.
My heart burgled all the strength it could. My head fell as I watched tears pour down the drain, my hair, waving, glowing light and wrong.

“Fate’s taking the last of your strength,

But I know you’ve got a lot of fight left.

Fate’s taking the last of your strength,

But I know you’ve got a lot of fight left.”

Something was stuck in my throat, heaving panic.
Let this be the last time.

“I can’t cry for fear of what it means.

I can hope but it leaves me undone.

Regrets keep me standing alone.

Wondering what I could’ve done.

Wondering if I gave you enough.”

There was more than just tears burning my throat; something else was stuck in there, my heart, my soul. I was trying so hard and then, I stopped.
This will be the last time. Make it count,
I thought. I eased myself down to the floor, the damp bath mat cool on my legs, the player pulling over the edge and landing on the floor. I wrapped my arms around my legs to contain the shaking.

“Please, my love, change this time, change this place.”

She wailed, she pleaded. But it wasn’t going away.

“Take this pain away.”
She threw the words at me, threw them into the atmosphere, and offered them to anyone that would have them. And I wanted to take the pain for her. I wanted to be stronger.

Grant. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
I let myself feel it. I let the tears run over my lips and into my hands. I held them there.

“Leave me my memories.

Leave them here with me.”

She asked. She told. She demanded.

I thought,
They’re mine. You can’t take him from me. You can’t change my mind about him.
I won’t.

I let the words roll over and over like racing clouds heavy with destruction. They floated in front of my face; they sloped over my forehead and smoothed down my hair.

“Fate’s taking the last of your strength,

But I know you’ve got a lot of fight left.

Fate’s taking the last of your strength,

But I know you’ve got a lot of fight left.”

I knew.

This would be the last time I let him hurt me.