I didn’t cry when my mother shot herself in front of me. I didn’t cry the first morning I found Clara choking on her own blood.
I will not cry now, or ever again.
In the emerging silence, my hearing seems to improve, the metallic ring fading. Now I hear my heartbeat, the sound of my own dragging feet. The weapon is slick in my hand, heavier than I remember it. My arms are shaking. I can’t seem to breathe.
The inmate turns around.
I fire.
He’s faster than I am; stronger; smiling as he dodges my imperfect shot. Blood is now smeared across his face, streaked through his hair. His clothes drip as he walks, his boots leaving red footprints along the white floors. He’s wounded in several places but this fact doesn’t seem to bother him.In fact, he seems delighted.
There’s no one left to kill but me.
News of this massacre has certainly reached officials by now, but all our surveillance technology can’t make up for a lack of manpower. I don’t know how long it’ll be before another troop is notified, armed, and unleashed. We are unaccustomed to such attacks. We have more scientists than soldiers. Never, since its inception, has the island sustained such losses.
The inmate winks at me. “Looks like we’re finally alone, beautiful.”
I fire again.
He dives out of the way, laughing, but the kickback damages my injured body anew. I stumble as fresh agony turns the edges of my vision white. One of my broken ribs, I realize, must’ve finally pierced an organ.
I rack my weapon, heart thundering in my chest. I wonder how they’ll tell Clara I’m dead. I wonder whether they’ll be gentle with her, but I already know that they won’t. The electric battery thrums under my hands as the gun recharges. We learned early on that manufacturing bullets was expensive and time-consuming. Most of our weapons are now powered by directed energy. Lasers so powerful some can reduce bone to ash in a single shot. The inmate is pointing two such weapons in my direction. Over his shoulder he’s slung four more, collecting loot as he stalks toward me. He must be carrying over a hundred pounds of weaponry,but he doesn’t seem fatigued by the effort.
Another flash of white teeth as he grins, and suddenly the distance between us has vanished. I don’t realize I’m on my knees until it occurs to me that I’m staring up at him, my head burning bright with fever. He pries the gun from my hands and it seems to be happening to someone else. I stagger slightly and he saysNow we’re evenbut the words stutter in my head and I wonder whether I’ve imagined them. Pain is crowding my thoughts, heat devouring my mind. I am delirious.
Already dying.
He aims the glowing barrel at my face and I’m less ashamed of defeat than I am of what I intend to say next. My greatest moment of weakness: observed by a stranger. Recorded by machines. Remembered forever.
“Please,” I gasp. “Tell them to be gentle with her.”
The inmate lowers his weapon an inch. “What?”
My head rocks backward, meets a hard surface. “She’s just a child.”
“Who?” he demands, his voice booming between my ears. “Hey—”
“My sister,” I choke out, though I can’t seem to move. I feel as if I’m going blind. “When I die, they’ll throw her in the asylum.”
The inmate seems to still.
I feel this somehow, though perhaps I’m hallucinating. I can’t tell whether my mind has already detached from my body.Perhaps it’s the fever. Chills wrack my bones; pain spasms across my torso.
For once, the silence scares me.
“She’s just a child,” I whisper again.
When he says nothing I brace myself for the final blow, for the pain that precedes nothingness, for the failure that was my life, for the futility of all that I am—
But when I force myself to look up, the inmate is gone.
Rosabelle
Chapter 6
In my dreams, everything is soft.
The harsh edges of the world are blunted, my face cradled by clouds. My body seems suspended in water, my hair freed from its utilitarian knot, silky lengths cascading down my back. I am a body still becoming, untouched by tragedy. In my dreams I am safe; I have a strong hand to hold; a door to lock against the dark; a trusted ear into which I whisper my fears. In my dreams I am patient and kind; I have room in my heart for more pain than my own. I am not afraid to smile at strangers. I have never witnessed death. In my dreams sunlight glazes my skin; gentle wind caresses my limbs; Clara’s laughter makes me smile.
