Secrets // Steve Harrington

Chapter Thirty-Nine - Lost

Word Count: 3,509 words. 

Warnings: None. 

All I could hear was voices. Voices that I didn't recognise. The world around me was dark, as though my eyes had been covered by a blanket of smoke and yet there was no weight on them. I was awake.

"She remembers too much," one said.

Another replied. "We can't risk the same procedure we did last time, her mind is too developed."

"At the rate she's growing in strength, it won't be long until he uses her to find his way back to this world."

"Then what do we do?" a different one asked. I knew that voice, I knew it well.

"Brenner," I breathed, realising that my eyes were only closed.

The voices stopped quickly and I could hear the shuffle of several feet as I opened my eyes. Drowsy, I turned my head left and right, vision blurred.

"Hey there," he greeted.

I was on a bed and I could distantly hear the beeping of machines around me. A hospital. I had to be in a hospital. How had I gotten there?

"You were getting into your car," Brenner's voice explained. I must have spoken out loud.

My head titled to the side as I opened my eyes. He was there, sitting in a chair by my bedside. Dazed, I turned my gaze to my hand. He grasped it tightly.

I shook my head, fear settling in. I pulled my hand away as harshly as I could, scrambling in the bed, bending my knees and pulling them to my chest as I tried to get as far away from him as possible.

"Calm down Two," Brenner tried, reaching out towards me.

"That's not my name," I told him frantically, noticing the wires that were attached to needles in my skin. I attempted to pull them out, hissing as the metal fell from my skin.

"Two, stop." He stood now.

"That is not my name!" I shot, anger and fear taking over.

The lights of the room flickered unnaturally, machines beeping too fast to count their beats. I turned my head left and right as the monitor shook.

Brenner's eyes widened. "Thalia, stop this," he told me.

Breathing heavily, a sharp pain ran through my temple, moving down my spine and bursting at the end of my nerves across my lower back. I held my head in my hands.

"Look Two, I tried to do this the easy way," he told me.

It wasn't Brenner that spoke, in fact, I had become totally unaware of him being in the room. Instead, my eyes focused on the man that walked towards me.

At the foot of the bed, he ignored the lights above him, resting against the bar at the bottom. "All you had to do was let me in, but you just pretended that I wasn't there."

The pain was getting worse now. "Make it stop. Please make it stop."

I could feel the currents of electricity running through me, the effort of pushing it down becoming more painful that I ever imagined. I couldn't let go, I couldn't. I didn't know why, but I knew that it wasn't the right thing to do. I knew that I had to keep it away.

"Sedate her!" a different voice screamed. Brenner.

One was gone when I looked again, and for a moment, I knew that I had imagined him. Then, he whispered in my ear.