Deception | NaNoWriMo2023

Chapter Six: You're Lost Without Me

The room Wraith takes me to is larger than Edison's apartment in the HSVRC (or End, as the other inmates call it). The main body is a circle with semi-circles added on to the left and right, making a rough oval shape. I step inside, looking around at the wide, double bed, large holoTV with comfy-looking couches, and even an entire alcove of bookshelves to my right. This is...definitely not a prison cell.

A swoosh and a click sounds behind me and I turn. The door is closed. I guess Wraith wasn't planning to stay around. Rubbing a hand through my hair, I drift over to the couches and do a slow spin. Everything is a sleek black, light gray, and red, making the room feel snug, elegant, and too fancy for my tastes. But maybe...I liked this before? It's hard to tell. Was Deception expecting me? Did she ready this room for me in advance or was it mine before? My ribcage tightens around my lungs and my tongue becomes dry and sticky.

This might be my old room with my old stuff catered around my old tastes and... I shove my thoughts onto another path. Flopping down on the nearest couch, I heave the largest sigh I can manage, pouring out the remnants of adrenaline, stress, and everything else making my legs shaky into it.

I am so screwed.

The laugh starts as an ironic twist of my lips, graduates to a breathy snort, then all at once becomes a short and sharp bark. I've said—thought—that before when I was Denizen, a lie, and I'd thought I'd never had to say it like this again. Naïvely, I thought my life would be the normal kind of hard. Now here I am, in a worse pickle than before, and I am so totally screwed.

Isn't life ironic? I drop my head into my hands, wheezing until the tears prickling the back of my eyeballs lull into a dull burn. Slush creeps down from the back of my neck, down my arms, and piles in my fingers, leaving a burning trail of chilliness. Reaching up, I brush my hand over the spot, rubbing the outline of where the PowDown patch used to be.

My power is unhampered now, and it constantly trickles through me to make up for all the times it was too sluggish. How bad will the withdrawal symptoms be? Normally, coming off PowDown cold turkey is unpleasant, but with how high my doses were, it's going to be a lot worse.

Just like the situation I am in right now.

My ribs squeeze tighter and my insides knot like they're being knitted into a tapestry of dread. I shove a wall at the building tide of questions I don't want to think, let alone answer, but they spill over anyway, washing through me and turning the taste of my mouth sour.

What am I going to do now? What is Deception going to do? She is the worst Villain to be stuck with, not just because she's been climbing the rankings in the South Quarter, not just because she's suspected to have mind control powers, but because she's apparently actually my ex-girlfriend. (Or still a girlfriend? Did I ever cut it off officially? Does it even count if I don't remember her? Why in all the universe did relationship problems have to come into this?)

The afterimage of her rich purple eyes and the warmth of her hand on my cheek flickers behind my eyelids. I tear them open and stare fixedly at the slightly domed ceiling until it goes away. She has suspected mind control powers. Was she controlling me already back there? Or was that the lingering evidence of our previous relationship? Could I even tell if she uses her powers on me? Am I already slipping? What does she even want from me?

And this place, it's decked out with the latest tech, if not the highest. She must be more successful and rich than I thought.

Maybe this is where the millions of dollars I stole went into. Dark smoke shrouds my mind, sinking me deeper into the holes riddling my insides. It makes sense, too much sense, and the holes yawn wider like the many mouths of deep sea creatures. I helped her. I was on her side.