The Clean Ones

Chapter 25

"You idiot!" Cale bellowed. "Do you realize what you just did?"

"I... I..."

Numb. That was the only thought I could process.

"L-Cale, sorry; yelling at her isn't going to do much at this point." Lilliana, I think, tried to reason. I didn't remember her coming into the office.

"She just single-handedly murdered the most powerful man in the nation, and you expect me not to yell?!"

"Christ, Cale, calm down! Why are you so worked up over this? You had the same gun, you could've stopped her!" Benton spoke this time, I think.

Every person's voice sounded cloudy and muddled together. It took all my energy to mentally make the distinction of one person's voice from another.

"I didn't think she'd actually- oh, oh no. No no no!" Cale roared. I heard a crash- a door slamming open, maybe? Followed by pounding footsteps, and more shouting voices.

"They must've found out!" Delta screamed over the sound of a gun going off. "Quick, Lu, barricade the doors before the rest of the guards come in!"

"Right on it, Del!"

A set of footsteps approached me. I tired harder to press my eyes shut tighter and curl myself into an even smaller ball than before, if that was even possible.

I felt a cool, metal instrument- much too sharp to be any form of gun- touch the space between the tip of my ear and my forehead, followed by a warm breath that tickled the inside of my ear.

"It's me," I didn't need to even think about who me was. I'd recognize that voice anywhere. "Listen, thing are...ah... Crap, well, how do I put this... They're bad. Really bad. I don't want to do this, but it has to be done. I hope you can hear me. And, I hope that some day, when we meet again, you'll forgive me for what I'm about to do. Perri, I'm so, so sorry."

The instrument pressed deeper and deeper into my forehead, and then, gone. As soon as it's cool touch left me, it was replaced with an agonizing burning sensation. It took every single fiber of my being to hold myself back from screaming and clamping my hands down over the site of impact.

The burning lasted for seconds, and then, it was gone as fast as it had come.

I felt myself slipping into a deep slumber, though I didn't feel heavy. No, not in the least bit. If anything, I felt extremely feather-light, more so than ever before.

I blinked, opening my eyes just to come in contact with smudged patches of red and black. They closed almost immediately.

Cale got up. His footsteps, though small, felt extremely distant, as if they were miles away. Soon, I couldn't hear him, or any of the other commotion occurring in the room, at all.

Silence consumed my ears. Blackness, my eyes. Pureness, my lungs; a new feeling interacted with every sense in my body until I couldn't feel anything at all.

Death is the fate of the ill and the unstable, not the Cleansed.

The phrase no longer gave me comfort; I wasn't Cleansed anymore.