Enlightenment

Part 20

              I woke up slowly; the first thing I registered was the burning pains in my wrists and ankles.  The second was the dull pain that still throbbed in my chest. I groaned and was jolted into full awareness by Jamie’s voice,

“Jade? Jade!”

              I squinted and focused on him he was tied by his wrists to the wall opposite me. We were in a small room. Devoid of any furniture, there was one window, far too small to fit through above Jamie with a closed blind; and only one small door at the far end.

“Yeah?”

He looked relieved “oh thank god you’re ok… I wasn’t sure if you were alive, you weren’t breathing.”

I frowned something about that sentence didn’t seem right, “I’m not, remember?”

Now it was his turn to frown, “you’re not what?”

“Alive.”

It took him a few moments to answer, “It depends on the way that you use the word.”

              I was too tired to try to decipher his words or his tone so I focused on evaluating my condition instead.

              I discovered that the pain in my wrists and ankles was caused by the fact that they were encased in what appeared to be silver coated steel manacles. They were at least a couple of inches thicker than normal manacles, and with the extra silver coating which was burning into my skin, I wasn’t sure I would be able to break out of them.

              The wound in my chest was starting to heal, but was still bleeding slowly. I could see a glint of silver; my body would have been pushing the bullet out as it healed.

              It took me a second to focus back on Jamie,

“Are you ok?”

He nodded, “I’m fine. You’re bleeding.”

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

He didn’t meet my eyes. “I’m not worried.”

My mouth curved into a small smile for a moment, “good.” Then I frowned, “what about the others?”

“I think they’re ok, they hadn’t caught them before I got knocked out. Julia was bleeding but it didn’t seem life threatening. I haven’t seen or heard them since I woke up.”

              I nodded slowly, and out of habit I breathed in before wincing in pain.

“That’s good. They are probably ok.”  

              I guessed it was around 9 in the morning judging by the weak sunlight filtering into the room around the sides of the blind. For the next few hours I drifted in and out of consciousness until I was jolted awake again when the door opened.

              An unfamiliar man came cautiously into the room keeping a gun pointed at me. He spoke to Jamie.

“Have you had a change of heart yet?”

He glowered “No.”

“What happened to you? You used to get it. Now you’ve gone all peace and love… I’m sorry you must be brainwashed man.”

“I’m not brainwashed idiot. I just learnt some things that I didn’t know before!”

              At first I thought he was just going to ignore Jamie, but then he suddenly turned and hit him hard in the face. Jamie let out a yell and cursed.

“What the hell was that for?”

“I’ve got to snap you out of it! I’m sorry it’s for your own good! Sam’s not happy man.” He hit him again.

              An angry snarl ripped from my throat. The sound was so sudden and ferocious that they both jumped violently.

“You lay a hand on him again and I will personally make sure that I rip your throat out!”

              For an instant he looked terrified before he covered it up with a smug expression.

“And how are you gonna do that parasite?” he tapped my restraints, “we’ve been preparing these for a long time. You are trapped. I can do whatever I want to you, but you can’t touch me.”

              I growled. He stepped closer and pulled a silver knife out of his belt. I focused on it and saw it was my knife. He was so going to pay for that… I was unable to stop myself from flinching as he waved it near my eye.

              He ran the flat of the blade across my cheek, but I didn’t let myself react to the red hot pain that it caused. He did it again in the same place and a whimper escaped my teeth. Jamie shouted in protest but he ignored him. He was just about to repeat the motion a third time when Sam stormed in.

“Clarkson! What are you doing in here?” he hurriedly stepped away from me and looked at the ground.

“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing! Use your brain boy, spend too much time near it and it might mess with your brain the same way that it did with him.” he jabbed a finger in Jamie’s direction.

              The one I now knew was Clarkson quickly apologized and left the room. I focused on Sam.

“Why am I here? Why can’t you just kill me?”

He stepped towards me menacingly, “you are here because we have a series of questions to ask you.”

“Like what?”

“Well firstly, why the hell are you stronger than all of the others we have encountered?”

“That’s easy. It’s because I’m much older than the others. They ones you will have met before will have been young, and weak… which probably explains the dim view you have of my kind.”

He didn’t seem to know how to respond to that so he moved on. “What did you do to him?”

Yet again he pointed at Jamie but didn’t actually look at him.

“Nothing.”

He slapped me across the face roughly. “What did you do to him?”

“I told you the first time-“he hit me again. Right on the raw skin created by my knife.

I hissed at him before I answered “Nothing!”

 He raised his hand to hit me a third time when Jamie shouted,

“Stop! You coward. Do you have no morals? You repeatedly hit her when she can’t even move and she’s telling the truth anyway! Besides which you can’t even look at me.”

              Sam clenched his teeth as he turned around to face him. “How dare you? I’ve looked after you for all these years and now you act like this? I will no longer look at you because you are dead to me now.” He walked towards the door, and called over his shoulder “you can both stay in here to rot for a while. You’ll see, she’ll show her true colors soon, I’ll bet she hasn’t eaten in a while.”

              After the door slammed there was silence for a moment before I gave into my fury. I yanked my arms roughly trying to break the manacles and screamed in frustration. It was no use. The only thing I accomplished was making my wrists even sorer. Although I only stopped when blood began to trickle down them.

              Once I had given up Jamie regarded me in silence for a while. He looked into my eyes.

“so… what now then?”