Façade (DISCONTINUED. Revised and redone as a webcomic)

Chapter 11: Recovery

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Day 004 2:22pm
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The entire drive home consisted of me leaning against the window with this terrible pit in my stomach. Shaun and Dust were oblivious to my slump, since they were having a discussion with Shark concerning what had happened in the fight. Triumph had a headache from blood loss and didn't say a word, but Echo, who sat between my brother and I in the back seat, noticed me staring out the window listlessly.

Again and again I saw the faces of the people I killed. Six of them. Two were about thirty years old, one was way past his prime, and the other three were no more than twenty five. Their cries, their terrified faces, their glassy eyes. However, the thing that scared me the most was...

I felt like I'd killed before.

Not only had I felt as though I'd killed before, but I...enjoyed it in the past. I felt my past self grow excited when I killed.

Suddenly, Echo tapped my shoulder, which caused me to look over at him. He paused, scanning my face for a moment, then pulled a Samsung phone out of his pocket and unlocked it. He opened up a new note, then typed something. After that, he held the phone out to me.

<I don't know you well, but I can tell that you're out of sorts.>

"Yeah..."

He typed in a new line of text.

<Is this about the fight?>

I nodded, to which he slowly, thoughtfully typed in a new line of text.

<You didn't want to kill them, right? And now you feel responsible for the injury of your brother.>

"Y-yeah. If I'd moved out of the way faster-"

He waved a hand in front of my face with a dismissive shake of his head.

<You may be a wolf, but even you can't dodge a bullet yet. I can't. Dust can't. Shaun definitely can't. Triumph had the choice to dodge that bullet, but he chose not to. It was his choice, so stop feeling bad about it. As for killing the soldiers...well, I'm also still squeamish about it. I hate them with every fibre of my being, but I still hate the thought of killing them.>

I met his eyes for a long time, trying to see if he was making this up to make me feel better. His eyes were serious, and he let out a soft sigh. He typed in another line of text.

<You won't be the same person you were before you took a human life. Nobody ever is. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Actually, I used to be a lot like you. I know this must seem odd, coming from a fourteen-year-old, but I actually was like you.>

"What...changed you? If it's sensitive, you don't have to answer-"

A peal of laughter escaped Dust, Shaun and Shark in the front seat, nearly interrupting the last few words I had to say. Echo gave me a smirk, much like Distance usually did, then began to type.

<I had parents who loved me, and a younger sister. I also had this friend. He was a wolf before me, and he and I hit it off. His name was Marcus. He seemed like a nice guy over the week that I first knew him. On my sister's fifth birthday, I took her to this park that she liked in one of Serenity's cities. My home city. Marcus came by and stopped to talk with us, so of course I introduced him to my little sister. I told him I couldn't wait to see her grow up, and she also told him that. He got this weird look on his face and asked her if she liked wolves. Having been born one herself, she got all excited and said yes. I was ten at the time, so I didn't really see what was going on until it was too late. Marcus invited her to play tag and became a wolf. She stayed in her human form and chased him right into traffic as the light turned green. Marcus made it across and became human again to grin at me as my sister was crushed under a semi. A year later, we went to place flowers on her grave and he was there. I didn't see him this time, either, and he used his powers, pyrokinesis and the ability to manipulate illusion, to make it appear as if nothing had happened. I bumped into my parents and broke the illusion to see that he'd broken the chains on a bunch of iron poles on the building above us to kill my parents. They had been impaled and held in a standing position by the iron poles. I was alone after that, but Marcus also decided to infect me with the Adlet virus when I attended my parents' funeral. I rejected the other family members who claimed to have ownership over me and ended up alone on the streets with the virus. A woman found me as I was struggling to stay human and took me in despite my threats. That was Dust's mom. I ended up staying with Dust's family until six months later, when I decided it was my mission to kill Marcus. I found and confronted him, which he found surprising, but that was a stupid move. In order to kill Shale, all the holders of the Eyes of Delilah need to be present. Anyways, it was a set-up. As I fought Marcus, he'd set up an ambush to kill Dust and I. He'd chosen to hide in a spot near a Lost Echo army camp, and our commotion alerted a young pair of soldiers to our position. They came over to where we were and Marcus used his ability to hide himself. I was going to be killed, but Dust had followed me and busted out into the clearing. He scared the soldiers and one fired some kind of handheld ballista at Dust. I pushed him out of the way and nearly ended up dead. That's where the scar comes from and why I've got less emotion than Kristen Stewart. The end.>