Fighting the Losing Battle

Chapter 14 - Making Rules

Kira POV

It takes a few seconds for me to adjust to my surroundings. The room – I get the sense that I'm inside rather than out – is gloomy. I don't recognise where I am. I've never been here before. My sight is limited – all I can see is a flickering candle, surrounded by a small ring of dim light, in the centre of what seems to be a large wooden table. I strain my eyes into the shadows, struggling to discern any significant shapes from the darkness, but my search is interrupted.

"We must make a decision." A deep voice emerges from the far side of the room. The voice is vaguely familiar, although I can't recall where I have heard it before. Authoritative and resonant, the voice chills me to the bone. Frantically I turn, searching for the source of the sound, but can see no one.

*

BANG!

I am torn violently from the vision, and I am left gasping for breath, as I try to regain a sense of reality. Although only short, that was the first vision since I've been here, and relief floods my system in the knowledge that they haven't been lost for good, as I had started to suspect. I feel myself relax a little.

In my peripheral vision, I am aware of movement. Suddenly conscious of another presence in the room, my body tenses, instantly defensive. I slowly, hesitantly, raise my head to meet the wary stare of him. He has a glass of water, half-filled, in his hand, and wears an uneasy expression. He holds my gaze, his dark eyes drawing me in, deeper and deeper, and my resolve to forget him instantly dissolves. I am drowning...

Unblinking, unmoving, time seems to stop still.

A distant peal of laughter from the corridor breaks the spell. Time restarts itself. We both look away, eyes darting around the room, anywhere but at each other. I turn away quickly, fighting the urge to glance at him once more. My heart pounds furiously; my breath catches in my chest. I hear him set down the glass, and then his hasty footsteps and the BANG! of the heavy wooden door as it slams shut behind him.

With a sense of overwhelming guilt, I spend the rest of the day trying not to look at the door. Failing.

The door never opens, and eventually I fall into a dreamless sleep.

*

Lukas POV

I can't do this. I can't. It's too much to bear. I thought I could manage, I thought I could cope. I thought I would be stronger.

Today had been a close shave. I'll have to be more careful.

If I can ever face going back in there.

But I must. I must go back. I can't let them see how hard this is. Adrian made it pretty clear that if I don't prove myself to the team, he'll be forced to kill me. And I'd rather not die today. Or tomorrow. Or any time soon, really. So no matter how hard this gets, I'll just have to find a way to bear it. Because choosing the alternative means choosing the end.

Okay, so I need a strategy, a game-plan. I'll just have to make a list of rules for myself. A list of rules to follow, to try and make my impossible situation a little bit more possible. You idiot Lukas! Like that will help. Here goes nothing...

Rule Number One: Under no circumstances whatsoever am I to make eye contact with her. Eye contact is a big no. Definitely not.

Rule Number Two: Limit conversation, where possible, to the essentials. Adrian may have told me to get close to her, but I can see that being a problem at the moment, given that I can barely speak around her. So, (re)learn how to speak, and then only ask what is required of me.

Rule Number Three: Start seeing her as the enemy. Because I keep forgetting who she is. Because someone that beautiful and vulnerable surely can't be evil. But she is. According to the team anyway. And they are all I have now, so however sceptical I have been of them, I must believe them. I have a duty to do.

That will have to do for now. It's getting late, and I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a long day. Adrian has permitted me a three hour break for sleep, during which the others will take shifts as guard. I can feel their eyes on me, even now, waiting for me to slip up, to make a mistake like before. The constant scrutiny is already growing tiresome.

I think life was easier when I was being ignored.

*

Kira POV

When I awake, my now-familiar tray of food and glass of water has already been brought in. I feel a strange sense of disappointment. That means he has already been in, and gone again. Will I get the chance to see him again today? Or is that it? Shhh Kira, you shouldn't be thinking like this. He wants to kill you. He has probably killed plenty of other people, probably some of my old friends. Stop thinking about him. He doesn't matter! And it's true, the chances of him having killed a number of my people are pretty high, and yet there's a part of me that believes that he isn't capable of it. That he wouldn't deliberately hurt anyone. That he wouldn't hurt me.

I need to stop listening to that part of me.

I need to face it. He is one of them. And if he gets the chance to kill me, he will. The connection I feel for him isn't real. It's understandable to feel something for dream-him - after all, I relied on him for months. But that dream isn't real. I can't feel anything but hate for real-him, enemy-him. The person that helped to murder my entire race. He's one of them, a monster. I can't feel anything for a monster. What kind of person would that make me? I can't let myself get close to one of them.

But sometimes, I really, really want to.