Purgatory

Chapter 28

Due to my state of being I could only remember bits and pieces of the trek to nowhere.  I was slung across the back of a man for the duration, but I could not remember when the urban concrete changed to dead leaves and loose soil.  At one point I could see Cole’s hand hanging limply out of the corner of my eye as he was carried by someone else.  My eyes were covered when we hit concrete once again.

The device in my neck was removed only after I was securely tied to a chair with what appeared to be the straps of old armor.  I turned my head to look at Cole as my awareness cleared as a man removed the device from his neck and walked over to one of his colleagues.  They spoke quietly to each other for a moment, and I tried to calm my nerves.  Cole lazily lifted his head as he came to, taking in his surroundings before looking over at me.  His eyes, once filled with concern, were washed with relief as he saw me.

“Are you sure about this?” the man asked his colleague, and the other man turned around to look at me.  I recognized him from the feed of my last mission as Niles Gatton.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Niles said before turning back.  They talked quietly for a moment more, Niles’ posture growing more rigid with each sentence as his gestures became more forceful until he began to yell.

“She’s the one that killed Nora, Kyle!” Niles exclaimed.  “There needs to be justice!”

“You’ll be no better than them!” the man named Kyle retorted, but it wasn’t enough to hold Niles back from grabbing his beam rifle and aiming it at me.

“You kill her and I’ll end you myself!” Cole growled.

“Go ahead and shoot me all you like!” I taunted.  “She was going to kill me.  What did you think I was going to do?”

“Shut up, Helena!” Cole commanded me.

“Niles, stop, they can be turned!” Kyle pleaded through the shouts.

“Hey!  What’s going on here?”  A slender woman with a modestly powerful build entered the room with a hand on her hip, and immediately commanded silence within us all.  Her eyes pierced through each individual with a hardened look of questioning before she sauntered further into the room.  Niles lowered his weapon and clenched his teeth as he turned away from me.

“Nothing, ma’am,” Niles said, and then angrily threw the rifle aside before storming out the doorway.

“Kyle, could you go get Midvar and check on Niles?” the woman requested, and Kyle nodded as he walked out the door.  I looked over at Cole with worry and hoped he could provide some comfort, but instead he was staring at the woman with wide eyes as if he was seeing a ghost.

I looked back over at the woman Cole was staring at, and she smiled brightly at him.  “Hey, Cole, it’s been a while,” she said softly.

“Thea…how are you alive?” Cole asked hesitantly.

“Faked my death,” she explained as she walked over to him.  She carefully began to untie him from his chair.  “Good to see that it was convincing.”

“You really tore Koen apart with that, you know,” he said to her.  “How could you do that?”

“He needed to believe it as well.  It was necessary.”  As she finished untying the tethers around Cole’s arms and legs, Midvar entered the room, his figure nearly blocking the whole doorway.  My eyes widened at his living form in disbelief.

“Atherton,” Midvar said in greeting with a single nod in Cole’s direction.

“What are you guys doing?” Cole questioned the two as he stood.  “You’re going to kill us all!”