Ablaze »»DARKEST MINDS««

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
FREYA
Ψ

Images flash across my brain, familiarly unfamiliar scenes unfolding before my eyes as I'm transported from kissing Dane to sitting at a dining table surrounded by smiling faces, to diving into a swimming pool and adroitly propelling through the water, to kissing a young boy on a playground. The flashing memories stop suddenly.

I open my eyes with a gasp, but I'm not sitting in front of Dane next to the kids anymore. An eerie darkness dominates the room I'm sitting in. I try to move my hands, but they won't budge. I glance down. Why am I tied to a chair?

"I would say I'm sorry, but really you've left me no choice," a disembodied voice says. Even before I see him, I know who it is—Derick from the Zone.

He appears in front of me with a gun, but the gun isn't pointed at me—it's aimed at man and a woman huddled together on the floor. The woman is shaking with silent sobs as she clings to the man's shirt. The man looks at me through tearful eyes, but no tears fall. His eyes are telling me something, something besides fear. Hope? How could he feel hopeful in this situation, there's no way for him to escape Derick? And how could I feel hopeful while I'm tied to a chair, about to watch Derick murder two unarmed people?

Derick cocks the gun, and the man holds my gaze as he pulls the trigger.

My eyes snap open as I resurface enough to pull away from Dane. 

"Dane, Dane stop," I gasp and clutch my head. Reality hits me like a gallon of cold water. Dane's hands hover over me for a second, then come down to hold my hands that are still shaking, latched to my head. His hands are cold on my hot ones.

"Shit, what's wrong? Are you okay?" He questions loudly, forgetting about the two sleeping children nearby. He tries to catch my eye, but it hurts too much to keep them open. "Can you hear me, Freckles?"

The pain wavers and then disappears completely. The graphic scenes cease their tirade on my brain. I release my head with a sigh and sag back into the wall.

Yeah, I'm okay, I want to say, but the words don't come out. I don't know—I don't think I'm okay. To be honest I have no idea what just happened or why, all I know is that it did happen, and those flashes couldn't have belonged to someone else. My eyes flutter open and meet Dane's concerned gaze.

"It's Freya."

He blinks. "What?"

"My name. It's Freya." I recount what I just saw again, and my throat goes dry. I suddenly feel pressure build behind my eyes. "What the hell, my parents are . . . dead?"

I barely register Dane's arms wrapping around my body as I feel myself caving. Why did this have to happen now? I was finally almost happy with my life, being on the road with Dane and Marcy and Bo and Falcon. We'd escaped the Xi Blues, slipped from Clancy Gray's grip, and now, after everything, when I'm kissing Dane of all things, is when my memories return.

"What's going on?" He murmurs into my hair. I shrug against him and close my eyes.

The Zone forced me to forget everything before IAAN ravished the country. Now, for some reason, I remember. Everything.

"It's like the dam that's been keeping the memories of my life before IAAN just . . . broke." I pull away enough to look at him, but not enough to lose contact. His lips are still red from earlier, before I interrupted our moment. "I'm sorry I ruined our kiss."