Prologue
November 5, 2009
c.s.
THE BOY HAD TO DO IT. There was no other way.
The man would've taken him back to his parents if he hadn't done it, and he couldn't go back to that purgatory. Living with them was like discerning a nightmare with his eyes open. It was suffocating, all consuming, soul-eating. The boy had finally figured out how to escape. He'd finally escaped. He couldn't go back.
He remembered it clearly, his departure. He remembered himself gnawing the belts that bound him to his bed off with his teeth. Picking the lock to his door. Stopping for a moment to look back at his room, to take in the blank white walls that seemed to match the inside of his heart. Empty. He could remember running the expanse of the hallways for what had felt like hours. Looking in every room, searching for the only other person in the world who mattered. And...the rest he couldn't think about. Bad things. Bad memories.
The boy had heard what his parents and their people said before he left. They thought he was asleep, and they'd clamored into his room to watch as if he was some experiment that needed to be monitored. They spoke of many things. He knew about what they were planning to do to his sister. For the power, they'd said, we want her power. They'd talked about deconstructing her like a person would deconstruct a clock, to figure out what made her tick, to examine how she worked. Going further than what they had with him. He couldn't let it happen to her. She was young, 10 months younger than he was. A kid who hadn't even turned 8 yet. Her life mattered more. He had to save her.
It happened late at night. The stars were out, glaring like dull diamonds, the moon a thin, milky curve in the sky. It was cold, and when he breathed out, the boy's breath crystallized into view in front of him. He'd made it out of the building, and he was running, dragging his drugged, sleeping sister by her arm behind him. Remnants from her testing, before. The boy wasn't strong enough to carry her, and she was weighing him down, but he couldn't-- wouldn't leave her behind.
The boy could hear his feet pressing loudly down on the ground before him. If he turned around, he'd be able to see a clear blue sign that read "The O.S." over top of it, glittering in the distance. He was almost in the clear when a dark man sitting on an even darker bench surrounded by stringy, moss-green grass saw him and stopped his movement.
"You, son," the man had said, "where are you going? Why are you dragging that young lady like that?"
"Nowhere, no reason," the boy had replied, nervously, hiding his brown face to the best of his ability, "just needed some fresh air." He felt the fear deep within his bones and it paralyzed him. It chilled him to his very core. This was a fear he knew all too well.
The man studied him then for a long time, a product of the darkness during the night altering his vision. He took in the boy's features, staring deep into his dark eyes until a look of realization dawned on his face.
"Nephew? Is that you? How'd you get out? Your parents will be angry if they find out you've gotten out of your room. Is that your sister there?" the man said, "I'll see you two safely returned to your rooms."
"Please, Uncle..." the boy pleaded, "Don't take us back. We just need to make a quick stop and we'll come right back."
The man grabbed his sister's arm, snatching it up harshly, and he threw her over his shoulder. The boy watched her dark curls fall against the man's shoulder, her brown-sugar-skin almost unnoticeable in the night. The man cracked his hand against the boy's cheek, and clamped his hand around his shoulder, dragging the boy back towards the building he'd just escaped from.
"Don't back-talk me, boy."
¨Please Uncle. Please." the boy cried, lifting his unbound arm with a dark look clouding his eyes.
"Keep that up, and I'll slap you again." the man replied, and kept dragging him along, erasing the boy's progress little by little. He could see his freedom slipping away.
Then, suddenly, a thin, red line began to write itself across the man's throat, continuing on only until the boy let his arm fall to his side. There was no knife involved, there was no gun, it could only have been the timber fingers of the boy's hand, suspended in space, that'd caused the fatal line. Blood spilled out of it like water, gushing and gurgling. The man cried out, his body fall to the ground with a loud thump as he held his throat, gagging, the girl in his arms falling with him. Red painted his hands, it painted his neck, it painted his niece and nephew. Red painted the ground that he'd fallen on.
"You...you...what did you..." The man tried to say, but he couldn't force the words. The boy watched as the life bled out of the man's eyes, a desolate smile on his face, until he was nothing but an empty shell. His sister, now awake, peered up at him from the ground with wide amber eyes.
"What did you do?" She asked, her voice weak, "Is that...Uncle Ephideus?"
"I did nothing, Vex. Don't worry about it." He replied, softly, trying to keep his voice level and clear.
The boy's sister had poured herself over her fallen uncle's body, shaking his arms, pleading for him to wake. Asking him to be ok.
¨Get up." The boy lightly rested his hand on the girl's shoulder, "We have to get out of here before it's too late. We can come back and save him after we're safe."
"But he needs us now! He'll die if we leave..."
"We'll die if we stay." The boy told his sister.
"But what about Mom and Dad-"
The boy couldn't fathom why his sister even cared for them, after everything.
"Don't worry about our parents. Just come with me." He held out his hand for her, but she hesitated to take it. "Don't you trust me?"
She frowned and said "of course," before placing her small hand into his, allowing him to pull her up. She kept her eyes on him, but he avoided her gaze.
That night felt like it happened years ago, though it had only been days since. The boy felt separate from it, somehow, as if it wasn't him who'd been living it.
The things that he did...they were not something he wanted to be ok with doing; but the fact of the matter was this, Rhys had to kill his uncle, and he had to kill the others, too.