Through Glass(69)

“But they let you come?”

“Something like that.” He turned back to me and smiled. My shoulders relaxed a bit, although not enough. I had seen the way he looked at the wall, heard the way Abran had spoken to me. Even though my brother was right here in front of me and I wanted to believe I was safe. I knew it was only an illusion.

“What’s going to happen to me, Travis?” I asked him, my voice shaking.

“I don’t know.” He looked right into me, his brown eyes large and pleading, but I could see the fear behind them and it scared me.

“I know you are lying—even now—I can see it in your eyes.”

He smiled as I caught him. His hands squeezed mine again in his attempt to comfort me, but I wouldn’t let it work, not this time. I could tell that he knew. I set my jaw as I looked into him, glaring at him as an older sister would, as I once had.

He looked away, his shoulders tensing as he exhaled, as he gave in.

“Abran is obsessed with finding a way to defeat the Tar. They want to make you bleed, Lex, then they want to see what makes you tick. They want to find out a way to defeat them, to get our lives back. We all do.” His voice was desperate, scared, and that alone gave him away.

He had tried to disguise what they really wanted with softer words, but I heard what he really meant. What they really wanted.

“You mean, they want to torture me?” I asked, my voice shaking as anger surged, the tears threatening to flow again.

“They want to torture a monster, Lex.”

He said it like it made it all right, as if that made it okay, but it didn’t. Anger coursed through me at his words, my breathing picking up as my heart pulsed against my chest. He talked about getting their lives back, like I wasn’t included in that. Like I couldn’t have my life back. I knew better. To them, I wasn’t one of them. Right then, I knew I never would be. As much as I had wanted to find others to fight back. To them, I would only be fighting myself.

I couldn’t accept that.

“It would still be me,” I said, the hard lines of my voice rising as my anger pulsed.

Travis looked at me, the fear in his eyes mirroring my anger, the strength of it taking my breath away. I wanted to say he agreed with me, but I wasn’t sure. He shook his head before looking down to the ground, his whole body sagging in anguish as it had so long ago.

I fought the need to yell at him, or to fight with him. It wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t change anything. He wasn’t in charge as much as I wasn’t. We were both at others’ mercy.

I slowed my breathing, matching the tempo to his as I tried to calm myself. I tried to convince myself not to fight him and let my logical thinking slink through me.

“What do you hope will happen?” I asked, my voice soft as I tried to hide the last of the anger and fear that was trying to take over me.

“You won’t change unless they make you bleed out, Alexis,” he whispered, his head lifting to meet mine. “You could stay here. We could keep you safe—”

“Here?” I asked, my voice cutting him off. “You mean in here?”

“Yes.” He continued to whisper and I had the distinct impression that he was trying to keep others from our conversation.

“Trapped in a cement box?” I asked, careful to keep my voice as low as his, even though my panic was trying to raise it. “Like a forgotten pet?”

“Not forgotten, alive,” he pleaded, his hands pressing into mine as he pulled me closer to him.

“I don’t want that, Travis. I would rather leave.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to go, back out into the darkness,” I whispered into the grey walls around us, the lone light bulb.

Part of me knew it was a foolish decision, but right then, I didn’t care. It was obvious that they would rather kill me than let me stay and staying trapped in here wasn’t an option for me.

“You can’t mean that,” he hissed, his hands releasing mine as he pushed me away, obviously disgusted with my choice.

“Stay in a box or be experimented on?” I asked, my voice rising as my anger swelled again. “I think I’ll take the darkness.”

“That’s no life, Lex.” His eyes pleaded with me, the dark brown orbs digging into me as he begged. I barely saw it. I could barely feel his desperate need to keep me safe over my anger, my fear.

“And living here would be?” I spat.

“You would have me.”

I stopped. Everything inside of me turning to ice, my anger freezing in place. Would I have him? Cohen had said the same thing, but I never had him, either. I had only had an image of him. Never him. It would be the same thing here. Alone, but not. Just like with Cohen.

“They took Cohen, Travis,” I whispered. He jumped, his eyes widening. I tried to ignore his reaction and continued on, needing him to hear, to understand even this little bit of what had happened to me, why I couldn’t stay here. “After years of being alone, of only getting to talk to him through the glass of our bedroom windows, they took him. They came to kill me and he saved me. They tried to kill him and he lived. They took him.”

“Lex… I’m so sorry.”

“It would be the same thing here, Travis,” I said as I looked down to where his hands pressed against his knees. Hands that didn’t belong to my fourteen-year-old brother—hands that belonged to a man—a man who had fought and killed for eight long years. “I would be trapped behind glass, alone, but not. I don’t want that life, not anymore.”