Through Glass(75)

“No, Tee, it won’t be. You don’t have any way to stop it, to heal me. They will infect me…”

“They’re coming,” I whispered, more to myself than to them, knowing they wouldn’t hear me even if I spoke up.

“They turned to ash, Tee. You were right. Abran is using them and if we both leave, we will never know what’s going on,” Bridget said, her hands clinging to Travis’s bloodstained shirt.

“I can’t let you do that, baby,” Travis pleaded, his tears distorting his voice. I looked away, feeling uncomfortable for watching his heart break. My own heart beat heavily as I watched them, as my own traumatizing good-bye replayed for me.

“Please,” Bridget said and I could hear the pain in her voice, the loss at what she was doing already engulfing her. “I left a phone in her backpack. I can watch him from the inside. Just stick to the normals.”

“I can’t leave you.” I turned toward them at Travis’s voice. His forehead was pressed against hers as tears streamed down their faces.

As they said good-bye.

I couldn’t watch this. I couldn’t bear the clenching pain my heart experienced at seeing such love and tenderness.

“They will kill you here,” Travis whispered against her skin, his last plea pointless and unheard.

I turned away from them, back to the opening, my eyes straining through the dark as I tried to see.

“No, they won’t,” Bridget mocked, the deep lie painful on her soft voice. “You left me behind and I hate you because of it. They won’t kill me, they will use me. And I will let them, for your sake.”

I kept my eyes trained on the dark as she spoke, my gun pointed through the shadows of the bleachers just as a dark shape darted out from the light. My finger pulled the trigger out of habit as someone emerged from the shadows. The dark shape fell to the ground immediately.

“Guys,” I moaned as I backed away from the opening, my feet sliding past where Travis held Bridget in his arms, where he slowly lowered her to the ground.

“I love you, Bridget.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered, her words almost lost through the blast as my gun fired again. “Now, go.” Bridget smiled and pressed the green gun into my brother’s hands, her eyes pained and tight.

Travis backed away from her as he pressed his thumb to the pad near the knob, the door swinging open with a soft beep.

I bolted through the door, my heart breaking as he looked back, as he closed the door on his heart. I wanted to beg him to stay with her, to just let me go, yet I could tell by the look in his eyes that any pleading would be hopeless.

I followed him as he plunged himself into the darkness, his feet pumping as we ran across the dimly lit parking lot of the school they had held me prisoner in. I could hear the shouts filter through the massive wall they had built and a tornado alarm going off as they warned everyone of what had just happened. I wasn’t sure what they were warning them of, however; the hotter who had escaped or the Tar who walk in the light among them.

We ran until the darkness took us, a beam from the flashlight Travis held in his hands the only thing keeping us safe. I was careful to stay close to him, close to the light. Even with that I couldn’t ignore the way parts of me tensed and others relaxed merely by being in the dark. Like it was familiar.

I cringed at the thought and followed Travis as he led us into a dark alley. He handed me the flashlight quickly and then his hands plunged into his pocket for a small disc. It looked like a breath mint box that I used to carry around; white on the top and bottom with metallic edging around the edges. He tapped it once and the thing erupted in light, the bright circle illuminating the disgusting brick walls we were now surrounded by.

We stood still as we watched the light, my breath slowing and my exertion leaving me.

“Are you okay?” I asked softly, not knowing what else to say or even if it was the right thing.

“Bridget is loyal, she will be okay.” His voice was deep, so much of his pain rippling out of him.

It hurt me deep down to see him hurting, to see the stress and sadness in his face. Before I knew it, I had stepped closer to him and wrapped my arms around him.

I clung to him until he moved away, his face sad and unreadable.

“What are we going to do now?” I whispered to the bright alley around us. The small piece of sanctuary was all we could expect from now on, until the light gave out.

“We have to stop Abran. I have worried for some time now that his experiments on the Tar were more than just to find new ways to kill them,” he answered, his voice growling in anger, stopping me.

“More than just killing them?” I asked, my brain moving faster than my words.

I pulled away from him slowly and my eyes narrowed curiously. Testing different ways to hurt, to kill. That’s what he pictured when he looked at me, what he was going to do to me, what “testing” he would accomplish.

“Yes, ways to defeat them. To become stronger than them. He wasn’t supposed to experiment on the survivors, but he found a way around it…” Travis stopped, the muscles in his jaws working as he looked around us, almost as if he expected the blackness to hold the answers he needed. “That guard, Jamie. He was not a Tar. He never was, but he turned to ash...”

I swallowed the bile that had risen in my throat, willing it to stay down, but knowing it was useless. I had just turned two men to ash, men who had been mutilated into something more. More than what he had planned to do with me. I was only a monster in his eyes. However the others had been people; living, breathing humans.