Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2) (22 page)

‘
Do you want to die?’ Rebecca asked again.

‘
Of course I don’t!’ I snapped, but I knew I’d lied, and so did
my mother. ‘I mean… I don’t…’

I had no
idea. I didn’t want to leave Anna and my son. Brian, Chris,
Jessica, my family, I didn’t want to leave them.

But part of you does want to. If not to leave them, then to
leave that world.

‘
There is no one here but you and I honey,’ my mother said, her
eyes crinkled. ‘Talk to me.’

‘
I-I I don’t want to leave them,’ I whispered while Rebecca
nodded, ‘but yes, I think I wanted to die.’

I sank
to the floor and sat there dazed. A huge weight had lifted from my
chest, and the blistering air seemed to cool.

‘
Why?’ Mum asked.

I
thought about it carefully, trying to form the right explanation,
one that wouldn’t make me sound like a coward.

‘
To be free,’ I replied, ‘to free the others. I am a constant
burden, a never ending source of danger and pain. It’s my fault all
of this happened, and it’s my fault all of their lives are gone. I
wanted to fight, to not stop until I’d won and gotten us our lives
back. But that’s naïve. The way I am, the way my son is, we’ll
never be safe. With me gone, I’m one less danger for them to worry
about.’

My
mother crouched across from me and scrutinised my face.

‘
You carry so much guilt,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe I can’t do
this alone.’

I was
about to question her statement, but she was gone. I got back to my
feet and wandered to where she had been standing. The light
vanished, and I was plunged into darkness. I panicked for a second
that I’d died properly when they came back on. The surroundings
were the same; I couldn’t tell that anything was
different.

‘
Hello, Mr Bishop,’ a man’s voice came from behind
me.

I jumped
and spun round. I gasped and stumbled backwards, hitting the floor
with my butt. Hanging from the pipes was none other than Dr Terry
Bishop. Terry had the face of a doctor with experience, but also
one of kindness. His brown eyes were crinkled with laugh lines and
his ash-coloured hair covered his wrinkled forehead. The glasses
perched on his nose reflected the soft light from above, and before
I could say anything, Terry wrapped his hands around the noose at
his neck and freed himself.

He
landed softly, his eyes never leaving mine.

‘
How are you feeling?’ Terry asked, and I flashed back to when
we had first met. He’d asked me the same question.

‘
Well,’ I sighed and stood, ‘I’m kind of dead in an alive sort
of way I think.’

‘
I’m dead,’ Terry replied, his mouth pulling down at the
corners.

I winced
and remembered his corpse, hung from a pipe with a picture of my
‘dying’ father pinned to him, a message for me sent by the old man,
with Terry as the envelope.

‘
I’m sorry,’ I whispered, unable to meet his gaze.

‘
Sorry?’ Terry asked while his face crunched with
confusion.

‘
It’s my fault you’re dead,’ I replied.

Terry
rumbled with a warm laugh, and I finally raised my eyes.

‘
Dear boy, answer me this,’ Terry said as he slouched towards
me. ‘Did you wrap a rope around my neck and pull until I died? Did
you rob me of air, sling me up and pin a picture of your Dad to my
chest?’

‘
No, but it’s because of me that-’ but Terry cut me
off.

‘
My work here is done,’ Terry smiled and waved before blinking
out of existence. His voice however had one more message. ‘We both
took similar vows, son. I promised to help people, just like you,
and even though we sometimes lose sight of it, it’s all we’re ever
left with.’

I was
completely confused. What was the point?

I wasn’t
standing there long though. The room started to shake.

‘
Aw shit,’ I muttered and waited for the inevitable
unpredictable journey to somewhere new.

The room
didn’t explode, and the ground didn’t shatter beneath me, but a
trap door that wasn’t there before appeared. It snapped open, and I
dropped. I’d have laughed if my head hadn’t felt like someone was
thumping it with a hammer. I slid like a child down a long slide,
picking up speed. It twisted and turned, dipped alarmingly and
levelled out before I dropped through another hole.

I
managed to land on my feet. I had been thrown into an empty room.
It looked newly decorated, and as I shifted, glass crunched on the
floor. I looked down, and then up at the broken skylight. The sun
shown weakly and I could hear the soothing sound of birds in the
distance. When my gaze levelled, someone had joined me.

She
looked around mid-teens; her hair usually blonde was matted with
blood. Her soft features were ravaged by the fact that one of her
eyes was missing, and crimson drops dripped from the orifice. I let
out an involuntary whimper and backed away. Terry had been bad, but
the girl that faced me was ten times worse.

Claire
had been a sixteen-year-old girl with her life ahead of her. The
room I was in had been used by Anna, Chris and I as a hideout back
in Greystone, and Claire had caught up with us. Changed and a
former shadow of herself, she’d attacked, and I’d made the decision
to put her down. It had been the first life I’d taken consciously.
The bullet wound was there in her forehead, right were I’d fired it
through her skull.

‘
Hey buddy,’ she smiled.

‘
Claire…’ I whispered.

Her
smile widened.

‘
Sorry about my look,’ she grimaced and spun, ‘but losing an
eye isn’t the best fashion advice. I bet my depth perception sucks
now huh?’

I could
only stare and gape.

‘
Ah don’t worry,’ Claire laughed. ‘Not your fault. If only I
had control over my abilities, I’d have probably healed, right?
Maybe grown a third eye?’

‘
I’m-’ I said.

‘
Stop,’ she cut in, holding up her hand. ‘I know you wouldn’t
have killed me unless you had to. I mean, come on buddy, it’s not
like I gave you a lot of options when I tried to squeeze the life
out of you. Plus I broke your nose. I gave you a mega bitch
slap.’

‘
It’s my fault you were even injected in the first place,’ I
muttered.

‘
Is it?’ she chided. ‘Did you take a needle with your Dad’s
miracle drug in it and inject me, knowing that I’d change? Did you
force me to wrap my hands around your throat?’

‘
The whole experiment only started because of me,’ I
replied.

‘
So you planned it did you?’ she asked, to which I shook my
head. ‘Well buddy, that’s all I have time for. Say hi to the little
one for me, huh?’

With
that, she too vanished. I felt like I was experiencing memory lane
whiplash.

‘
Are you understanding now honey?’ my mother’s voice came from
behind me, and I turned.

Rebecca
stared at my face.

‘
I get what you’re trying to do, what my brain is trying to
do,’ I said. ‘But it won’t work. You can’t just get rid of guilt,
not when it’s warranted.’

I
blinked and she was gone. I sighed, frustrated. The door to the
room was to my left, and my peripheral vision caught the knob as it
rattled. There were footsteps outside, and I felt my eyes
widen.

‘
No, please,’ I begged and searched for a way out. ‘Please, no
more.’

The
entire door started to shake angrily, and I couldn’t take my sight
away from it. I waited for it to open when I clocked the wardrobe
we’d hid in back in reality. I raced over to it and yanked it open,
remembering the trepidation I’d felt hiding in the worst place
possible. I plunged in and closed the door behind me. I couldn’t
see, but I continued to back away, my hands outstretched behind me
to touch the wall.

The wall
never came, but the ledge did. I tumbled backwards into a white
light, and found myself standing in a corridor. I knew it. It was
the better maintained part of the tunnels, the place my father and
his men bunked out while we ran terrified around the outer
perimeter. Metal slabs lay underfoot, and instead of humming yellow
lights, the hall was lit with glaring white.

‘
How you faring sweetie?’ Jane McDonald asked.

I turned
to face her while my heart battered against my chest. She stood a
few feet away behind a doorway in the middle of the corridor. It
was the place she’d sacrificed herself in to help us get away. The
submarine-like door was open, and she clasped her hands in front of
herself. Her features were calm, youthful for someone in their
late-thirties, and her navy-blue eyes watched me carefully.
Eventually she moved, her hand rose up and shifted the loose black
hair around her face.

I felt a
lump climb into my throat and tears rim my eyes. Jane had been the
kind-hearted soul who’d taken it upon herself to be the group’s
mediator in Greystone. A brave, selfless woman who had eventually
blew herself up to give us time to escape. I had tried to stop her,
to save her, and I’d failed.

Jane
tilted her head.

‘
You failed?’ Jane questioned. ‘How exactly?’

I looked
at her incredulously, but she shook her head before I could
answer.

‘
It was my choice to do what I did, Lucas,’ she continued. ‘If
I hadn’t, all of us would have died here and no one would have
escaped. The only person guilty for my death is your
father.’

‘
And me,’ I spat.

‘
Why are you desperate to take the blame?’ Jane
laughed.

‘
Guilt is what keeps me going,’ I answered, ‘it’s what drives
me forward.’

‘
It’s what holds you back,’ Jane said. ‘You may have overcome
your fear, but your guilt? The guilt that isn’t yours to
handle?’

I
sighed.

‘
You want to die because of what you think you cause,’ she
said. ‘But really, you’re not even to blame. You rush into these
deadly situations without a second thought. It’s brave, and
contrary to what Chris tells you, it’s exactly who you are, you
shouldn’t change.’

‘
Then why am I here?’ I moaned.

‘
Because whether or not the guilt is yours, you carry it, but
you don’t use it,’ Jane replied. ‘Guilt is there to make you second
guess your decisions. It’s there to make you think, before you
leap. You just leap.’

I went
to disagree with her when my mother flashed to her side. Terry and
Claire appeared behind me, and they all started to talk at once.
Their voices echoed in unison and the sound was like nails on a
chalkboard. I gasped and covered my ears, but that did nothing to
stop the onslaught of sounds.

‘
You need to accept the things you have no control over,’ they
screamed. ‘Relinquish the guilt that doesn’t belong to
you!’

‘
No!’ I cried.

I had no
idea why I wanted to hold on to it so fiercely. The guilt was mine,
it was mine to carry, the burden I’d become so used to. The dead
started in at me.

‘
Think about it this way, Lucas,’ the voices overlapped, ‘Anna,
Brian, Chris and Jessica. How will they take your death? Will they
blame themselves?’

‘
No! My death is on me,’ I tried to fight through the noise,
but the heat in the air increased exponentially and I felt ready to
burst.

‘
But you know they will,’ they replied. ‘Do you think their
guilt will be the catalyst to their deaths, like ours was to
yours?’

I shook
my head, I tried to think of a response, but I couldn’t. They were
right. Could I cause the deaths of the people I’d died for? It was
impossible, but one of the most logical things I’d heard in a long
time.

‘
Unburden yourself,’ they all cried. ‘Let go.’

I could
fell tears streaming down my cheeks, and I couldn’t tell if they
were from emotion or the warmth polluting the air. I collapsed to
my knees, finding everything unbearable. What would I be left with?
If I let go of what I thought drove me forward, how would I go
on?

‘
Are you ready to die before finding that out?’ the voices
questioned. ‘Admit you’re not to blame. Let go of what holds you
back! Admit it!’

‘
No,’ I whispered, shielding my head, but the voices didn’t
stop.

‘
ADMIT IT!’ they screamed. ‘ADMIT IT! RELINQUISH WHAT ISN’T
YOURS! TAKE AWAY YOUR BURDEN; TAKE AWAY WHAT HOLDS YOU
BACK!’

I moved
my arms and opened my eyes which I’d squeezed shut. All four of
their faces were inches from mine, their eyes widened unnaturally
and their mouths were monstrous. I couldn’t decipher their words
anymore; they were just screams that increased with volume. The air
was thick and filled with heat, and the walls to my sides started
to close in. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything. It was too
much. My brain was going to kill itself with the pressure. I was
going to die all over again.

And then
I surprised myself.

‘
IT’S NOT MY FAULT!’ I bellowed.