“I don’t want to die!” I screamed out. “Please, don’t kill me! I-I may not remember anything before, but I have something that might help.”
Keiji leaned forward a fraction. “Is that so? Well then, what is it?”
“A handwritten note with blood on it.” I opened my hand slowly, as I brought it up for them to see the revealed, crumpled note. I was acutely aware of the gun that was still pointed directly at my head. “I found it at tha- that building. It was sitting on the ledge of the window.”
Keiji grabbed the note from my open hand, and Andree lowered the gun just a fraction. Now it was pointed at my chest instead. My mind raced a hundred miles an hour. The one thing I hoped they didn’t question, was how I held on to the note. How was I going to explain the crow? They wouldn’t believe me. I just hoped the note was enough to barter my freedom.
“Well, it’s not much. But maybe we can find a match in the database based on the handwriting?” Keiji spoke, after finishing the note. “It’s something at least.”
“I don’t know Keiji. Seems fishy to me. The Reaper never left notes before, so why at this one? What make this one so special. Is it him?” Andree gestured at me with the gun.
I felt a tug at the back of my mind. It was strong, and violent feeling. I tried to focus on it, but I couldn’t make out the almost alien sensation I was feeling as I focused on it.
“Possibly. But I’m not sure. I’m going to call the boss. Andree, don’t do something stupid.” With a glare, Keiji left the room and the door shut behind him. Leaving me alone with Andree the Psycho.
“Are you two even real cops?” I blurted out, not knowing were the confidence came from.
Confidence. Good. Fight. Exit.
How was I supposed to fight?
Andree barked out a laugh. “Ex-cop. Though I am a detective still, I just work for someone other than the government now. My employer is the one who owns this facility.” He thought for a moment. “Hey, wanna play a game while Keiji’s gone?”
“A game?”
“Yeah!” Andree made that awful grin again. “It’s called, ‘How many bullets can I fill you with before Keiji comes back?'”
My blood ran cold. The note had bought me some time, but it had also removed Keiji. Now I was stuck with the insane one, who seemed really keen on killing me.
Confidence.
Leaning into the advice of this voice for once, I did my best to project confidence.
“Wouldn’t that upset Keiji, and your boss? If the note is good, I might be of more use to you.” Andree widened his eyes, so I pushed a bit further. “Plus, if you can help me regain my memories, then I could be of even more help!”
Very good.
The last thing I expected, was for Andree to put the gun down as he started to howl in laughter.
“Oh, that’s some balls! You were just a quivering little rabbit before, but you got some teeth to ya dontcha? Ok, this is more amusing then my game. How long can you keep it up?”
More. Catch him off guard.
It worked before, so I kept listening to it.
“It’s true though. Killing me is honestly a waste. If you brought me in and helped me, it would be a benefit to us both.”
The more I spoke, the easier an more right it felt. Whatever the voice was, it seemed to know the situation and it was helping me the best it could, with little nudges here and there. The gun was resting in his lap now, though far from forgotten. Andree still had his hand around the grip, but he was nodding along. Whether he believed me or not, it was helping.
“I can see how that works in your favor, but for us, we need to invest resources into fixing you. How do we know you’re not a lost cause, that your memories will even come back?” He sneered at me. “They may be gone forever.”
He was cornering me, and I felt my confidence dipping. It had bought me some more time, but Keiji wasn’t back yet. I felt that pull in the back of my head once more. Once again, I tried my best to focus on it and see where it led me.
Let it fight.
With the gentle prodding of the voice, I found it. It was like a muscle that hadn’t been worked out, left to atrophy. If I had to describe it, was almost like a thread that tied me… and my shadow. Movement in front of me brought me back to reality. I had been silent for too long, the duel was over, and Andree was moving forward with his original plan. The gun was pointed at me once again.
Let it fight!
With no other options available, and Keiji still gone, I leaned into the feeling again, finding the thread. I flexed the muscle, snapping the thread.
I watched as my shadow detached itself from me. Using the shadows cast from the lamp, it was able to quickly move in between myself and the gun. At the same time, the gun went off and the bullet fired. I closed my eyes, waiting for the impact that would end my life. It never came. As I opened my eyes, I saw Andree looking at my shadow in terror.
“What the fuck? You’re a fucking Xer?! Shit, just my fucking luck!” He fired the gun again and again, hitting my shadow with each bullet. The shadow began to buckle, each shot causing the shadow to grow more translucent. I wasn’t sure how much longer it would last against the bullets, and I was terrified of what happened if it faltered.
“Attack! Stop him!” I cried out in desperation. My shadow obeyed. I watched as one of it’s arms morphed into a long, sharp, blade, as it moved towards Andree. He fell out of his chair in an attempt to get away from my shadow. Strangely, it simply walked past him, as he lay there on the ground. We both blinked in confusion, and I felt my heart stop. Andree hesitated, not knowing what the shadow was doing. It cost him.
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The way the light was shining, Andree’s shadow was stretched out behind him. Once it was within reach, my shadow brought the arm blade down, effectively stabbing his shadow in the chest. Andree screamed in pain, coughing up blood, as he fell to his knees. Blood continued leaking from a wound that went straight through his chest, right where my shadow had stabbed his.
“Y-you ba-bastard. Th-the Order will have your head. I was… I was… neeeeee-“
Andree fell to the floor, no longer breathing. Blood pooled out around his body. I couldn’t move, still trying to process what had happened.
“I-I-I kill-killed him…”
Wrong. Pride.
Pride? Pride in killing a man? What the hell is wrong with to have that kind of a thought? Just how fucked up am I?
Movement brought my attention to my shadow. It was still separated, and seemed to be doing something. I watched, in morbid curiosity, as it gripped Andree’s shadow in it’s hands, pulling it off the floor. A thin line appeared on it’s head in the position of where it’s mouth would be if it was human. Where my mouth would be in fact. It’s mouth then opened in a inhuman way, stretching out to unrealistic proportions. It quickly bit into Andree’s shadow multiple times, taking chunks with each bite. The shadow was eventually severed from the corpse and fully consumed by my shadow within the span of five seconds. Strangely, Andree’s body was not a mangled mess of bite marks. It still only had the one hole through the chest.
My shadow then turned and “looked” at me. It didn’t have eyes, but it was facing me fully. It no longer moved, it just stood there. I felt in my mind the muscle twitching. I focused on that muscle in my mind, and relaxed it. Watching, my shadow sank into the shadows around it, and reconnected itself to me. As soon as it had reconnected, I felt the presence of memories, but I couldn’t remember them. Emotions and scenes I couldn’t recall were now trying to flood my mind, yet they were held back by some force within my mind. I was ecstatic for a moment. My memories are back!
Except, it wasn’t me. I willed a few of them through, and I started hearing the thoughts associated with them. Andree’s voice. I focused on one of the new memories and sucked in a breath. Andree’s memories. The memory I was focused on, I could feel everything he felt. It was his death.
The rest were sort of there, but seemed to need my focus in order to see what they were exactly. I needed to let them into my mind. His death though, all the emotions and feelings that went with his death were flooding into me. I learned what he was trying to say, at the end. “I was needed. They told me so. I can’t die here!”
I felt sick to my stomach. I had killed this man. I had snuffed out his life as easily as flipping a switch. It hadn’t been intentional either. Had it? I told the shadow to attack, to stop him. Killing was a way to make sure both commands were obeyed. My shadow may have done it, but the shadow is me? I killed Andree. I found myself throwing up on the floor. Tears started to streak my face as my emotions ran wild. I didn’t like this feeling, I didn’t like these memories. Maybe it would have been better to die.
No. Never die. Exit. Now.
Slowly getting back to my feet, I stumbled, falling down on my back. Trying again, I got up and moved towards the door, opening it and heading into the hallway. Moving down it, further from the room I had been in, I ran down the hall. There was no sign of Keiji, but if he saw me, I just knew he’d kill me. I killed his partner after all. Coming to the end of the hall, I found an elevator. There was only one button, so I hit the button to call the elevator down.
There was only one button, pointing up. I must be underground. Underground. Then what happened to that crow? The lack of windows made sense, but where could it have gone. Neither Keiji nor… Andree… had even commented on it.
I was brought out of my thought by the ding of the elevator.
As the doors slid open, I half expected to see Keiji standing there. Instead, the elevator was completely empty. I looked to see what button options I had. Groaning, I saw that there were close to twenty different buttons, and not all of them were numbered. There was no level 1, or ground floor option. Which was the way out?
Memories.
I shuddered. I was in real deep now because of this stupid voice in my head. Yet, it had helped me. I felt for the memories, held back from pouring into my mind. How to find the answer I’m looking for? The doors to the elevator slid shut, after receiving no instruction on where to go next. As stupid as it felt, I asked the memories, How do I get out?
A strong pull came from a specific memory, and I let it in. It was Andree and Keiji entering the elevator.
"Why are we doing this Keiji? Playing cops?"
"Because," Keiji looked at me, at Andree, sternly. "The boss said so. He noticed something strange while the guy was sitting in that cell. He wouldn't say anymore, but it seemed like it wasn't a camera glitch. We go in nice, and hopefully, we get something of value."
"And if not?" Andree said with a bit of a bite.
"Then we kill him."
Andree nodded, and followed Keiji into the elevator, and watched as he input the code. With a shake, the elevator started to lower.
As I finished watching the memory, I was left with a taste of disdain for a man I couldn’t put a name too. I quickly punched in the same code I saw Keiji, and waited as the elevator started to rise.
The elevator didn’t say what floor we were going to, so I was left with time to think and ponder. My mind kept drifting back to that damned crow. As I thought about the crow, I found something guiding my thoughts, and I felt something similar to before, when I had detached my shadow. It was like another muscle in my brain, yet this one seemed, different. While the shadow had felt atrophied, this felt… like it had never been worked out. I didn’t flex this one though. All I could keep thinking about was how I felt when my shadow stared at me after killing Andree. In a cramped elevator, no way in hell was I try anything.
Still, perhaps I could get a better understanding if I looked into Andree’s memories more. Keiji had mentioned NDI, and Exalts. Andree had called me a Xer. I had no idea what these things were, or if knowing might improve my survival. I recalled that flash of disdain I got after absorbing the last memory, or all the hate and fear I felt after seeing Andree’s last moments from his own eyes. I felt… uncomfortable with those emotions and feelings being so real. Yet, the memories held the answers I needed.
I didn’t get the choice though.
With a ding, the elevator stopped moving. As the doors opened, my heart sank. In front of me was what looked like an armed militia. Body armor and assault rifles all pointed at me. I was trapped.
“I must say, congratulations on making it out of there. I thought for sure Andree had you dead to rights, but imagine my surprise when I saw you kill him. Quite the brutal way to go might I add. Needless to say, I called in the security to make sure you don’t escape.”
The voice echoed around the room, with no clear origin point. It sounded like it came from a speaker system though, with a slight electronic hiss to it. What stood out more was the way the man spoke. He seemed, almost jovial. Like he was either expecting this outcome, or at the very least, was not displeased. There was something else to the voice as well that felt… odd.
“Trying to find me? Don’t waste your energy. I’m not here, nor should I be your focus.” The voice spoke again. “See, Keiji wanted me to open fire as soon as the doors opened. Andree may have been a lot of things, but he was his partner, and Keiji is very loyal. Say hi Keiji!”
The last line, said with the tone of a suggestion, seemed to have been a command. I saw movement behind the armed men as a hand waved stubbornly at me. A gritted “Hi.” just barely reaching my ears. It seemed to be good enough for the voice.
“Andree, despite his faults, was a very good agent to have on my payroll, even for someone who had no powers. He had connections, and strings he could pull. Plus, he was a spy I was quite keen on using to his full potential. You killed him, which was unfortunate. Now, what to do with you? Killing you is an option, one that buys more loyalty from Keiji. It’s also incredibly easy to do. One word is all it takes.”
My heart was pounding. I couldn’t count all the men around me. There were at the very least, 10 in front of me. I had a sinking feeling that even if I let lose the shadow, I’d be dead before it managed to even take out one guy.
“Now, the other option I see,” The voice continued on. “Is having you replace him. I like having those who can fill multiple roles. Andree was one such person. You, even more so. You’re an Exalt, and quite versatile if my intuition is correct. So, those are your choices, which are you going to choose?”