Assassin's Dream

Chapter Five

Chapter 5

Ivy wanted to scream as the doors closed behind her. The white room around her seemed to be closing in, the walls surging forward swirling around her, and she knew, she knew, that she was crazy.

White rooms meant an asylum, and Ivy had already known she was fading, but it was another thing altogether for someone else to think so too.

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After Derek’s evaluation, he was taken by the guards to a room to wait until the next potential Dream contestant was done their own evaluation. Stepping into the room, he noted how the white walls seemed to reflect his indifferent and hopeless mood. Even the mirror set upon the far wall seemed to be mocking his lack of a social life and his consequences of attacking the enemy. Still in thought, he barely noticed the heavy metal door being closed and locked behind him.

He made a face at the mirror and thought about what had happened recently in his life to land him in this internship for aspiring criminals.

I could have been at my aunt’s house by now if it weren’t for those morons who decided to pick a fight with our Empire’s most powerful enemy! I’ve waited years to find my sister, I don’t want to wait all over again.

The room changed instantly into a setting that he was all too familiar with: a dead-end alleyway, where what appeared to be a young boy was being beaten up by a group of dangerous - looking men. Derek ran over to help, but stopped and stared in shock as he realized that the men weren’t beating up a boy.

They were beating up a teenage girl. A girl who looked as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks and really needed a good, warm bath. A girl who just so happened to be his sister whom he hadn’t seen since their mother’s sudden death. She was silently crying while struggling to get away, but in vain. Her clothes were filthy and torn.

Derek was so angry he could feel the anger pulsing through his veins, while his vision became hazy. All he could think of at that moment was saving his sister. If those men stuck around, beating them up would be an added bonus.

“Leave my sister alone you freaks! You hurt her, and I’ll kill you. Get away from her!” Derek yelled as loud as he could, but even the nearest man didn’t do as much as raise an eyebrow to acknowledge his presence. He yelled again, but with the same results. In his anger, he rushed forward to start fighting with the men.

To his surprise, he passed right through them. It was as if he wasn’t even there. How was he supposed to help his sister if he couldn’t even get to her? He stood in defeat and watched as his sister slowly became weaker with every blow she took.

From his right, he heard a shout. As the shouting grew louder, the figure of a hulking teenage boy about his height and build drew closer to where his sister lay. The boy reached the group and began attacking the men, who fought back as one. Soon, most of the men had been knocked out, and the others fled out of the fear that they would end up the same way. Then the boy reached down and offered a hand to his sister, who looked up at the boy with adoring eyes.

Who was this strange boy who had captured his sister’s heart and was brave enough to save her? What else had happened to his little sister while they were separated? Derek knew that by some miracle, the room had given him the strength to go on. If he was put in the Dream, he would fight with all he had. He would attack everyone like they were the ones abusing his sister.

Slowly, Derek sank to the ground, and again thought of the mocking, white waiting room. The scene vanished, and he relaxed slightly. But he had a plan, and the Empire wouldn’t see him coming.

 

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Ivy stared at the white walls around her, the hairs on her neck standing up. She knew she wasn’t really alone, she could feel the hidden stares.

For a while, she wasn’t really sure how long, she simply stared at the wall, letting the room reflect her blank mind. It was almost peaceful, the way the room allowed her to forget.

But the room then slowly changed.

The walls begin to fall in towards her, spinning towards her as if to wrap her up in a cocoon. Trapping her.

The walls were now so close, Ivy knew she could never get out, she could never forget the  feeling of being trapped. It was her nightmare, and slowly she could feel her surpressed memories surfacing.

Shouting begun to fill her cramped room.

A woman was screaming, Ivy wanted to help her, but she couldn’t see anything. The woman’s screams grew until Ivy’s earing were pounding, her screams echoing around her head.

“NO! NO! IVY!” the voice pleaded, screeching into this empty room. “Please, I’ll do anything. . . leave Ivy. . . IVY!”

Ivy curled into a fetal position, holding herself. But she could already sense the man coming, the real nightmare.

Suddenly the scream was gone, Ivy was lying on the floor in the original white room and a man stood in the doorway. He was panting as he held the door open, a wild look in his eye.

“Out!” he bellowed. Then with a slightly less crazed expression added, “You’re done, the guards will take you now.”

Ivy stood shakily, her legs almost unable to support her weight. She didn’t care if guards were waiting for her outside, she needed to get out of that room. Ivy hadn’t relived that night in years, she felt violated especially because she knew someone had been watching.

As she walked out she realized something else.

The room hadn’t been done with her, that man hadn’t entered the nightmare. As the guard gripped her upper arm, she looked back at the man that had opened the door.

He was looking at her, the fear from before had disappeared and instead an incredibly smug look covered his face. Smirking at her, he turned around left.

After that Ivy knew that he knew. She never knew if her grandfather had been forced to tell anyone. But the man didn’t just know, he had been protecting him, making sure no one saw the man of her nightmares. That’s why he had looked so panicked before, but now that she was being sent to the Dream he had looked so content.

Ivy knew they weren’t planning on letting her live.

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The guards led Ivy to another room but inside were Wyatt, Callie and Derek. She had been taken through the winding hallways to another part of the vast building. This time, they were all pushed into the same room, and it comforted Ivy slightly.

The room seemed to be a small library. Bookshelves made of expensive mahogany leaned against the gingerbread-colored walls; all in a line along the . Various paintings and portraits were hung in the spaces not taken by the bookshelves.

Hardly anyone had noticed Ivy enter the room, the white room consumed all their thoughts. Ivy didn’t bother to break the already existing silence.

They all knew now that the Dream wasn’t their chance, it was the empire’s final act in crushing them.

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Hey so it's been awhile, sorry bout that.

But the chapter's finally here!

We blame track for the delay, we have literally been surviving on a max of six hoursa of sleep a day, along with sore muscles.

The goal is to have chapter six done in under a week, fiingers crossed!

-lightbeforedarkness

gloworange13