The Strange Tale Of Ayla Jae

Chapter Eighteen - Echoes And Repeats

The gunshot echoes, with its sound-waves sharply pummeling my chest and aching my ears. It's been along time since I've heard one, and yet, it still terrifies me. If there were ever a way to instantly make me lose myself, it's a moment like this. I have no idea what's happening around me. I'm bawling. I'm fighting. I'm losing my mind.

As I sit here crouched behind a wall in a small hidden corner of it, there is a tiny pinhole of calm surrounded by a maelstrom of chaos and fear in my head. It's a memory, I think. It's so small but so clear.

I'm five years old. I know that much. I'm in a small rental building, filled to the brim with big furniture and tall suit laden people. There is a loud speaker, so broken and crackled that it's almost gibberish, and it's repeating an announcement. I clearly hear a few words, 'Movement Twenty-Eight Alpha in progress'. It garbles more and more then repeats. It's means nothing to me, but I know means something.

The swish pace of people coming and going is blinding me being only three feet tall. It's so serious. I wipe my nose. Wait, I'm crying? I'm angry. No, I'm sad. I'm griping someone's tough hand, but I don't want to. I keep asking myself why I'm here. Why am I in here? I'm too distressed to look up beside me to see who I'm with.

"Come on, kid. Move." The tough hand man says as he sternly jerks me forward towards a solid swing door with a small oval window towards the top. The force of the moment makes me follow whether I can form an opposition or not. I'm so lost. I am so misunderstood.

A woman's voice chimes in from the other side of the tough hand guy. We stop.

"Hey. Here. The papers."

"Thanks." He replies.

"Chin up, Maverik. Maybe this time, we'll get lucky."

"Stow your hope. Maybe this time, they'll get results."

"Real results come from real facts AND real hope." She pauses. "They're waiting for you."

"I don't like this, Jasper. We shouldn't be letting them pursue this. It flies in the face of every known sense of--."

"I know. I've taken care of it, okay? All you need to do is go through there and towards the back wall door. Thames is waiting. I'm playing the part for the moment, but you've got to get back there right now, if we have any chance of doing what you want. What we want."

The man sighs with slight relief.

"You just had to get my nerves up. You'll meet us?"

"In twenty minutes, just outside of Bakersrun. We'll go from there, but go. Now."

It starts to fade, but I think I'm being led through the door. It's a dark gray hall, empty. We move quick. I stammer as fast as my emotional eyes and stubby legs can carry me, holding so tightly to the tough hand. It's blurry. I hear a gun shot near us. It scares me, but we move faster towards a door. I can't see. I can't remember.

That's all I can know for sure. Focusing isn't helping, and I can't remember why I knew I was there. It falls apart. As clear as it is in my mind, a young kid's memory is fairly simple I guess. Incomplete.

"Ayla! What the...Come on! Run! Don't stop!" I hear a tense voice scream at me.

Here I am. I'm back on the floor, wishing so intensely that I didn't hear what I just heard.

"Here!" I see Elin rush by as Chloe juts her hand down to me. "Come on, girl!"

A glimmer of hope rushes back into me, until I see an actual glimmer coming from her other hands. The stark and intimidating angled metal mechanism sitting in her palm strikes confusion and reality into me. Chloe's got a gun.