Ame Perdue

Chapter Six

I stared at him blankly. He was staring at me like he was expecting me to have an epiphany, or freak out. Cursed. Yeah, that was what people claimed they were when they just had a spin of bad luck, not realizing that it was their own fault things happened the way that they did. Duh, you got a flat tire, you ignored the fact that your tread was low. Yeah, you lost your job, this was the fifth time that you've been late this month. That's not being cursed or having bad luck. It's stupidity. Don't be surprised you got pickpocketed on the way home when you're the Karen too busy complaining to notice me beside you.

Claiming to be cursed was an excuse for the self-entitled.

"Cursed with living with morons like you," I scoffed. I slammed my shoulder into him as I brushed past him to the door. I wasn't going to stay and listen to this bullcrap. I wasn't even going to pretend to believe this guy. I was noping out. I was about to walk through the door when it suddenly slammed shut, a faint click of the lock telling me that I wasn't leaving any time soon.

"We won't hold you here, you're not a prisoner. But I can't let you leave yet." The guy was quick to reassure me, ignoring the glare that I shot his way. Unlike Travis, this guy looked nervous as he watched me as if there were a hundred other things that he would rather be doing. His eyes darted to the knife still in my hands, "Would you mind putting that down?"

"I would gladly put it down in your lung," I turned the knife over in my hands, it wasn't a large weapon, but having it on me had me feeling immensely more comfortable with the situation. At this point, I had given up all pretense of pretending this was a dream. They clearly didn't believe me on that. I couldn't bring myself to be overly concerned about that.

He grimaced, "Just bear with me here, alright? Trust me, I don't want to be stuck with you any more than you want me glued to you. I have some things that I want to get done today, such as convincing Milo to let me come with him. I didn't even know that you existed until the boss feed me the information. Let's get this over with then we can both do our own things."

"Counteroffer, I could always just knock you out and find whatever mechanism you used to lock the door."

"You could try, ignoring the fact that it would be almost impossible for you to knock me out, the key is controlled by code, a code that only I can feed into the system, or that the boss can feed in." He paused then added as if he knew exactly what I was thinking, "And before you say anything, blackmail won't work. You couldn't kill me if you tried, and even if you managed to get close, the boss would pump this room full of mustard gas before it got that far."

"To avoid me killing you, he'll just kill both of us. Brilliant." I moved to a corner of the room, first checking to make sure that there weren't vents around the walls, floor, or ceiling before I took up the position. I crossed my arms as I glared at him, "Before you start talking, I don't care about whatever half-baked scheme they have fed you. They will either let me out eventually, or we will both starve. I don't care which."

I wasn't going to play whatever games they were trying to play. From what I had seen so far, this place was nothing more than a cult. Janus and I were probably kidnapped as a way of grabbing new recruits, a decision that I was quickly going to make them regret. Did they think that I was stupid? I wasn't going to allow them into my head with their brainwashing technics.

I liked my head the way it was, thank you very much.

If I could just get you morons out of it, my life would have been set.

"According to the boss, he wants that explanation to wait anyway. Instead, he wants me to show you what I am." He sounded rather cheerful as he gave me a lopsided grin, not seeming to take offense to my tone. Before I could question what he meant by that, he started pulling off his shirt. A cloud of yellow surrounded him briefly, before it cleared, revealing a cripple to an extent that I hadn't seen outside a morgue.