Immortals

Chapter Twelve // Ashe

When I was in elementary school, maybe six or seven years old, I had to get my appendix removed. I didn't remember much of the procedure itself, or much of the recovery, but I did remember the hospital. It was too white, too sterile, too much like the headquarters I was in now.

I knew I had to get moving and make it underground, under the main parts of the building, but I felt like I couldn't stop wandering in circles around the first floor. It was so unsettling, how pristine everything was, but I couldn't leave it be. The way the government managed to make everything look so unrealistically perfect was almost mesmerizing, albeit sickening as well.

"Ashe, stop walking in circles and get to the stairs!" I heard Parker hiss through my earpiece.

While mesmerized by the headquarters, I had forgotten that Parker was tracking my movements and could communicate with me from the van.

I refused to call that thing The Kidnapper. What a stupid name.

"Dude, it's creepy in here. Kind of like an overly sterile hospital. It's just clean and white and bland and quiet. It's freaking me out," I whispered.

"Ashe, I don't care. You have a job."

"You should care, though. This is fucked."

I could hear Parker sigh on the other end of my earpiece. "Whatever. Yes, life is fucked. Just please hurry up."

Without a word, I tried to force myself to carry on. I didn't want to hear Parker lecturing me anymore. I felt it was unnecessary, as he had no way of understanding what was going on in my head. He was not seeing what I was seeing, not feeling the same chill I was feeling.

I also doubted he was having the same second thoughts I was.

From the moment Mia pitched the plan, my mind was riddled with doubts. While I trusted my friends and believed that their plan had the best intentions, it also scared me. I was scared of what failure could manifest into. Was it worth all the risks?

Was it worth facing the same fate as my siblings?

What Grace and Andrew faced at the government's hands was something that haunted me in the middle of the night. None of it was fair. Not a single aspect of the life anyone had grown to know was even close to being fair. It was a life that punished people in a discriminating fashion, and did not care about the lives it tore apart. It emphasized flaws, and wanted to kill those flaws off. Even if they were irrelevant, they were to be exterminated.

That's what happened to my siblings, especially my brother. He had so-called "flaws" that held little to no weight in the operations of society, and he was exterminated by those who ruled. Even my sister, who fell under society's acceptable standards, was exterminated for looking past what society viewed as flawed and for seeing people as people below these so-called "flaws".

It really and truly was not fair.

To make all matters pertaining to my anxiety worse, it was my siblings' death in a borderline historic defiance of the government that was pressing on the back of my mind, threatening to overwhelm me and everything that I was in the headquarters fighting for. They died while escaping Andrew's fate, my Favorable sister laying down her life for my Unfavorable brother when she could've saved herself and been allowed to live.

They were thrust into the jaws of the monster that was our governing force, and now I was doing the same kind of reckless behavior. I was walking through hallways in the beast's lair, trying to take it down from within.

"Ashe, you there? Get to work."

Parker's voice held a rather annoyed tone to it as it filtered through my earpiece and pierced through my thoughts.