MANIPULATING THE MANIPULATOR

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Well, I'm not."
My spine dug into the wooden shelves in an uncomfortable way trying to get personal space.
"Celeste, believe it or not, I care about you. This place isn't made for girls like you, no matter the fate your Mother had set for you or not."
I could understand his concerns. Right now, I wasn't special or valuable to HYDRA. I was a girl who was only trying to pass college months ago and now knows a good few ways to kick a guy in the balls.
"If you cared about me, you should be agreeing with me, not against me."
"I'm only against you because you're being naive."
He moved his arms so that they were caging me in with his own body, the rest of my body formidable against it.
I clutched the books to my chest with one of my arms, my other arms supporting the bottom of them so that they didn't fall.
Maybe I was being naive, but I was trying in desperation to stay walking and stay living, just till tomorrow, then over again. I knew there was no point in breaking down and crying, despite how badly I felt the need to. I wasn't allowed to cry anymore, let the tears drip from my eyes.
I just couldn't show weakness, knowing I would get ridiculed if I came out the other side. I had to be strong, and by tethering that strength to the belief that my Mother just might have left something - a legacy, or a curse - for me here, was the only reason I hadn't slipped and fallen yet.
I bowed my head, my lips pursing inwards and my eyes going to the books. I had a good feeling, that aside from how good I was going in college, that I needed something. Needed to be something. You see people reaching the states in the world they want to be in, I see myself reaching the same states and just feel...
Empty.
My life is automated, made for me to follow step by step until I reach the end of my trail. I didn't want someone to pave my life out for me, I didn't want to be controlled. Yet again, it was happening all over again here. In HYDRA. They were planning to control me and enrol in my life in the grotting ways they pleased. But, this, this message, was something I could controland do for myself, and I wasn't going to let myself stop now. It didn't matter who I was doing it with, even if the Winter Soldier had the capability to exploit me and all my ideas to the higher-ups of HYDRA.
I was going to finish it, and I was going to do it properly.
"This was for me. I can't not continue."
I muttered, a shaking breath leaving my mouth when Kage only seemed to get even closer, his lips hovering over my forehead in a way that sent ice down my spine.
What the hell was he doing?
He pressed a single kiss to the middle of my forehead and let it linger for a few seconds, his arms travelling the course to my upper arms, squeezing them gently.
In a weird consequence, I couldn't find myself to pull away. Like after everything, I needed some consolidation, in any form. He sighed into my skin.
"I know."
He said softly, which was oddly surprising from him. I slowly raised my head - it felt like a bowling ball on my shoulders - and met his forest green gaze.
"What are you-"
I only got halfway through my sentence before h e started to run his arms up and down my arms, creating an endless friction that formed my nerves to a furnace.
"I care about you. So if you want this, to find whatever this is, then I'm here." He admits, his voice sounding what could only be a resemblance of silk. My knees want to shatter. "Okay?"
Seconds ago, he was upset about the Winter Soldier, upset about my decisions to find my place in this torment of a facility. Now? He was saying he cared, and the feelings that bubbled up in my stomach betrayed the common logic I should have had.
"Okay."
I said quietly.
I tried to channel every single weird emotion into determination. I needed to finish this. Needed to know what I was meant for, like I had been waiting for it for my whole life.
Who knows?
Maybe I have been.

↠

Eventually, we had collected all of the books, splayed them all out of one of the large tables in the library. They were all spread out to random pages, our three pairs of hands flicking over the pages in search to find something.
Anything that could tell us we hadn't reached a dead end.
"What exactly are we looking for?"
Kage asks, his hand flipping over every page, his eyes pacing over the pages like lightning.
"The acronym was 'GIVES IN', with each different book with the corresponding barcodes..."
I trailed off. We had seven books for each seven letters. Maybe there was something in the books that started with each letter?
"Can we put the books in order of the acronym?"
I asked, and the Winter Soldier nodded sharply and arranged the books in order directly in front of me.
Kage was on one side of the table, the Winter Soldier was on the opposing other side and I was at the front side of the table, technically in between the two.
I scanned over the books, my eyes searching for anything I could spot out that might direct us to a new point.
The G book was - as mentioned - the World War Two book.
The first I book was an old dystopian fantasy novel. The V book was a Shakespearean play.
The E book was a Thesaurus.
The S book was a romance novel.
The second I book was a simple Sci-Fi.
And the last book, the N book was a history book on the appearance of demons in the 1500's.
It made no sense. How did any of these add up? They were all simple books, the ones you would pick in a library and put back down, none of them held the proper weight of significance. My hands were planted on the wooden table, holding me up as I leaned over to try to find something out of order. Nothing I could manoeuvre, at least. I suddenly felt stupid, as if the answer was charging at me with its fucking blinker lights on a full brightness and I still couldn't see anything.
Then, I physically couldn't see anything, the library plunged into deep black and I flinched at the suddenness.
"Power-outs happen in HYDRA?"
I hear Kage ask over the vast of voiding darkness.
"More than you think."
The Winter Soldier states, his monotone voice seemingly matching the dark setting. A blue ray of light streams across the room onto the front wall - where we entered - and I follow its path to find where it had come from. The Winter Soldier was holding a UV torch up, his wrist bending lights to twist it around the room.
Either he pulled that out of his ass or he's a magician.
I didn't question it.
The ray went over Kage's face briefly and his eyes squinted tight and held his hands up to defend his face for a few seconds.
"God, watch where you point that thing..."
Kage grumbled.
"Sorry."
The Winter Soldier said, but he said it in a way that he was most definitely not sorry. He directed the torch to the books, skimming over each one slowly. I looked back to the books, my eyes catching the way one of the hidden pages in the Thesaurus was lit up. Without thinking, my hand threw out to catch the Winter Soldier's wrist - his metal one - to stop his slow wrist movements.
He flinched slightly.
"Sorry, just..." I didn't finish my sentence, one of my hands working to direct his wrist to the Thesaurus so I could better see the lit up page, my other hand moving to open the book to said page. The whole page was lit aglow, something that no one could see before when the lights were on. Meaning whatever had been doused on this page was full of fluorescence.
However, one singular word on the page was not lit in the same glow every other word had been contaminated in.

Ending.
Weird.
Kage came over to my side, his own eyes finding the same word.
"Ending..." He trailed off, a light hum in his throat as if he was in the middle of a contemplation. "Wasn't this thesaurus the 'E' book?"
Ending started with E, of course, that tracked.
I smiled, maybe we were totally stuck after all.
"Can we check all the other books?"

↠

After finding all of the pages and singled off words, we lined all the books up in order once again, this time with open pages, and it read;

Goodness
Incites
Violence
Ending
So...

Initiating
Necromancer

Initiating Necromancer.
Me.
Well, me or my Mother, but still. That was the first thing that came to my mind. Was someone pre-warning me? Or informing me about what once happened?
Alas, it was either vague or we had solved the puzzle.
"Goodness incites violence ending definitely doesn't sound very Friday afternoon to me."
Kage comments.
"This place is a hell breeding ground. By what this says..." The Winter Soldier seams off. "They just want to use you to make it all worse."
I swallow. I wasn't sure this was the so-called 'fate' I was desperate to find earlier.
They wanted me to make it all worse.
I mean, I expected it from a place like HYDRA. I wasn't going into finding this out expecting anything good. But, my skin peeled off from unconformity the more I simply thought about being used in their ploys for games.
The lights flickered back on inside the library one by one, the action quite eerie in of itself. The Winter Soldier turned his UV torch back off and fitted in his waist hollister.
The man had enough on his body to survive for life, really.
I didn't say anything and closed all the books, piling each of them on-top of eachother in an uncoordinated way.
"You okay?"
Kage asks me softly.
"Yeah, fine."
I managed a small smile. Both the men knew I wasn't fine, but didn't push any further.
I was upset. Not at the message, the message was inevitable one way or another.
I was upset at myself.
That I should have known, that I did know, and refused to believe it.