Connections

Chapter 9: Betrayal

My eyes snapped open and I sat up so fast, I hit my head on the headboard behind my bed. While that was jarring enough, I looked in the direction of the slap to see...Melanie?

 "What the hell?!" I said in shock and surprise. I mean I might not always be the friendliest of people, but believe it or not, it's not every day I get woken up with a slap and an exclamation of, "You lying bitch!" so this was new for me.

 "You lied!" Melanie said angrily, and now that I was fully awake, I noticed that her face was streaked with tears. Her hair was wild, and she looked really scary right then. I don't normally back down easily, but the expression on her face made me cringe away from her.

 "What are you talking about?" I asked as calmly as one can ask anything when their newfound friend-who-they-were-always-weary-about-trusting slaps them and calls them a bitch.

 "I'm talking about when you went to talk to Ruler last night! You said you wouldn't rat us out! I told you that you couldn't tell Ruler anything!" She was practically yelling now, and I was glad that the walls in the Center were so thick.

 "I didn't! I just spoke to him about some of the things that were bothering me!" I practically shouted back. "You said I could talk to him about that!"

 "Oh yeah?" Melanie's voice turned low and threatening. "And did Chris become a large part of the conversation?"

 "Um, well, um, I guess, well really..." I was stuttering like crazy. I. Don't. Stutter. But something was seriously wrong.

 "I knew it! I knew it! I told you, didn't I? That if you even said our names to Ruler you'd screw up somehow! You'd either purposely or accidentally screw us over! We were wrong to trust you! We let you into our homes. You know so much. We were so stupid! To think, for even a moment, that we could ever trust a Kreater!" Then without warning, she collapsed on my bed and my legs in tears.

 "Melanie..." I started hesitantly, "What happened?"

 Then through her tears and her anger, she managed to say, "Chris has been slated for Replacement."

That was it. That was the final straw. I stood up, carefully avoiding kicking Melanie in the face, and stormed out of my room. I passed a very confused Ric who was trying to console a very scared looking Chris. I passed two Center guards and heard a piece of conversation that said, "And then he tried to take her out anyway. I say we track him down and skin him alive." But mostly I passed the walls that had always kept my perfect life together and protected. And as I got closer and closer to the door at the end of the hall, I saw them come crumbling down, my belief that Ruler could be anything other than what Melanie said going along with them.

 They say love is blind (Chris taught me that phrase during one of our Ruler: Evil or Not? debates). Well I just had a sight renewal spell and I was seeing everything clearly. Stupidly, painfully clearly. Especially that scene I saw on the night of the end of school dance. It was hard to believe I could ever have been so stupid as to think it was anything other than I what I saw.

When I entered the room, Ruler was sitting at his desk, flipping through some papers. He looked up when I entered the room, and smiled when he saw it was me. "Why, hello, Pegasisyly, dear." he said pleasantly, completely oblivious to my completely outraged expression.

"Don't you dare 'Pegasisyly dear' me!" I said angrily, and a second later I felt bad when a hurt expression crossed Ruler's face. But all I had to do was think about Chris and the feeling passed.

"Sly what's wrong? You seem upset." Ruler said, using my nickname to try to calm me down. And on any other day it would have worked.

"You - you -" I broke off and took a deep breath to gather my spinning thoughts, and then said, "You had Chris slated for Replacement. Why?"