Adrian (The Write Awards 2013)

17: Daddy's Girls

I wish I could yell back at him, prove to him that I am stronger, but I have to focus all of my energy on escape, not worrying about being a coward. I keep running, despite my slowing pace. Mud keeps squishing in between my toes, and even with everything else that's going on, it still manages to annoy me.

I trip over another vine, the same kind that constricted me earlier. It tries to wrap itself around my ankle and bring me down, but I quickly wriggle out of it and kick it away. I continue on. When I turn around, I don't see anyone or anything following me, but my paranoia is enough to scare me farther and farther away.

I don't want to be here. I never wanted to be here, in this universe, with an impossible responsibility. Why did it have to be me? Why, out of all the people Jax could have thought up, why did it have to be me?

"Cleo!"

Is that Jax? I can't tell, but I don't think it is. It sounds to desperate. I just keep running. My head is spinning; I could pass out at any moment. I'm surprised that I haven't already. My legs are getting sore and tired.

"Cleo, it's Darren!" he calls. I can tell that he's far off by the way the sound of his voice travels, but it only propels me forward. "I'm here to help you! I'm sorry!" he says.

He's sorry? He's sorry. I remember him saying that, before he disappeared with Jax. I'm so confused. Sorry for what? I don't care to find out, but I'm so exhausted that I have to stop. I can't afford to pass out. I remain standing, having learned my lesson from the last time I stopped to rest, and use the trunk of yet another tree to support me.

I don't know how long it is before Darren appears in front of me. I have the sudden instinct to run, and I begin to, but he stops me by encasing my entire being in a blue bubble using his powers. I only see the bluish, radiating waves spanning out from him for a few seconds before I'm trapped.

"I need to talk to you," he says. He's panting, out of breath. Just as I am. "Please," he takes in a deep breath, "hear me out."

I push against the bubble with my hands, but it's impermeable. "I guess I have no choice, really. Go ahead." I cross my arms over chest, angry that I have to listen to his bullshit. "Where are Lenore and Louisa?"

"I'll get to that."

I nod curtly, not fully satisfied at all with his answer.

"I swear it was all Jax's fault. I didn't want to do that, I'm just his puppet. He controls me. But he has a god-awful time controlling you."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Lenore and Louisa, they're my creations, brainwashed to be under the control of Jax. His human-like creatures tend to be... more robot-ish than anything else. So he kind of had me set up their little city. They think of me as their father."

"So why do they call you Darren and not Dad?"

He shrugs. "I never was exposed to a father-child relationship, so I really don't know how all of that works."

"Fair enough."

"I really hope that you can forgive me," he says. "It was Jax. I swear. And I know this is all so confusing for you, but I'm getting stronger from Adrian--"

"What? You know where Adrian is? And how is he making you stronger?"

"I can travel through him, remember? But that's not important. Everytime you touch that damn water of his, he feeds off of your powers. So your sitting here, getting weaker while your the only one that can defeat him."

"Why would Jax create someone who's stronger than him?" I blurt out.

He rolls his eyes. "He didn't think you were stronger than him, at first. But he was careless with his powers, and now you are. He used to be able to control you so much easier, too. And then Adrian started developing a mind of his own and everything got all kinds of messy."