Vivid (BoyxBoy) {Pipe Dream: Book I}

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Banshee

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Banshee

I mentally went back to the nameless boy, the pain he experienced until he forgot himself, begging for it to stop. The memories scraped against the glass that was keeping it from spilling forth and drowning my own thoughts. Screaming out into the dark wishing for an end...an end that I gave.

Isn't there another way? "Can't we reverse it?" I ask. What would happen if this person was exactly like before?

Seth mulls over my question but as the frown didn't shift from his face, I expected his answer, "There isn't one. Only death."

"They aren't willing victims!" I snap. Who in their right mind would agree to turn into a black sticky mess that make people insane?

"...the way it affects a person is like frying an egg. The cells are too denatured that it can't be undone. It's not just the physical characteristics that are changed...DNA structure, brainwaves right done to the molecules...Hanna has looked into this for years, the change is too great."

I look down the tunnel, unable to process anything anymore.

Rain came by and checked the tunnel that we were in front of and turns to face Seth, "The first two tunnels have a stable saturation of about twenty to twenty-six percent but it seems to be climbing...As for these two," he motions to the two closest to us, "They are a bit more erratic, bouncing between twenty-eight and eighty percent. It looks like the pipes come from the same source."

"X?" Seth sighs.

X looks down the tunnel, almost as if he could see down there perfectly. "I can risk it."

"...Alright. But you are only going down there to check. Do not engage." Seth's eyes then wondered to me, "That goes double for you. Especially if X cannot handle the fluctuations. You're only getting a visual. I don't want to have to explain to Siem that I got Hanna's toy killed."

Aaaannnd identity crisis. "Wait. You aren't coming?"

"Unlike you, we are normal human beings," Rain snips. "We do not have the heavy gear with us to walk on in there. So we're stuck with you."

Then why didn't you bring the 'heavy gear', you ass? I wanted to growl at him but kept my mouth shut. He has a gun and was still looking for an excuse to use it. But I couldn't completely keep the glare out of my gaze and he returns it like a laser beam was going to shoot out of his eyes any minute and I would melt into a puddle of sludge on the floor. Quite frankly, I would welcome it.

"Okay, kiddies. That's enough," Seth pulls up his hand between us to break our eye-locked battle. "As Rain states, even though we're trained to take on this sort of shit, it's the unstable fluctuations that will get us long before it will affect X. And I for one do not want to experience the idea of cleaning up the aftermath if that happens. Siem would have a fit at the damage."

"Clean up?" my frowning became a little less irritated.

"It would be easier to put me out of my misery," Seth states his demise like he was commenting on how dark it was in here, without batting an eyelid. "Believe me."

I did...there was something about him...how he moves was similar to X...something 'broken' inside him. I was starting to put the pieces together and became suspicious that Seth and many of Siem's 'secret police' didn't properly fit the mould that these 'Cities' had and what exactly that might mean, as Mist had said...but I didn't really think about it until I was standing in front of Seth and receiving so much animosity from Rain.

Actually that makes me wonder about how little I knew about what happens inside the walls...at how much Cody resented...was it worth it? Was it worth all of those years of anger and envy, gazing at these blue snow-globes from a distance?