Midale

Chapter Twenty: Every Man's Family (Part 2)

"You were right, it is insensitive and there's no way I'm going through with it." I said, yanking my shoulder away from her hold. She might have meant well but at the end of the day it would have been me who would have had to do it. I couldn't imagine doing anything worse to Jimmy than causing him to die but what Cassidy wanted me to do was way worse. It was irrespective of a dead guy's rights, a good dead guy at that, one who had even put seeing his child on the line just to help a group a of strangers. I couldn't have lived with myself if I went through with it.

"Then there's no way were coming back. Madison you are our only way out. I hate to say this but without your powers you're not much help to anyone, including yourself. Now I know this might seem like we're disrespecting Jimmy but in fact we are honoring his death. We need to get the bastard who did this to him and we need to stop the same thing that happened to Jimmy from happening to others and we can't do that without your help."

I still stood there, motionless. It was all too much, test after test, difficulty after difficulty. The saying said that there was always calm before the storm and then the calm returned after the storm. Where was that calm?

Maybe it was just a saying, because realistically there could be no calm after a storm, there was only grief and moving on.

"Madison if not for yourself then do it for Emma. You know we have a chance at survival and all of us have had to make compromises. Make this last one." Cassidy urged, her eyes almost teary. I knew I was not only one affected by this war of good and evil and no matter what I did, I could not fill the emptiness inside me. I could never get my parents back because what was gone was gone. I had made peace with the fact that they were never coming back long ago. There was no way I could gain back what had lost, but I could stop this world from taking anymore from me. I could stop the people I cared about from losing the people they cared about and I knew that would not heal the hole inside me but it will give me other parts of myself to look at, not just the empty one.

"So what do I have to do again?" I asked in a low voice, still unable to believe that I was really doing it.

The urgency and hope on Cassidy's face was replaced with unsurity.

I squinted my eyes at her.

"You do know what you're talking about right?" I asked, folding my arms in front of my chest.

She rolled her eyes at being caught but went on to explain.

"Look I know that it works, just not how."

"Then why would you bring it up?" My tone rose a notch higher and I tried to get my emotions under control but all those feelings I had just dealt with were starting come back and I didn't know for how much longer I could contain them.

"I thought you would know. Look I am not a teleporter and there weren't many before you and so we have little information about your kind. I scanned every piece of the liaphet and only found the mention of this harness process. According to it, you should feel a certain pull to the energy and lingering life inside the dead and then you should be able to tap into in and-"

"Suck it out of them? So now I'm a parasite." I shook my head disbelievingly.

"It's better than being dead." Cassidy reasoned and I pushed all the humanity out of me. Turned the switch off like I was used to doing a few years ago. Life was so much easier back then.

I walked towards Jimmy's corpse, covering the distance in a few strides. Standing right next to it I felt nothing, no pull, no attraction, no inclination to suck the life out of an already-dead guy. Well maybe there was a little of that last part.

"Now what?"

Cassidy sighed.

"Madison I can see you're not trying to think about this, but being a telepathic, I know that things like these need feeling and concentration. If it's the guilt or the anger or even sorrow that you feel, you need to put it out there. It is what powers you, it's like your fuel."