The Nemesis Syndrome

13. Eliza

'Always watching.' She muttered, resting her head against the wall, trying not to think of what was crawling on it.

Her whole body ached. Still. She wasn't quite sure what was more irritating. The green vapour, her body protesting every time she moved...or the fact that she was-almost- sat in the same place as the boy who tried to kill her.

She could feel his eyes on her, even in the darkness.

'Do you think they can hear us?' He asked.

She shrugged, then realised he might not see the movement. 'Don't know. Don't care.'

'But-.'

'No offence, Leo, but I don't want to talk to you.'

She shifted, groaning slightly, leaning completely into the wall with her face away from him. And then there was sweet silence, and she closed her eyes. It was silent enough to pretend she was back home, curled up in her bed. Silent enough that she could pretend anything. That the boy opposite her didn't exist.

Then he shifted.

She ignored it, trying to even out her breathing as if she had fallen asleep. Either it worked, or Leo didn't want to talk to her any more than she wanted to talk to him.

The silence lasted for hours. Long enough for her to drift into restless sleep and be woken by the door slamming open and rough hands on her arms.

She looked up to see empty eyes and a hard scowl, a young man she had not seen before. He pulled her to her feet, ignoring her cry of pain.

'What are you doing?' She saw Leo jump up, take a step forward before he remembered the barrier. His hands clenched at his side and she had to look away, remembering the feeling of them in The Circle.

He got no reply, and the dead eyed man pulled her out of the room.

Stupid, she had been so stupid by giving herself to them to stop them hurting Leo. Because there were not enough worse in the world to explain her fear, not enough words to explain how much she wanted to fight the man, knowing she could not because they would just hurt him.

She shouldn't even care.

Her mother had always said her heart would get her into trouble. In a world where every survivor was a murderer, there was no room to have a heart for anyone else but a soulmate- or at least, a soulmate that actually cared. Eliza remembered when she was younger, she would be the one to find hurt birds and animals, begging her parents to help them. She remembered their no's and shakes of the head, remembered them telling her that animals, just like people, had to die, and there was no helping them.

She remembered thinking that she didn't want to grow up thinking that- and look where it had gotten her.

'What are you doing this?' She said to the man holding her.

No reply, not even a flicker of expression on his face.

'You cannot be that heartless.' She muttered, more to herself than to him. 'What if I was someone you knew? A sister, a friend? What about your soulmate?'

He flinched, a movement she only caught because she was staring so hard at him. It was a reaction, at least, and it gave her more answers than words could.

'People say that those who have lost their soulmates lose their hearts. They become little more than robots. Not caring about anything at all.' She paused. 'But I would have thought, more than anyone else, they understood the fear. I thought they would have understood the good of soulmates...and not used it against people.'