Dream Simulator {Discontinued}

CHAPTER 30 - Flammable Nothingness

More fire. More smoke. More death.

Not that much fear though.

I'm standing in the middle of it all, and I can move freely. All of the smoke that surrounds me represents how foggy my brain is, and how I can't come up with a reason for not being afraid of everything around me.

The fire. The smoke. The death.

The destruction.

Without thinking about it, my legs begin to move on their own towards the still burning embers. I know I'm still in control of my legs — I can feel it. But I can also feel that letting them move on their own might work better than me leading the way.

They're going somewhere, and they're desperate to get there.

I can feel that something somewhere is tied around me like a rope, and it's pulling me towards it. So I let it.

After a few short seconds of walking, my legs come to an abrupt stop and I look up. There was a little girl standing in the middle of the burning fires, unmoving. She wore a white sundress that was still as white as snow —not covered in night black ashes —and her hair was tucked into a tight bun that made her almost unrecognizable.

Arabelle?

I'm not sure if I thought it or said it aloud.

Opening her eyes, I saw the dull grey eyes that hid shyly behind her eyelids.

I want to feel shock, but I can't. I want to feel something, but I just can't.

I feel like a vessel of pure nothingness.

As she stretched out her right arm to me, I realised that it wasn't a prosthetic one. It was a human one, flesh and bones and all.

"Come on," she beckoned, her voice light. "The flames don't bite."

I step through without a second thought.

❈❈❈

Their entwined figures were bathed in the very early morning sunrise as a gentle, chilly breeze ruffled their hair. No matter how comforting Jessica's hand felt in his, he couldn't stop being nervous. He didn't know why he was nervous, all he knew was that he just was.

A million thoughts kept running rampant in his foggy head, and nothing he thought about could put them to ease. They always came back to the little girl standing in the midst of all the burning fires. To Arabelle.

Archer tried thinking about the tests that morning, but for some reason, it made his nervousness even worse. He wasn't at all afraid of what would happen because he knew was just helping improve the Government's technology. But whenever he thought about the tests, they went straight back to Arabelle. How afraid she looked that day, how she let him hold her clammy hand.

Then Archer began thinking of Jessica, and that made things worse. Guilt began to mix in with the nervousness because he held hands with the girl that Jessica absolutely despised. He was nervous about how he'd have to break the news to her, if it even came to that.

Hopefully, it wouldn't have to.  If Arabelle said nothing about it, then Archer didn't have to mention it.

It was just a friendly gesture, nothing else. We're just friends. Ish.

Jessica squeezed his hand, violently dragging him out of his thoughts. Reality hit him: they were walking, holding hands with nobody else around them in the early hours of the morning. As if Eden were abandoned, and it was just the two of them.

"You seriously don't have to worry about anything, Archer. Everything'll be fine." She sounded very unconvinced.

"You seriously don't sound like you believe that."

Sticking out her tongue, she gently elbowed his ribs in a way that made him laugh. The joy in that gesture didn't reach her eyes, though. "Well I mean... I don't know. Just the Government doing this all of a sudden worries me."

The lie was written everywhere: on her face, in her words, in her voice. He'd known her for long enough to tell something was bothering her.

Archer stopped walking and Jessica stopped abruptly, still hanging on tightly to his hand. "It's not the tests that are bugging you, is it? This has nothing to do with the Government, right? What is it?"

An unreadable expression crossed her gentle facial features and she turned away. She opened her mouth to say something, but Archer grabbed both of her tiny hands in his and cut her off. "And don't tell me that it's nothing. If you don't want to tell me, then fine. But if you're going to tell me, make sure you tell me the truth."

Still not meeting his eyes, she muttered so quietly that he almost missed the words: "You'll think I'm being stupid."

Placing two fingers underneath her chin, he tilted her head up so that she finally looked him in the eye. "Hey. Nothing you do, say, or feel will be stupid to me. Just tell me, Jess."

There was a slight pause of silence when she shut her eyelids, as if trying to shut him out. "Arabelle," Jessica murmured. The wind carried her words in the chilly air all across Eden.

"Arabelle?" he asked. "She's what's bothering you?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I'm just...worried that she'll..." her words trailed off into nothing.

"That I'll fall in love with her?"

"Yeah."

Falling in love with her?

No, no there's no way I can. She's dangerous, and with what she's doing and what she's done, anybody who has any sort of  close relationship with her will get arrested as soon as she does.  Holding hands is something friends do sometimes. Dreaming about her...that's something else, but it doesn't matter. Who could even fall in love with an anti-social cyborg that's also a black market dealer with a dysfunctional family?

"Not a chance, Jessica. There's no way I could ever even dream about liking someone like her." The words felt sticky as they rolled off of his tongue. "You're the only one I'll love. You know that. Okay? Do you trust me?"

Some of the light returned to her eyes as she said "Of course I do."

Pressing a gentle hand on her cheeks, Archer tenderly kissed her.