Phonetic

The Effect

Foxtrot.

I feel... lost.

I lower the pistol. My arm trembles, traumatised by the act of murder. I murdered Xray.

I just murdered one of my family. My brother.

I needed to. I had to. It wasn't my choice. But if it wasn't my choice, why did I hesitate?

Hesitation means I didn't have a gun to my head with someone shouting 'kill him!', or someone put the gun in my hand and pressed the trigger, because I still wouldn't hesitate. It means I wasn't forced.

But if I'm going to die unless I keep doing this, it isn't a choice. Is it? I can't seem to tell left from right.

It was a decision I had to make. It was a choice because there was an alternative. I didn't have to kill Xray. I could've just left him, and he'd still be running down the road. Imagine if I didn't kill him, and he was set to win. There's was some chance set up for him to win, but I destroyed it.

I want to use the excuse that he'd never make it, and I'm just trying to prevent Alpha and Bravo from becoming any stronger, but that's not what I was thinking when I stalked Xray all the way here.

My dial was set to murderer, and got jammed right until the very last second. It was almost as if, only once I pulled the trigger, during that blink, I realised the effect it would have.

I can't call it an effect. I killed someone.

What slices into my gut was that he couldn't even fight back. Alpha and Bravo are known to react quicker than a bullet, and Charlie and Delta are still extremely fast. Echo and I, not being able to keep up any of their agility levels, learnt to analyse when they're gonna make the shot and be ready to move, or just not wait around that long.

But Xray, and Yankee, and Zulu were the closest to normal any one got. If someone shot at them there's no question what would happen. If we weren't provoked to massacre each other, they'd live the longest because they depended on the drug the least, and their bodies naturally still produces the hormones.

Zulu was very apathetic towards everything, and was hilarious to train with because she used to just sit on the edge and insult the people actually trying. She was one of the oldest, and probably the most grounded as well. Everybody saw her as the big sister - annoying, lazy, sloppy, crude, but loveable. It's a shame we rarely saw much of each other, there being such a massive gap between us level wise.

I miss her.

Yankee had a good habit of turning her nose up. Being the penultimate of twenty-six didn't sit well with her, and so tried to place herself above people by being extremely intelligent and was naturally stunning. I saw straight through it, and that pissed her off frequently, especially when I used to smirk at her during our classes every time she got an answer right.

I miss her.

Xray rarely ever turned up to training. He was very often caught up in a book to the extent he wouldn't answer if somebody called his name. He was like a pair of ears, and that's what stood out the most. You didn't have to be close to Xray, but he'd listen to every word without judgement. I'd be surprised if he knew how to hold a gun - he said if the Crazies aren't going to put any effort in with him, he wouldn't for them. What's strange is he was one of the few people that saw everything we did and was being done to us, wasn't for us.

I miss him.

They all tried to make sense of themselves being the lowest, and found ways around it. They manage to keep up with twenty-three near superhumans by not trying to keep up or begging for more Valens. They thrived in personality and knowledge.

Being Foxtrot put me right up the other end of the spectrum. One injection a day, and it was that injection that threatened to completely tear me away from the later letters. It's a shame I generally choose to ignore Xray. He listened to me if I needed it, and that's the closest we got.

Listening to me was the last thing he did before he died. Before I killed him.

A few metres away his body and gore twitches and shivers erratically. I stare blankly, dead-faced, until I collapse against the side of the barn and choke and cough up phlegm and spit. There's nothing for me to throw up.

I haven't eaten in twenty-four hours. And I don't really know if I want to. I don't really want to move. I hate looking at Xray's body, but I can't stop staring at it. I don't think my brain can quite process I did this.

I finally swallow again, slamming my fist against the barn wall, and the plank shattering beneath my hand. That shouldn't happen. I shouldn't be able to break walls by accident at eighteen, even if the barn was already to tumble.

I don't want this. I'm barely what can be considered an adult, and I just killed my brother. I can run one hundred metres in 8 seconds. I can jump over your doorway. I can throw your door across the length your house. And I can kill people. But I don't want to.

As the sun finally shows itself, squeezing between nooks in the build-up city behind me, I take a long deep breath.

If I don't fight, they'll kill me, but maybe that's what I need. But I don't want this happening again. I can't let the most human of the twenty-six keep suffering because they're the weakest. To face that they'll always be graded as the worst for the last fifteen years is implausible for someone like me to compute. They weren't the weakest, they were the strongest.

But we're killing them.

I approach the body. There is every direction for my eyes to turn to, and it's tempting but I nail them to the hole through his head and the blood now only dribbling from it.

I take his left wrist gently, his gelid skin causing me to flinch on contact. I bring my wrist close, and both the squares snap open like trapdoors, with a small tube on the inside. I hold them together, and the glimmering blue substance begins ascending up the translucent pipe and through into mine.

I hold my breath and bite my tongue as the ripping sensation strangles the veins in my wrist, but at the same time everything becomes much more tuned, and my frame grows taller, happier - satisfying an addiction.

When it's dried up, I'm out of breath and am ready to sleep for the rest of the day. My entire structure feel like it wants to crumble, and my head's left spinning for a moment. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. Just what we're used to, except it lasts a little longer this time. I've never taken in so much as once.

I eventually make my way back to my feet, nearly tripping over myself a few times before steadily able to walk through the field again. And half way through, I halt and even my heart misses a thud.

I can hear someone walking - running actually - around half a mile away, now my body's at it's peak. It's not the fact there's just some random twit plodding around at probably six in the morning, it's when I can just pick up the sound of clicking, echoing into a mess of loops in my ears.

I cup my gun in both palms, then gripping it properly and pushing the safety switch back. Click.