2050: The Beginning of the End

Chapter 25: Lilian

The last thing I remember is being on the second floor, seeing a familiar jacket in the distance. I was about to run after it, but before I could there was a dinging sound behind me. I turned, horrified to find three soldiers racing out of the elevator at my back. I turned around, looking for the figure, spotting them sprawled across the ground.

Playing dead, I realized.

I made to run, realizing too late that I should have done something about thirty seconds sooner.

I heard a gunshot, then a voice telling the others not to kill me.

They could use me, it said.

A moment later I was on the ground, and I felt something hit the back of my head. There was no pain, but all of a sudden I was dizzy and for some reason I couldn't get back up again.

"Help!" The word was meant to be a scream, but to me it sounded more like a pathetic croak.

In the next instant, someone was picking me up, and everything seemed to fade away.

~*~

I blink, my eyelids feeling heavier than they should. I'm in a truck bed, my mouth dry as sandpaper and my hands behind my back as I lay on my side.

It feels a little awkward to lay like this, but as always nothing hurts, which is why it startles me to see the conditions of the other two.

Am I this beaten up?

Emilio and Theo are unconscious. Theo has a gash across his forehead, a huge bruise already taking up the left side of his face. Emilio's jacket sleeve is absolutely drenched in blood, and one of his eyes is almost swollen shut.

Did they shoot him?

From the amount of blood, that looks like a logical guess.

No, this can't be happening.

Jason?

Where is he?

I look around, blinking several more times to focus in the darkness. There are no streetlights here, and I have no way of knowing which direction this truck is driving in.

I only see Theo and Emilio at first, then I catch sight of the third figure, pointing a gun in our general direction, keeping the weapon over their shoulder is they look away from us.

The gun shakes violently in the person's hand. I find it hard to believe that they're that cold, but I guess it's a possibility.

It is cool, I suppose. It's raining again, and though it doesn't feel terribly chilly the downpour makes it worse than it normally would be.

I sit up, feeling a little off balance with my hands tied. I don't understand exactly why they would tie them; they've already knocked me unconscious and we're driving off to who-knows-where, it would be a stupid decision on my part to bother fighting back now.

I guess they want to make absolutely sure that none of us are going anywhere.

I haven't really had a chance to think about all this until now, and suddenly it's all hitting me at once.

Leaving Mathers Hill.

Losing my parents.

Trying to protect Jason in the middle of all of it.

London.

Finding out I've been living a lie, that I do have powers and my little brother was right about the supernatural world all along.

I thought all of that was rough. I tried to handle it, and I told myself I could do it, I could get through this.

I had to be an optimist.

Then we all nearly died in an air raid. Our shelter, our weapons, all destroyed.

Then I was a pessimist, deciding all this was a disaster and there was no way we could make it.

But we were all right, if only for a few hours.

Then Katerina ...

It's so painful to think about her, but I force myself to. I can't believe she's gone, dead, killed by the knife from my hand. After what happened to her, I tried being a realist, I guess. I told myself, despite what I was thinking, that it was a good thing that I did it. She was going to bite more of us, then we'd have to kill more of our own. She wouldn't want to become a monster, even if she was a bratty kid.

Now, I don't know which is the best approach to take. I've tried all of them, and none make the situation seem any less distressing.

Is this it?

Is this the beginning of the end for me, for Jason, for all of us?

It feels like it, but I'm not supposed to think like that am I?

I'm supposed to hope. I have to. What else can I do to pass the time besides dream and pray that Jason and the others are safe?

They are.

They have to be.

I decide this is the only logical option; somehow Jason, Rose, and Brynn all got away and they managed to find Shemik.

None of them were captured or killed. No one is looking for them. It's the only possibility I'll accept as fact.

I close my eyes, and the next thing I know I'm falling asleep.

Naturally, when I'm missing it the most, I dream of home.

I dream of my solar system, of Mom's homemade cookies and Dad taking Jason and I to the park every other Saturday morning during the summer. It's like I'm there again, playing a pathetic game of baseball with him and Jason and a few neighborhood kids, listening to Dad telling me I throw like a girl.

Every time I would roll my eyes and mouth off that of course I threw like a girl, because I was one.

Dad would laugh, the smile reaching his eyes no matter how bad his week had been or how stressed he was.

I dream of Christmas mornings before the war, when we all knew there would be presents under the tree, and how from the moment he could walk and talk it was Jason's Christmas Day tradition to wake us all up before dawn.

I dream of my birthdays, at least as many as I can remember. The party I had when I was six, how mad I got when I didn't get the book I wanted when I was eight, how Jason and I had a fight on my tenth, and how last year my parents skipped work just to be there to celebrate.

Then my twelfth birthday, the day I became an orphan.

I wake up with tears on my face, my hair soaked by a mixture of them and the rain.

I want waking up to be a dream, want my dreams to be the reality, but I know that's foolish.

I have to stop wishing to wake up from a nightmare, because the truth is waking up is the worst thing I can do.

I don't notice at first that we've stopped moving, that the truck is parked and the motor turned off. Eventually I do hear the voices from up front, a door slamming, and boots stomping toward the rear of the vehicle.

"Any problems out of them, Orlov?" A gruff voice asks. It's the one they call Commander I think, talking to the soldier with the gun who has been sitting with us.

Orlov. Dimitri Orlov. I bet he's the reason they found us. Did he lead them back to London because he wanted revenge for his uncle's death?

Am I just looking for an excuse to blame him?

I need someone to blame for this, for the latest in a series of unfortunate events.

But maybe this is a coincidence, maybe it was random and there is no blame to be placed.

~~~~~~
A/N:
Sorry this chapter was so incredibly short, but it just seemed like the perfect place to close this one out.
Next chapter will be Dimitri's POV, and there will likely be two or three more to come after it.
Dedicated to Madisyn2004, who helped me come up with the perfect title for the sequel. Thanks, Kid, for giving me a few suggestions. :)