2050: A Time of Courage

Chapter 10: Shemik

I twirl the knife expertly between the fingers of my left hand, watching the silver blade as it catches the light of the moon ever so often.

Would it be fast? Milena taught me how to slit someone's throat, though I've never done it in a real-life situation.

Would I drown in my own blood while I was still conscious?

Would it happen quickly?

I shake my head. I don't deserve a quick or relatively painless death. Katerina suffered before Lili killed her. Brynn suffered. Dimitri's uncle was literally torn limb from limb by Inhumanes.

That wasn't quick, it wasn't painless, and it was entirely my fault.

Everyone I meet seems to die eventually.

Every time I close my eyes, I have to watch it all over again.

My father and the twins being executed.

My mother, in her bed and looking as though she were only sleeping after she took those pills.

Dimitri's scream as the then-twelve-year-old watched his uncle slip off the top of the gate.

Milena, begging me to kill her.

Katerina looking even more mad than usual as she threw herself at me. Lili throwing the knife, killing Katerina on impact.

Ivanov turning on his fellow soldiers, willing to murder his former allies to help a few children escape, then paying for the mistake with his life.

And Brynn. Brynn, who could have grown up to be as brilliant as her father was.

Brynn.

The daughter of one of the last foreign associates I was able to reach.

All of those associates are probably dead by now.

It wouldn't surprise me.

I close my eyes.

I'm hearing their voices now. Brynn telling me how sleepy she is, Katerina begging me to take Kristenson's journal while she still had enough humanity left to give it to me. Milena yelling at me, telling me she couldn't even look at me the day our mother died.

Then it's Dimitri's voice in my head, the words he said to me that night on the hotel roof, a few minutes before he pushed Jason and me, repeating themselves over and over again.

"You killed my uncle. I still listened to you. You murdered your own sister, the only family you had left. I still listened to you. I leave, and you get Katerina killed. She was like a sister to me. You knew that, and you let her die! It is not my fault you ran the Warszawski name to the ground..."

I punched him for saying it. He saw the truth, and I punched him for it.

He had a right to try killing me. I wish he had. I wish Jason Messer wasn't so stubborn that night.

Why couldn't Jason have just let go, let Dimitri kill me, because the Russian boy was right about it all. I ran my family's name to the ground, and every time someone else dies because of me, I run it down even more.

Someone is screaming. It's a terrible sound, like nothing I've ever heard before. I have the vague impression that it's me.

How ironic that the girl who reads minds has finally lost hers...

I can't do this anymore. I wish I had never turned thirteen, that this war never started, that the Inhumanes never came into existence.

I wish I was normal!

I wish that I didn't have a talent.

Sixteen years is a long enough lifespan for me if staying in this messed up world is the alternative.