Estranged [Completed]

Epilogue

Kalei returned to Solitary. Behind her, the city was quiet. At her hand, the errant Estranged were all disabled until the Wardens could pick them up. The Untouched? Dead, turned, locked within their houses. Terror and shock were all that remained in the city.

Solitary confinement was empty now. All of its former occupants had vacated when Xamic's seeds had triggered. Much the same had happened in Tech Town, Downtown, in the city itself. At Xamic's command, the entire city of Celan had erupted.

Whatever Tusic, or SWORDE, or anyone had believed the device to be, in the end, it was just a decoy. He had other ways to send his signal. As Walker was causing intermittent blackouts to the ear cameras as part of his updates, Xamic was wandering the city with a different device. A signal jammer, which specifically targeted SWORDE's ear cameras. Who could have distinguished Xamic's blackouts from Walker's?

This was how he had managed to visit almost every Estranged in the city and plant his seed. Just a little pocket of darkness, tucked away into the victim's mind, ready to alter their brain chemistry and drive them to a voracious frenzy when Xamic remotely released his signal. He could do things like that. He was the genius of the darkness. He was its inventor. And he was dead.

As Xamic's killer, Kalei had now inherited not only his power, but his knowledge and his memories, as jumbled as they were with the memories of his victims.

But now things were different from anything Xamic had anticipated. Now, the darkness no longer sat within her like water in a glass. It was her. It infused her skin, her eyes, her hands, her heart. It couldn't be contained or moved; there was too much, there was nowhere to move it. From the feel of it, Kalei fully expected to look down and find that her skin had turned full black, but instead, for reasons she couldn't fathom, the darkness revealed itself sparingly, dancing across her skin in the form of living swirls.

But the swirls were a mere decoration, an icing to cover the mayhem underneath. Hundreds and thousands of dead memories pressed in against her mind, victims from both that day and days departed. Terin's victims, Xamic's victims— they would not stop. They would not tire. They wanted to be heard; they needed to be remembered.

Somewhere inside the chaos sat Kalei, more broken and desolate than she ever thought possible. Fenn was dead, at her own hands. She couldn't bear the blood on her hands. So she let go of Kalei, content to let that poor, ravaged soul be buried by the others. It was too damaged to be recovered.

As she walked through solitary, she grabbed a new remote off the counter. She sat down within one of the small circles on the floor, and she raised the glass. Her eyes fixed on the far wall and her swirls danced and flexed across her skin like so many companions. She began to lose herself in the steady ebb and flow of countless memories, each one fighting for dominance.

Then one memory slowly pushed itself to the surface. It was Terin's; he was talking to a new recruit. He told the boy, "You know you touched her. But what you don't know is whether or not you killed her. Look inside yourself. If you find her memories, you know she is dead. But if you cannot... the chances are, she is still alive, living as an Estranged."

Kalei stirred from her desolation. She heard what Terin was telling her. If Fenn's memories were among those thousands, then all really was lost. But if not...

She closed her eyes. For better or worse, she had to find him. If not here, in her memories, then out there, among the Estranged. But the search had to start here, with these tormented souls. Kalei took a deep breath and plunged into their world.