Susceptible

Chapter thirteen

"Adriana don't!" Alex called after me, but I ignored him slamming my door to my room. I dropped to my knees taking deep breaths. My breathing was irregular and speeding up. I needed to calm down before I started to hyperventilate.

In, out, in, out. I slowly made my breathing go down to normal intervals. I couldn't believe what Alex was right in there covered in someone else's blood. I had never thought of him as physically dangerous, but now I was worried. Not so much about me, but more about Sam.

He obviously had some sort of vendetta against Sam since he took me and told him I was dead. Did Sam know Alex in real life? I had never seen Alex before and he was a couple of years older than us, so I doubted it.
If this blood wasn't Sam's then what about the next time Alex came home? Would it be Sam's then?

Suddenly there was banging on the door. Alex was pounding on my door and I could see the door moving against the weight. I screamed out terrified of Alex coming in, scared of whatever he had just done, what he could do. The pounding stopped after he heard my shriek.

"Adriana please no. Don't be scared of me." His voice broke and I could tell he was still crying.

I heard him sit down and I could sense his presence on the other side of the door. I was on the opposite side of the room as far away from the door as I could get. I slowly also sat down and stared at the door waiting unsure what to do.

Our relationship had just shifted, I was already confused about what I felt, and now this. It was back to square one, how could I trust him now? I was just as scared of him as I had been when I first was kidnapped.

Did this need to happen? Was this the break of some sort of Stockholm syndrome I had developed?

I sat there shocked not moving just staring at the door. I could still hear the quiet sounds of Alex's crying, and it broke my heart. He obviously had remorse for whatever he had done.

The more I thought about it, the more it didn't add up. I couldn't understand, he was the happiest person I had ever been around. He had never been rough with me, the amazing way he treated his mom, and now he was crying...

I slowly got up and made my way to the door. My hand rested over the handle and I stood there debating what to do. I did not move for what felt like hours, just stared at the door knowing that Alex was on the other side of the door hurting.

My hand slowly slipped off the handle, and I let my back slide down the door as fell down the floor. I pulled my knees to my chest looking for some sort of comfort. I was too much of a coward to help him.

My brain tortured me going back and forth between every good thing and every bad thing he had done, not letting me choose a side.

But isn't that how we all are? No sole person was all good or all bad. We all had a mix of black and white, a muddled gray, because we are human. Even the supers, they are still human.

The only thing as humans we can do is to choose which one we want to be more of. Which one we are proud of, want to try to be. While we think everyone would choose white, innocence, virtues, kindness, that is not always the case. There are plenty of humans drawn in by the black, consumed with darkness, evil, motivated by bad thoughts.

The difference between us 'normal' humans and supers, was that a typical human did not have to declare which side we were on. There was no public announcement we had to make saying where our true intentions lie.

But as supers they had to. They were branded as villains or heroes, exposed as to which side they would follow.

And I believed Alex had declared the wrong side too soon. Whether he had been enticed by the black, the call we all feel towards it, or maybe he knew it existed inside him and thought he had to follow it. Whatever it was he had made the wrong choice because his soul was full of more white. And I could help him see that, help him go back on what he had done.