No Way Out ➵ John Murphy

16 //

SIXTEEN.
❝ too numb to feel the knife in my back ❞

She had grown accustomed to Polis' dungeons. Layla would head down there every morning, a piece of well-prepared food for each person in the cell with John Murphy. They were fed sparingly by the guards and all of it was soggy, stale, or moldy.

John Murphy would sit on the edge of the cell, his hand wrapped around one of the metal rungs as he talked. He was a lot more talkative when she started bringing things for him.

At first he had been apprehensive, snide when she came down to see him. He still acted that way at points and even though he spoke to everyone that way Layla couldn't help but take it personally — he seemed to have a grudge against her for a reason she couldn't comprehend.

Today, she handed a loaf of bread through the metal that separated them. He took it quickly, tearing off a large piece for himself before passing it around the cell. At first, he hadn't shared the food she gave him, instead he scoffed it all down on his own. She concluded the other prisoners did not take that lightly, with the new bruises and cuts that had appeared the first few visits of hers.

While they talked a lot, Murphy was not all that helpful—most of the time, he left her even more confused. He wasn't openly hostile with her anymore, but he was abrasive—there was a wall there that she could not conquer.

"How do you know so much about ALIE?" Layla questioned curiously as he went off on another tangent about ALIE, something she had grown to expect. She usually just listened but the extent of his knowledge intrigued her.

"Research," he said with a laugh that was colder than the draft that flowed through the damp dungeon. "Lots of it."

She nodded slowly. "Can I find this research anywhere?"

"No," he shook his head. "Not here, not now."

"Oh." She said, disappointed. "I would've liked to have read it."

"You don't have to," he replied much quieter, as if what he was saying was a secret shared just between them. "Just think, Layla. It should be there."

On instinct, she shut her eyes and thought as hard as she could. She repeated ALIE, ALIE, ALIE over in her head, attempting to spark a memory. At first there was nothing but then there was a foggy image, a brightness in all the black. She saw herself sitting on a tan leather couch, her eyes fixated on a television screen. ALIE stood on the screen with a man, insisting that her idea or project was revolutionary. Scenes flashed by in head rapidly, giving her no time to process them. Until the last one—she jumped at the bang, her lips parting, a small scream escaping them. Her eyes flickered open and she glanced at Murphy, her fingers shaking as she brought them up to the cold metal to touch his hand with her own.

Layla didn't know why she did that. She had suddenly gotten the urge to hold his hand, knowing he would somehow comfort her with his touch. The moment didn't last—she quickly retracted her hand when she realized what she was doing. Though, he hadn't seemed to mind at all, as if he were used to it.

"What did you see?" He asked softly. He was being the gentlest he had been with her so far.

"Lots of things." She told him, monotonously. While she couldn't comprehend all her sudden findings, she had been able to come to one conclusion: ALIE was not the simple fix Layla had believed her to be, it was more tangly and complicated than that. "I saw ALIE, I saw a man die—I saw the world end."

Murphy sat up straighter. "So now you know—the chip, Layla—you have to get rid of it."

"How?"