The Memoriam Files: Hearts ✔

| Chapter 17, Unexpected ally

|Will you fight or will you walk away? How long will you let it burn?

|Song: Let it burn, Red

|||

Lisa's P.O.V.

Gally stepped back and opened the door wider. 'Come in.'
The others walked inside and I slowly followed. The world seemed to slow down around me, as if I was walking through a dream.
I stopped once I stood in front of Gally and suddenly it was hard to breathe.
He seemed to notice my trouble of finding the right words and gave me a simple nod of encouragement instead.

The apartment was dark. The room was tidy with no furniture. A yellow blanket had been hung over the large window, giving the place an eerie glow.
'Have a seat,' Gally said.
We all took place on the ground.
Taking a deep breath, I folded my hands on my lap. I wanted to get this over with.
'You know Minho and Lisa,' Thomas said awkwardly. 'This is Brenda and Jorge. They're-'
'I know who they are,' Gally interrupted him. 'Those shucks at Wicked gave me my memories back.' He focused his glare at Minho. 'Hey, you were real nice to me in our last Gathering. Thanks for that.'
'I'd had a bad day,' Minho responded, his expression making it impossible to tell if he was serious or even the tiniest bit sorry.
'Yeah, well,' Gally said. 'Let bygones be bygones, right?' His snicker made clear he didn't mean a word of it.

A silence fell and finally it was Thomas who spoke up. 'I'm sorry about what I did, Gally.' And ebem though it seemed like he was only trying to fill up the silence, I could tell he truly meant it.
'You're sorry? I killed Chuck. He's dead. Because of me,' Gally replied.
'No, because of Wicked,' I said, almost stern. The thought of the knife leaving my hand and impaling Aris, flashed through my mind. I still felt guilty but I knew it wasn't my fault. There was only one to blame. And I was fully focused on raining down hell upon them.

Gally held my glare. Long enough for me to get uncomfortable and look at my hands, intangled on my lap. 'That's a bunch of klunk,' the former builder eventually spoke but it was almost like I could feel he wanted to say something else. 'If I had any kind of guts I could've stopped them from controlling me. But I let them do it to me 'cause I thought I'd be killing Thomas, not Chuck. Not in a million years would I have let myself murder that poor kid.'

'How generous of you,' Minho spoke from next to me.
'No, listen I tried to stop Wicked when they tried to take control of me and it almost killed me. You can't blame yourself,' I said, not understanding where this weird desire to make him feel better suddenly came from.
Gally just kept looking at me and I frowned.

But before I could ask anything Jorge interrupted us.
'Wait a second here, muchacho. First off, you're going to tell us every little thing that's happened since you got shipped out of Wicked till you ended up sitting right where you're sitting.'
'I wanna know how you know we were coming,' Minho added. 'And when. And who was that weird dude who delivered the message to us?' Gally snickered again. 'I guess being with Wicked doesn't exactly fill someone with trust, now does it.'
'Not exactly, no,' I mumbled.
'They're right,' Thomas said. 'You've got to tell us what's going on. Especially if you want our help.'
'Your help?' Gally asked. 'I don't know if I'd put it that way. But I'm sure we have the same goals.'
'Listen,' Thomas said. 'We just need a reason to trust you.'

After a long pause, Gally began talking. And I listened with a wild beating heart.
'The guy who gave you the note is named Richard. He's a member of a group called the Right Arm. They have people in every city and town left on this crappy planet. Their whole mission is to bring down our old friends, Wicked. To use their money and influence for things that actually matter. But they don't have the resources to disrupt an organization so huge and powerful. They want to act, but they're still missing some information.'