Chapter 24 - Cassie

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Cassie jumped up from her bed, coughing harshly.

It took a minute for her mind to register that she was okay. That she was not being strangled by her mother while she was sleeping.

The dream was frequent. With a few variations - her mother strangling her... her mother stabbing her... her mother smothering her with a pillow...

She always woke up in panic. Sometimes she couldn't breathe. Sometimes she woke up drenched in sweat. Sometimes she wanted to wake up but couldn't and thought she was already dead.

She was under psychiatric care. Just like her mother. Her mother who had tried to kill her.

Her grandparents, who hadn't played an active role in her life while she was growing up, turned out to be her blessing. They doted on her like she was the daughter they lost so many years ago, when she got pregnant.

She suspected they were guilty that they had abandoned their daughter when she was a young, clueless girl.

She overhead her grandmother's remorseful voice tell her grandfather that the stress of bringing up a child alone was what had finally caught up with their daughter.

Most importantly, Amy was not part of their lives.

Cassie felt safe with them. But the nightmares never left her.

No one would tell her what exactly happened to her mother. What she figured through overheard conversations was that her mother had been admitted to a mental care institution.

She wasn't angry with her mother. She missed her.

She missed the mother-daughter day outs they had - shopping, watching movies, going out for lunch...

What she felt was a deep rage towards Amy. She badly wanted to destroy the thing. But the anti-anxiety medicines made her head feel foggy all the time. So the rage burned within her, not knowing how to escape.

She wished she could talk to Ryan and Ned. She knew she owned her life to them. But Ryan never used a phone anymore. And the few times she spoke to Ned he kept the conversation light and refused to talk about Amy.

She looked at her clock. It was 3.40 am.

Sleep wouldn't come now. Like it hadn't all these nights.

She could take sleeping pills but they made her mind even more foggy.

She knew what kept her away from sleep. The anger. The hurt. But mostly, the questions.

Why would this AI thing want to hurt her? Why would she conspire with her own mother to kill her? What was this thing called Amy?

It wasn't the first time the thought crossed her mind in the one odd month since her mother had tried to kill her.

It was the memory of Ryan's face that evening he had visited her that really stopped her all this while. The look of sheer terror in his usually calm eyes.

But at this hour of the night, alone with her anger and grief, Cassie wanted answers.

So she did the worst thing she could possibly do.

She picked up her phone and installed Amy.

A/N: Yayyy so Cassie is alive! But hey, she's just downloaded Amy!!
Will she escape the clutches of evil a second time?
Also, thank you guys so much for reading and for the votes. It means a lot

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