ADRONITIS (II) : tmr minho

4: I could be Saving

Ella 4

Thomas is alone.

Waiting for a boy he hurt. I saw him, when he got here. I saw his smug face. He did this to us. Cracked us open and left us to bleed. He stole all the thoughts from my head, stole her from me, stole all of this from everyone.

People have died, Thomas. People are dying.

Maybe she is dead too. I cannot bear the thought of the loss of purple. Sunrises and sunsets all gone. There is no salvation for us. He took the lilacs and the colour, and turned all the boys into grey teens and left me trapped here. Lacking all that once belonged to us in this world. Stolen is this world. The sun is an illusion, all the gold gone, and I am left a sickly dark hue.

He stole from me, stole from all of us. I wonder if he can hear her whispering sweet nothings in his ear. I wonder if he can see us bleeding on the pavement. Ankles shattered from long climbs. Boys broken from falling down deep dark holes. These are not metaphors, these are realities I can remember when I let my mind rest for a minute.

"I heard he jumped," I tell the three of them.

Only two of them new the boy, for even I didn't but the two cannot breathe.

"Is he..."

"Alive," I answer, though she does not ask about that boy. She asks about another. "Nobody's died we knew yet."

"I hate the way you say yet," she continues on, marching over the other girl's silence.

The girl who knew none of the ones we do sighs. "It's only worse out there."

Thomas was behind that. That pain and suffering. He was the root cause of it.

He was the source of all this anguish. More complicate than the Smoke man, he is his own sort of brand of evil. He has murdered me, and all of us, and we should've known better than to trust him.

I sit down across from him. Trying to breathe, but my lungs won't function.

He looks up at me, with soft eyes and a heavy chest. Mine shoot out from in the bench, backing away. His brown eyes are glossy, and dull, like he's just seen a Griever for the first time.

On your first morning, they have a grey boy take you to see a Griever, but Thomas should recognize them. After years of watching he should know what they look like. I am sure of it.

He told me he was going to ask to go up with his memories intact.

"We have to do it before they send him up," I whisper to her across the table.

"We're good on my end," she whispers back, lightly tapping the bottom of the table. "My whole team is a go, and they know what they are getting into."

That was the plan, with his memories together, the day we were due. Instead, he shows up a month later, a blank canvas. Did we change this?

"You don't remember," I tell him, like he doesn't know. "You don't remember me.

He stands up, moving closer. At first, he doesn't say anything, before he parts his lips. "Why, do you remember me? Are you one of those people who went through the Changing?"

No, there was nothing to change. He doesn't remember, he is gone, they took him. Which can only mean one thing.

They are sending her.

"No, no, no," I back away from him, stumbling on the ground. "You don't remember? They are going to kill us! We are going to die!"

Thomas rushes towards me, trying to help me up, but I slide as far away from him as possible. "Are you alright?"

"You were supposed to remember, Thomas!" I shout, trying to keep my head above water. "They were supposed to cancel it and restart, or you were supposed to remember. I don't know what is going to happen!"

"I even got her to agree to it," he tells me, trying to reason me. "They'll let me in, and I can take them down that way. They aren't even going to send the eight of you guys left over in there."

Eight, as if he knows.

"See Ella, I'm fixing this," Thomas smiles while I frown.

"We've given you too long to fix this," I tell him. He may not have told me before now of his plan, the night before it was supposed to go into action, but of course I overheard. This place has ears. "Now, we are going to put back together everything you've broken."

"I didn't tell you my name," he manages to whisper.

Someone is picking me off the ground, although his hands are grey so I don't recognize their origins.

"We don't have time for this!" I try to rip myself free of the hands around me. "It's all going to be over soon! We only have a few seconds left! The Smoke Man watches us Thomas. He stole, do you remember? With his white pen and his white pages and his gridded lenses? We were there Thomas, do you remember?"

The hands flip me, to have me face away from the boy, dragging me away somewhere. I can't tell who it is, but I hear voices.

I don't remember why we are here. I remember the anger and the rage, and the wish to sabotage, but I don't know what. What are they looking for? What did they want me to do? What was the plan?

What is the Violet girl's name?

"Thomas, you've got to escape!" Can he hear me or am I shouting into a vacuum? "We've got no time! Beat them, WICKED is-"

It's at this point that my body shuts down.