X-Marks: Rising Shadows

Walls

I leaned my back against the cold concrete walls or the small dark room and let a hot drip of sweat slide down my back. I was trapped in a small space with only the bright light of a window as my friend. I looked up to the lone window as a thin laugh escaped my dry lips.

None of this was funny, but I was laughing anyway.

I laughed because I needed to hear something other than sobbing in the distance. I laughed because my life was ending the same way it had started, but most of all, I laughed because she had ended up right here with me.

I squinted my tired eyes across the small hallway between us, and through the glass bars that enclosed the cell doors. She cowered in the deepest shadows of her shadowy gray cell, never lifting her veil, not even to eat. She hid from everyone else, but I knew just who she was.

Valencia couldn't hide from me.

There was something about the silence in this small space. Something about not knowing what was beyond these walls and only the daily schedules of guards to tell the passing time. It was something I hadn't had in so long. I finally had time with my thoughts. No running away from anyone or anything.

As the days passed, the distant memory of a foul yellow fog kept coming back like a bad taste. I needed to find out just what happened to us all those years ago. No matter how painful. No matter how insignificant the truth turned out to be. I would know for sure, and the only person who could give me that answer was right across the hall.

It was the eighth night when I finally gathered the courage to speak to her.

"You said you wanted to tell me the truth," I whispered across the hall, "I'm ready to hear it."

Valencia was silent for a while. Shifting back in forth in the dark corner of her cell.

"I was not who I said I was," she finally whispered.

"Then who are you?" I said and sat back from the wall as a flood of images of a dingy office came flooding back to my mind.

"All we wanted to do was make a change in this world," Valencia said, her voice breaking, "Dr. Hahn, Milo and I arrived at the center about the same ages as you. About sixteen or so.

"We had come from the same holding camp and joined a group of rebel travelers who felt the way we did. It wasn't right for the Allies to keep all those children locked up away from the world, without even a name.

"But we could never understand it. How the Allies kept this many quiet as to what was happening in those centers. What was really happening? Surely, one person would object. But once we arrived and realized what they could do, make us see all those shadow people with their treatments. We understood.

"Dr. Hahn could his forged his treatment documents, and I had found a way to make it look like I was receiving my treatments, " Valencia's voice broke again, "I am not proud of what I had to do."

The images of the murky office and a wrinkled hand clouded my thoughts again and turned my stomach.

"But Milo, he couldn't find a way to forge his documents as a guard. We thought we would only be there a short time. That we could keep everything together before we lost him. But as the years passed and the day before I left, I knew it was over. He had told everything to Sandall. Forgot who he was and what we came to the center for. I didn't have much time after they had taken Dr. Hahn. But before I left, I wouldn't let them have you."

"That's a lie," I said, "You did, you left me there."

"No, no in that way," Valencia said, choking on her words.

"Then what do you mean?"

"I did everything I could. Just to have the doctors wait, maybe one day. Just until I knew someone was coming for you before they could turn you."

"Turn me?"

"Into one of their soldiers," she said, "There was nothing else they needed from you after your last birthday. Nothing else but to put another implant in your head and a gun in your hand so you could carry out their orders. That's why I sent," Valencia sighed and paused, "That's why I sent Johnathan -"

It was all falling into place. Every word, every person, every action that I had witnessed had led me here and now knew why.

I had my answer, the cruelest of all. If it weren't for us, Buggy would still be alive. He would have made it here and maybe, just maybe he would have ended all of this for good.

But instead, Buggy got in trouble with the elders and Allies for protecting us. For protecting me and I had just messed everything up.

"You sent Buggy," I said leaned away from the wall, "You sent Buggy, and now he's dead because of us!"

Valencia pulled her veil over her mouth. It filled my chest with hot blood to see her hide from me.

"And Ocean too!" I continued and ran towards the bars of the door, "You promised me! You said you would tell me the truth!"

I shouted, through the glass bars. My voice getting louder and louder until I could hear nothing else. I slammed my hands against the steel door, letting each blow scrape my knuckles until they were running red with blood.

I kept pounding on the door, my temperature boiling through my ears. I didn't care who saw me. They needed to know. They all needed to know. I shouldn't be here. Valencia was the liar! The liar who deserved what she got, not me.

In the corner of my eye, I saw two black cloaked figures. Their ghostly silhouettes walked closer and closer until they were at my door.

I continued to shout, smearing the red against the glass bars.

The black figures, disappeared as my view grew darker on each side. I felt a force lift me as my vision faded into complete darkness.

They were here to take me.

I had finally learned the truth, and now I was ready for my end.