Adrenaline

Chapter 12

Song: Heroes ~ Zayde Wølf.

Present Time - 2 weeks after The Purge.

"I win."

Watching the black ball slide almost mockingly into the top, left pocket for the third time tonight, I barely resist the urge to impale the ever-so-arrogant Seth Silver onto my pool cue. The white ball stopping abruptly instead of following its black counterpart and therefore restricting me from gaining a last minute win.

"You cheated."

Grabbing the chalk, I apply a heavy dose onto the tip of my cue, a subconscious attempt to blame the slippy stick rather than admit he was simply better than me. It's a weird feeling: being the hustler yet allowing yourself to be played. It puts me at a disadvantage.

"How do you cheat at pool?"

"You tell me, cheater." Seth extends a hand at my demand, wiggling his fingers until I place another $20 on his palm, groaning at the light feeling steadily growing in my back pocket. Obviously, all outside assets had been frozen, courtesy of Mr. Silvers after Kians unfortunate demise, a punishment for the killer not coming forward. It was meant to be a guilt trip, forcing any easily pressured parties to admit to what they did. However, I don't happen to be easily influenced, especially when the price you pay is death. It helps that all the guilt I can feel is fed to another situation of substantially higher importance.

Connor.

Now, Seth Silver knows a lot of things; a lot of things that hold the power to ruin any resemblance of sanity I have left, a lot of things that could very easily have me six feet under within seconds.

Yet here I am. Breathing and grasping tightly at the fragile strings holding my rational mind together.

The question is: why?

When telling Seth about Connor the pain from my stab wound had served as a bittersweet saviour, forcing my conscious thoughts elsewhere and somehow rendering me able to keep my face stoic and my voice monotone. It allowed me to tell the story in full, every gory detail, bringing the demons that have been swimming around my mind for years to the forefront, manifesting into live creatures that swarmed my vision. Seeing Connors limp body slowly rotting, all alone, with tears streaming down his face in the corner of the kitchen had forced the breath out of my body. The large black holes where his copper eyes had once been stared at my soul, cracking it's shell and allowing me to poison the world with my toxicity, the protective seal irreparably broken.

It was the first hallucination in a long time yet equally as haunting.

Seth's reaction however had been unexpected. When I'd first arrived at The Academy rendering Seth Silver speechless would have been a small victory, his uncrackable armour finally exposing its weakest points. However, after sitting in silence for the remaining couple of hours, the pain in my side making my whole body feel as if it's being split in two, drifting in and out of consciousness whilst trying to watch every small movement the man made, I was the one left feeling exposed - vulnerable to his next sentence.

Truly, I still don't know what to think of his reaction, a tight nod of acknowledgement and a soft 'okay, Athena' hadn't been what I was expecting, not that it mattered; whether he'd have shouted, clammed-up, refused to converse with the monster in front of him, the monster he just saved. None of it mattered. He was just reinforcing what I already knew, in a situation like that ignorance is bliss, yet I have no choice but to be fully aware of what I did, and when the option to be ignorant is revoked, the bliss is taken along with it, leaving me to a life of damnation.