Like the Darkness, but not the Darkness (A Gone series fan fiction)

Bearing the Monster (Chapter Nine- Part Two)

Screaming, Ivy clapped her hands over her ears.

That voice was back, screaming in her brain as Ivy tried to collect herself.

"Ivy! Ivy what are you doing?!" Kim broke Ivy's loud and violent daze, looking confused and concerned as she came from inside. She was much faster than Ivy at the moment, and within seconds she was standing next to Ivy.

The voice disappeared as quickly as it had came, and Ivy lowered her hands to her sides- her eyes snapping back and forth in a panic.

"Ivy what's wrong-"

Kim reached out to touch Ivy's shoulder, and before she could Ivy snapped away, tripping over her own feet and tumbling to the ground.

"Seriously Ivy, what are you doing?" Kim said softly, sounding desperate as she put out a hand for Ivy to take.

To help her up.

"Don't touch me." Ivy hissed, rolling away before getting to her feet herself.

Looking back at Kim, the look on her face made her heart drop to her feet.

"Kimmy, I didn't mean it like-"

"Whatever Ivy." Kim said coldly, turning her back on her older sister as she went quickly back into the house.

Ivy felt planted to the spot, trying to understand what had just happened as her eyes slowly went down to her hands.

She brought them up, putting then in front of her face.

They had been bandaged tight by Hunter, but over the course of the past two days- they come loose, parts of ruined skin showing.

Healing skin.

Skin that had killed two animals with the mere touch.

"No, that can't be it." Ivy thought, watching her hands as if they would suddenly attack her. "It has to be some weird, new disease. It's not possible for me to, for that to happen.."

Ivy could feel herself slowly crumbling, and she wanted to be alone in her room when she reached the breaking point.

She stumbled down the steps, walking stiffly past a crying Alice and a consoling Kim.

Alice's back was to Ivy, and Kim looked up over the little girls shoulder. Ivy could hear Alice sobbing over not being able to find the guinea pigs, and from Ivy's sullen look Kim knew all she needed to know.

"It's ok Alice, you know what happened? Something entirely magical." Kim stared, looking uncertain at first but then smiling wide when Alice really looked up at her.

"Where did they go?" Alice hiccuped, watching Kim with wide eyes.

"The guinea pigs, they got sick of living in this huge hamster ball. You know what they did? They planned for months, deciding to go visit family in Ohio for a little while. But then this dome appeared around us, and they thought 'Well, we need to protect our Alice first.' So they started their adventure just a couple minutes ago- taking a secret guinea pig tunnel out of the dome, to find mummy and daddy for us."

By the end of the speech Alice looked much less sad- hopeful even.

"And when they find them for us, we'll all be a happy family again. Now, why don't I go make us something to eat for dinner?" Kim asked happily, Alice, being overwhelmed by happiness, only being able to nod frantically in response.

Ivy couldn't even look back at them, just trying to control her breathing as she frantically made her way down the last of the steps, not stopping until the door was closed with a bang behind her.

Just then did she realize where she was heading. Where she was.

Her eyes slowly went over her mother's abandoned laboratory and almost immediately she started sweating in fear.

Before she could start wringing her hands in fret she started digging through a nearby cabinet, her hands automatically knowing where what she'd need to clean up the mess was.

It was a standard thing they'd been taught; how to react and clean up any dangerous accidents that happened in mom's lab.

In a matter of minutes Ivy had cleaned up the chemicals, which she was relieved didn't seem to have any acid compounds, and had thrown out all the glass.

But now she needed something else to occupy herself. Not just her hands, but her mind as well.

Without thinking she started putting things away, and then quickly sorting through all of the things her mother had in the different cabinets- skipping over the locked ones. She focused intensely on the task at hand, managing to push aside her dark and scared thoughts over what she'd just done as she became more and more curious over what she was finding.

She found many different fluids in different glass beakers, some confusing and scientific research and paperwork stowed away, and even a few skeleton's and models of what her mom must've been working on.

It was a huge secret to her, no one could ever know.

If you ever asked, she just answer plain and simple- "A magician does magic and never reveals his tricks, a scientist like me does magic and never reveals the mircle's she performs."

But we all knew she'd share her mircle's in a split second if it meant becoming a world renowned scientist. But for now she was just a bromatologist- apparently also being a cariologist/cytologist or neurophysiologist or physiologist, if Ivy had read the papers correctly.

It was all just the study of the human body. The growth of the human body. The evolution of the human body. And it was all very theoretical.

But Mrs. Blackwell had always been about food. About making lasting food to supply troops (like Ivy's dad) or starving children with.

Maybe she was just way more ambitious than I thought... Ivy thought as she sorted through another paper on possible future evolutions of the human body that Ivy didn't quite understand.

She quickly dismissed that thought though, thinking of how deep she seemed to get into her work- with all the studying she did with the other scientists. All the time she spent in this lab and in the lab that was up near the old military base.

Now that she thought about it, her mom had also spent quite some time at the nuclear plant.

So she's a lot more ambitious than I thought. Ivy thought, chuckling to herself as she started putting away all the work. When her mom came back there had to be no sign that Ivy'd been looking around, or else she'd flip out.

The same way she'd flip out at anyone who came closer than a foot into her lab.

But the angriest she ever got was when you ever went near her room.

Even just thinking about it Ivy's eyes strayed to the door on the far right side, feeling herself become more nervous as she slowly crept backwards.

The door was slightly ajar, and Ivy couldn't see anything inside.

But she was glad she couldn't. Whatever was in there scared her, and she didn't want to find out what it was.

Or maybe it was just her way of bearing the dark monster she was sure was inside her- turning it into the monster in the dark room.