Deserted Highways

Where We've Been

A/N: Alright, friends! This is it, the last post from my second NaNoWriMo. I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing for you. This post concluded the month, and is the first chapter in the third and final book in the Disillusionment series. Thank you! Please vote, comment, and share with everyone you know!

A Path of Ruin

Chapter One

Where We've Been

Kaelie sat behind a solid mahogany desk, her feet rested on a corner of the desk, a knife in one hand and a gun resting on the desk before her. The office was very nice, affording her a comfortable view of the crumbling city beyond, rain clouds hovering low over the ruins. She watched a feed from a laptop monitor in front of her.

There were several small cells making up the screen as a whole. She smiled at her work, on one cell, a crying mother clutched her long dead child in her arms. In another, she watched as a faction of civilians forced another group to their knees, a small squabble over the sudden lack of food. She didn't hear any gunshots, the feeds had no auditory functions, but she saw the shockwave of the shot blow through someone's chest and she chuckled.

She focused her eyes on her favorite cell to watch, the small portion of her screen that allowed her to watch her old friends. She doubted they knew yet about her little surveillance project, a tiny piece of tech she'd taken from Jordan for her own personal entertainment. She recognized Jace's hand, as he reached for a knife, one she knew instantly, bone handled, slightly curved, and sharp, razor sharp.

She watched as Jace's focus shifted and she could see Michael' face through his eyes, healed finally, set into a grim, tired expression. She recognized the room he sat in, dusty and unkempt as it was, the living room to the safe house back in Phoenix. Michael was speaking rapidly, and Jace had looked back down, focusing on playing the knife in between his fingers and avoiding looking at Michael.

Kaelie sighed in vague frustration, cursing the lack of audio. She knew where they were, though, and she supposed that that was all that mattered. She looked away from the screen as a door opened. A man, once handsome, she thought, by normal human standards, was escorted in. He was gaunt, pale, his cheeks sunken in, skin taught across his bones. A once beautiful suit hung off his thin frame and his hair had thinned to being nearly bald.

She nodded at Margery and Timothy, the Hunters who'd brought him to her. "Thank you," she said, her voice smooth, level. "You can go. Resume positions at the gates. Inform me of movement immediately, so that Hunters can be dispatched to take care of any stragglers."

The two Hunters nodded respectfully back to her, not saying a word and the door clicked shut again. The man in front of her slipped to his knees as she stood, snivelling into the expensive carpeting. "Please," he muttered, his voice weak and shaking.

"Please what?" she said with a cold grin. "Please don't kill you? Please let you live? Tell me, what do you have right now that is really worth staying alive for? Do you think one day, I'll get bored,and just let you go?"

The man in front of her shook his head against the carpet, the loud rasping grating on her thin nerves. "Please," he begged again, but his voice was hollow now, like he was trying to go through the motions, doing anything for another second, another breath of air sucked into his lungs, one more heart beat.

"I know you remember, what you did to me," she said. She regarded the disgusting creature in front of her with an icy gaze. "In your misguided, underinformed attempt to grab at any type of power, of control, any type of money? Your meetings with Serna Rose were for naught, because she did not have the ability to grant you the things you wanted. She lied to you with a silver tipped tongue and you were so hungry for any sort of gratification that you lapped it all up like a cat with cream. And then, you gave me over to her. She tortured people. Not that they really matter anymore, because more importantly, she tortured me. She nearly killed me."

"So, you see, Jordan was really the one you should've been worried about. Or rather, maybe it was me, because I may have been hindered with the trappings of a social propriety, of some dripping of kindness, but I am no longer. And I have no use for those who have displeased me. I burned the world you so badly wanted to control to the ground. I watched your family die. I have nearly eradicated the human race in these past two months, and the little rats are taking care of the rest of themselves for me."

Kaelie lapsed back into silence, the man didn't move. She sat back at her desk, looking again at the monitor in front of her. Jace was outside now, stepping around debris in a ruined street. She did not know where he was going, as she hadn't seen him leave the house yet today, and had not had the time to watch in several weeks. She watched for a moment, he stalked across the rubble with a straight back, new muscle packed on in the last two months, a confidence she'd not seen in him before.

It nearly made her laugh, to know he still thought he would find a way out, find a way to save the pitiful amount of humans left, that he walked with his head held high, a leader among the ragtag band of people he'd managed to round up, the weight of their expectations resting on his shoulders. She'd destroy that too, when she was good and ready. They had not seen her at all since she'd walked out of the hotel room, but she made sure that every town she brought to it's knees had a mark, something for them to remember her by, to see and know that it had been her.

She shook herself out of her ruminations, picked up the gun on the table in front of her. She studied it calmly, the light glinting off it dully, the polished opalite set into the handle nearly catching her reflection. She stood again, moving towards the windows, flicking open the heavy curtains a little wider. She walked back around to the man and pulled him up roughly, tightening her grip around his wrist until she heard the small bones grind against each other and he gave a small whimper of pain. She smiled. She drug him in front of the huge window, forcing him back to his knees and grabbing a generous handful of his thin hair. Her grip was tight, nearly punishing, and she held his head straight forcing him to look. He tried to close his eyes, and she leant down until her mouth was at his ear.

"Open them, or I'll carve those eyelids off and make you," she whispered into his ear and his eyes fluttered open again.

"I want you to take a good long look," she said, louder this time. Outside of the window, Washington D.C crumbled in front of her mismatched eyes. The once beautiful architecture of the city was nearly in shambled, dirt, debris, and trash nearly covering the broken streets. The clouds had finally fulfilled their threat of rain, and it fell in sheets. Bodies littered the lawn in front of them.

"I took your city from you. I took your country. I took your people. Do you recognize any of them?" she asked and he whimpered out another sob.

"I don't want- I can't look, please," he begged and she laughed in his ear.

"Look at them," she said, and he opened his eyes again, staring out the windows at the bodies crumpled on the wet grass. The rain had washed the last of the blood away from them and now they almost looked like props left behind in a movie.

She held his hair in one hand, pointing with the gun in the other. "Over there, that was your daughter. Amanda, was it? She was very pretty. She cried too, a lot like you did. She tried to save your wife. Not quite quick enough, though. I carved her up just for you. Left her face alone, no use in taking away the last piece of true beauty you might see. I suppose you really should have let her know how much you loved her instead of beating her."

He snivelled, a nasty mixture of snot and tears running down his face and dripping onto the front of his grubby suit. "Please stop. Just get it over with," he sobbed.

"Oh, but we aren't quite done yet," Kaelie said, tapping the barrel of the gun against his temple roughly and he flinched away from her. "Wife came next. I didn't really have to, I suppose, but, where would the fun be in that?"

She pointed out the window again, to another form lying listlessly in the grass, nearly unrecognizeable as human, even to her enhanced eyes. "I'm sorry," he cried out. "I'm sorry. I didn't understand, I didn't know, you have to-"

"I think you're overestimating my character, love. I don't care. I don't care at all, and I don't have to do anything. Really, I just wanted to show you where your choices led you," Kaelie said, moving around him to stand in front of him.

She pointed the gun at his face, the barrel less than an inch from his face, his eyes nearly crossed as he looked up towards it. "Hey, Mr. President?" He looked at her.

"Fuck you."