Game of Riches (ONC)

Some things never leave me.

The next time I entered the mess hall, they'd cleaned away the bodies.

It was as if nothing had ever happened. Yet there was an almost imperceptible shift in the atmosphere. Everyone looked at each other with suspicion. The air made me jumpy, and as I sat down at table four, I was astutely aware of all the knives at each place along the table. I picked up the knife in front of me and squeezed it into my palm, nails pinching at the skin there.

Evan sat down beside me, "You're okay." He breathed and pulled my free hand to him.

I nodded, distracted by the one seat that remained empty at our table. I searched the faces to see who was missing. Curly hair. Was he dead? Guilt wrenched at my stomach a thousand times worse than anything I'd ever experienced before. I had no way to know whether he was dead. I didn't even know his name.

"What's wrong?" Evan asked.

I blinked and stared down at my food. "Nothing." I said and began to eat, but the food didn't want to go down and each bite was a struggle to swallow.

Evan looked me over for a moment, but then relented and turned back to his own plate.

I clenched my fist harder around the knife. I would never know how my decisions had led me here -- to a place where I'd as good as murdered an innocent boy. But one thing I was certain of, I had to do something about all of this. Though just yet, I had no idea what that something was.

The announcement came later that the restrictions on movement were being lifted. Despite the way the Captain made my skin crawl, I used my newfound freedom to pay him a visit. The corridor was full of emerging prisoners and I was careful to give each of them a wide birth. I was certain one man whose eyes followed me was going to come after me, but he stayed where he was. By the time I reached the Captain's door, I was ready to jump out of my skin.

I was actually relieved to see his face when the door slid open.

He smiled at the sight of me. "Ah, come in."

I nodded and scooted in past him to the table that was still set up from yesterday. He sat down opposite and poured tea into a cup that was already set up for me. Had he been that certain I would come back on my own? Was I that predictable?

"So, are you ready to carry on?"

I nodded. "Only if you promise to tell me more about yourself."

"That's only fair." He answered. "Tell me, why were you on Station 457 all by yourself."

I took a deep breath to which he only smiled. This was the last thing I wanted to talk about, had never really told anyone about, but I would do this for him.

"It happened when I was ten."

The warmth of Shiffir had been suffocating that day. I'd spiked a fever over 39 degrees. My mother had forced my father out the door that morning, saying she could handle everything. And it had been fine until they'd shown up. My father was a well-known man, and they'd been waiting for him to leave.

They were dressed in black, like malevolent ghosts, come in the night to steal away our souls. To me, they were but a blur as the room spun and their shouts echoed around the room. My mother threw herself on top of me, and it was suffocating, but then they pulled her away and left me with just the cold.

First, they tied her to a chair, then they set up a camera, and finally, they placed the gun in my hand.

"Shoot her, or we'll shoot both of you." They'd said and I'd dropped the gun on the floor. That's when the cold barrel had pressed against the back of my head. "Shoot her."