Vicious Memories

Chapter 87

Bev's eyes reached for me across the space between us, chips of ice, blue stars, bottomless oceans. Without blinking, they took on the cunning gleam of a predator - I was shocked I'd never noticed it before.

"I'm here. Let Alice go."

Bev lowered the gun and tapped it against her thigh casually. Her finger rested on the trigger guard, and I could tell she knew how to use it.

"Not just yet," she said. "I brought you here for a reason, after all. I wouldn't have asked you to trek all the way across the island for nothing."

"What do you want, then?"

"It's still thrilling, you know, that after all this time you really don't remember. It never quite settles permanently in my mind, doesn't fully compute that everyone has successfully lost their memories."

They remember, Felix had said, lying in a pool of his ruby-colored blood. They remember everything.

It was hard, even then, to stare at the woman across from me and see her for who she really was. The whole of it was impossible to fathom. But certain details were easier to swallow. The sharp grin on Bev's face tilted her lips with a confidence I'd never seen before. Her gaze was forged from steel. Her posture changed, becoming self-assured.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked. "Why are you trying to kill everyone?"

Genuine shock flashed across her face like static on a television set. "Kill everyone?" She shook her head. "No, Ollie. I'm saving everyone. So are you. We did something amazing."

"We?" A sick feeling ballooned in my stomach as I strung together my various nightmares over the past two weeks.

"Yes. We. We aren't trying to kill everyone, as you so ineloquently put it, but sacrifices had to happen along the way. And the murders aren't even the most important part. Everything, Ollie. I planned everything. The killings, the village, the people, the group that you hilariously refer to as the Strangers. This whole island was my idea."

I blinked, as if clearing my vision would somehow force the words into a semblance of sense. Comprehension was ellusive. Alice whipped her head around, staring up with narrowed eyes and teeth that were bared around her gag.

Bev laughed sarcastically. "I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you the truth."

Alice spat. She worked her jaw furiously and managed to fight around her gag, the white cloth falling to her chin like a helmet strap.

"How could you? We lived together for two years. What kind of person can spend that much time with people and one day kill four of her friends?"

"Friends?" Bev scoffed. "You aren't my friends. How could I ever be friends with monsters like you?"

Alice growled, the primal sound bubbling up from her chest.

Bev raised the gun and the sound subsided. "Don't try anything. And don't you move either, Ollie. If you twitch, she dies." She deftly replaced and tightened the gag. Angry red lines from the cloth now covered Alice's cheeks and chin.

I rocked back, unwilling to do anything that could cause Bev to hurt Alice. The longer we stood here without her giving us her demands, the more I suspected that she was after something specific. I thought about the way she'd referenced me, as if I'd known this real version of her all along, and watched as her eyes flicked sharply over my face for my reaction. All the while I knew time was ticking by quickly - I had to find out what was going on and save Alice and the rest of the villagers from the impending attack.

"I didn't kill all four of them, by the way," Bev continued. "Felix killed Sirus and Shana, bless his idiotic soul. He didn't want to. He tried to argue, to plead for their lives, even after I took him below Mount Home and showed him everything. I had to kill Jessica when he wouldn't cooperate. She wasn't on the original list, and I knew after that that he'd do what I asked. That's the thing about psychology, it gives you advantages over everyone else. I knew that Felix would be the easiest to turn, because he was the one who cared the most. He couldn't bear to see anyone else needlessly killed after Jessica." She pursued her lips for a moment. "There are more to come, though. Him getting caught made me move up the timeline."

"Enough," I said. "No explanation would make what you've done okay. Tell us what you want, but know that you won't get away with this. You took Alice to get me here. What do you need to let her go?"

Bev's face twisted hideously, the first real emotion she'd shown, and I recoiled.

"You don't remember," she spat. "You don't remember so you don't understand. We've already gotten away with it, you idiot. The world has gone to shit. Nothing is sunshine and roses. We have real problems that you can't even comprehend. This project is a ray of hope. And guess what? It works."

Her words bounced meaninglessly off my skull as the gun continued to tap against her thigh. It felt like listening to someone speak another language.

"Why are we here?" I yelled, losing patience. I wanted the truth more than almost anything, especially if it would lead to getting my own memories back, but I wouldn't let myself think about that when I could still see Alice bound and gagged before me.

"Are you going to let Alice go, or not?"

The cold and loving gaze Bev settled on me clanged so discordantly that I shivered.

"It seems there's something about this island that brings out the emotion in you. Last time it was me. Now it's her. Very fickle, aren't you, Ollie?"

Thunder boomed across the island, startling a nearby group of birds. They took wing like bloody shrapnel after a mortar blast, squawking and streaking in all directions.

I looked from Bev, down to Alice, and back.

"What are you talking about?"