Depthless: Under The Library

Chapter Twenty-Eight// Alex

Alex’s POV

“I don’t care if I never sleep again, all I want now is to break through those invisible barriers and haul her back up to safety!” I snap. Then after my outburst, I slump my back, shocked at my own behaviour. I never snap at people! I do get frustrated, true, but just you wait until someone under your care is dying, yes, dying, somewhere deep underground.

Jocelyn rubs her bloodshot round eyes, a reproachful look in her face. “Well, the best you could do to help…” she rants, “is to stop moping around and get some rest! In this state, you can’t even think straight, let alone give out sane orders. “

“I mean,” she continues after I sent her a death glare. “Really? Forcing a team to join hands and lower themselves down the chasm? After what happened to Stella? That’s unlike you, Alex. The Alex I know does not give out dumb orders, nor does he refuse sleep just because he is over-obsessed with the curse and its progressions.”

I furrow my brows in annoyance. All her high-pitched chatter is making me dizzy and tired.. oh, so tired. I open my mouth to form a retort, but she holds up her arms and makes a big show of waving them in front of my face.

“Really, Alex? We’ve been through this countless times. We’ve spoke with Niko, and Stella, and David… pretty much everyone else around the scene at that time. I thought we had come to a conclusion? It was all pretty much an accident, you heard it from Niko! Anyway, it’s been three days, and so far, everything is peaceful---“

I couldn’t take this any longer, I really couldn’t. “Peaceful?” I lift my eyebrows and sit upright in my leather seat. To my surprise, I found that the voice escaping my lips wasn’t my own. It is completely different from how I’d imagined it to be--- my angry voice, now dead cold, intense, soft as a cat quietly stalking its prey.

“Correct me if you must, but I count one head injury, no, make that two, one guy going off his rocket, one girl down there in the depths of dark misery, awaiting goodness knows what cursed Crisis is about to take place… and you call that, peaceful?”

Jocelyn clenches her fists, her lower lip sticking out obstinately. “I count that as peaceful as long as there won’t be havoc---“ She meets my stare, her eyebrows delicately arched.

“Havoc…” I muse. “I wonder how you define havoc. In my dictionary, havoc means having a girl plunge headfirst into the chasm, the place of exile, no less, and a girl whom we’ve got under our serious care and protection--- offer to climb down to save a wretched boy who is currently going out of his mind? How about that girl whom we’ve placed our oath to be her protectors for as long as she remains here, suddenly ends up with a near-fatal head injury, and is still recuperating in the hospital wing?”

Jocelyn presses her lips together, but I continue my cold ramble. “And now, the whole upper part of the library is buzzing in havoc, each either demanding to turn chasm climbing into a pastime, or to seal up the gap for once and for all? How about the fact that, in just three months, we’ve received nine letters from our population, requesting a relocation? A relocation! Do you have any idea how dangerously idiotic that request is? The library is, or was, just about the safest shelter ever since the Great Burning. Now word is getting out about the curse, and our populace is demanding to be relocated, even be let out, back into… that dangerous world?”

I pause for breath, and fix a stare on Jocelyn. She regards me with a cool stare, then sighs, shaking her fluffy blonde head. “You know what I think, Alex?” She crosses her arms, for once not stooping to flattery while in a discussion with me.

“What?” I say aggressively, rubbing my thumbs across my closed fists.

“I think, after all this happening, after all the ‘havoc’ and the accidents and your obsession with what’s not really there, after going through all of this with you, after watching you go crazy with lack of sleep for three days! I have come to a simple conclusion.”