Page 62 of Revenge of the Forgotten

“Worry about me, I know. I know. It’s just the more I think about all of this, the more I realize this isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way, and I can’t imagine what it’s going to feel like to remember all of it. I’ve been warned, but that doesn’t prepare me.” She was rambling, finally letting her inner thoughts out. “Does it hurt?” she asked. This one was the answer she’d been fearing the most.

“You handle it well.” Khort skirted by the truth. Vega knew without a doubt whatever was happening tomorrow would be unlike anything she’d ever felt… or that she could remember.

Vega began to sink into worry, her arms wrapping around her torso as she imagined herself inside of the memories she’d been told.

“Come on.” Khort reached out, then grabbed her by the hand and tugged her towards the elevator.

“Can we take the stairs?” She shivered at the thought of getting back into that creaky contraption.

“This is faster. You’re not spending your last night sulking about tomorrow’s worries or fretting about an elevator I’ve only been stuck in once.” With his free hand, Khort pressed the button for the top floor.

“What do you mean, only been stuck in once, Khort?!” Vega hadn’t been outside of her new underwater home since her arrival, but now all she could picture was dying inside the elevator.

“Relax, please.” Khort threw his arm around her shoulders and pulled Vega into his side.

“I can’t relax. My whole life is a mystery,” she said through gritted teeth. The awaiting scent of salty air was enough to snag her out of her funk and force her to block out the squawking of the machine box she was ascending in.

The smell hit her before the shrieking stopped. Vega filled her lungs with the briny air, exhaling with a heavy huff. “How do you stay down here for so long?” she asked as the elevator slowed.

“I don’t think about it much anymore.”

The door slid open painfully slowly, opening to a round staircase. Vega quickly removed herself from the death trap and looked up, leaning against the beginning of the handrail.

“This is the exit out of here?” Vega asked, looking up, dizzying herself at the height.

Khort started up the stairs and didn’t turn while he answered her. “One of them. We wouldn’t limit ourselves to a single exit.”

Vega followed him, his long legs taking two stairs at a time. She was nearly wheezing by the time they got to the last step. “I should’ve exercised more in this life.” Khort stopped them at the top of the stairs where a hatch loomed above. Vega caught her breath, annoyed that Khort didn’t look fazed by the climb at all.

“We’ll keep training.”

Vega held up her middle finger while she gasped for breath. “Open the hatch. I need some air.”

Khort climbed the small ladder and turned the wheel on the ceiling. It clicked as gears she couldn’t see unlocked. He gave the hatch a strong shove, and it heaved open, sucking in fresh air with a howl. Vega followed him up the rungs into the deep night sky.

Khort emerged first, holding the door open for her. When she cleared the opening, she gasped at the landscape surrounding her. A crumbled building wrapped around the entrance they had just appeared through, but beyond that, the land looked like complete waste—like a bomb went off and destroyed everything in its wake. Khort closed the hatch, and in the exact moment the door became flush with the entrance, it disappeared.

Vega’s jaw dropped. “Where did it go?”

Khort handed her the bottle. “Open.”

This time Vega didn’t have to focus so hard to get the air to push the cork out. The pop didn’t startle her either. She took a long swig right from the bottle.

“You can thank Arlet for that.” Khort kept his eyes on Vega as she marveled at the door no longer there. The walls around them were destroyed, stone sitting on its side, the night sky twinkling overhead with no light pollution.

“She’s actively concealing all of this all the time?” Vega asked, turning to face Khort.

“She’s strong, but we’ve been lucky enough to have some people from Littera help out. They’ve built a few machines that mimic her power and help keep us hidden. When we first built Castra, though a lot smaller back then, it was all her. It was just impossible for her to go to Earth and keep a hold on her powers here,” Khort admitted.

This rebellion sacrifices too much for me… “She’s fucking incredible,” Vega said instead.

“That she is,” Khort agreed.

Vega hadn’t changed out of the dress, kicking herself now that they were crawling through rubble to get to the open land outside of the abandoned stone home. “You could’ve warned me that I’d be trudging through an old war zone,” Vega mumbled.

Castra was nestled deep under the sea, but this hidden exit tunneled through the core of the crumbled remains of what was once Imber.

Now, there was nothing left of the buildings or their people. All that lay present to the eye was a ruined territory destroyed for standing against Marlena.

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