Page 67 of Repossess My Heart

“She’s mine Eight. Fuck off.” The man behind me quips as one pauses. The shorter man stands in the stream of his killer buddies, a hunk of garbage in a sewer drain. Parting the shit and piss like a sentient being. Or the old dude that did something similar with an ocean, according to another story CeCe had told me.

“Maybe I take her. Our numbers mean jack shit now, all the rules and decorum are fucked, the leaders are dead. All of them. You should see our little art project in there Six, its fucking tight work.”

Six?

Six?!

My head snaps towards him, but his grip on me tightens, and even in whatever mental state I’m in now, I see that for what it is… be cool.

Nathan…

My chest throbs again with pain and I have no idea how effective the pills his drone gave me are against heart failure, but I’m nearly positive I’m almost there. All the cruel words he spoke slide around my neck like a noose, choking my sobs and leaving them stuck in my throat. I jolt as alarms blare to life, plunging the hall into darkness, only a red flash lighting it now. The humming approach of a drone makes me suck my bottom lip between my teeth, digging again into the flesh there. It’s so chewed to shit even if I lived hundreds of years, I wouldn’t heal.

Eight’s head tilts up and towards the glass ceiling, stares up at the wires and mists above before laughing, “Fuck man, not sure what happens to us now.”

“I don’t have those answers, but you need to go.”

The man just shakes his head, his braided honey colored hair shaking with him. “Relax brother, I won’t take your girl.”

Not his girl.

I’m practically brimming with questions, but I tramp them down. My mind is swirling with confusion so when I’m flung forward a screech leaves my throat as Eight’s arms band around me. My breath shutters, panic… real panic filling me anew, but Six moved too. Quickly.

Eight’s arms loosen as he stumbles back, allowing me the opportunity to wiggle free just as warm coppery liquid spurts over my face. Something akin to a squeal rips from my throat as Six again jerks me backwards. Shoving me forward as he takes off. My confusion and the mental whiplash must be making me move as slow as my brain because the press of metal at my back urges me faster. When I turn, stumbling over my own feet, I find a drone. Instead of the vague egg shaped one I know this one is rounder and a dark navy blue.

“What’s going on?” I ask breathlessly as we ascend into a maze of pretty halls and walkways. Opulence I’ve never encountered before, not even in Nathan’s apartment.

He makes a frustrated sound from behind his mask. “Don’t tell him I did that either. I did not help the two of you just to be ripped apart by Nine.”

“What is going on?” I yell, trying to stop him from pushing me along.

He turns on me, his voice darker than it was before. “The plan!”

“H-He didn’t tell me.”

“Yeah, I gathered that.”

I quickly lose track of the turns as the chaos in the building grows thicker. You can feel it in the air like every breath is something well-earned instead of a given. My boots are hitting concrete again, my brain still on its spiral as I replay each horrible event from the last few hours. Trying to see what I’d missed or if this was just another facet of his cruelty. Or Six’s maybe. The hope in my eyes is what he needs like Nine needs the misery and fear.

He got it…

He really got it in the end.

My breath leaves me in a pained huff as I’m suddenly jerked off my path and into a dark room. Six’s hands feel wrong as they grapple with mine as my body has apparently decided this is a flight or fight moment.

“Fucking hell, you’re hardly worth destroying a world for.” He grunts, slamming me into a rolling chair roughly, we fall into silence as it awkwardly rolls across the room only stopping as it bumps into a line of lockers behind me.

He didn’t do it for me.

“Was it real?” I whisper, my breath shuddering.

“Fuck no, Nine is obsessed with you. He really didn’t tell you the plan?”

I don’t typically listen to them well, so no…

A sob breaks free from my chest, my hands flying up to squeeze at the fabric of my top.

“That's not a positive thing. You know that, right? The dude is fucked in the head.”