Page 40 of Dead By Dusk

“So, did I pass this little test of yours? I told you everything that I remembered,” she calmly, if not a little awkwardly, states. Carmen grabs her hand, a movement tracked by all three of us, and Nate releases a deep sigh.

“Yeah, you’re good.”

I study the way he looks at her, always calculating, always questioning. She may have passed whatever test she needed in order to gain access to the folders, but the coolness in his gaze makes me wonder if she truly gained his trust. My gut tells me it’s unlikely as he shifts his gaze away and to the stairs beyond us.

“I guess it’s my turn, then?” Nate says. “Though, you’ll find that I don’t remember anything useful.” It’s a calm and casual statement, with no hint of a lie as he slowly rubs his hands together and brings them to his mouth. The sound of himblowing warm air into his hands fills the brief silence, and when he drops his hands, he shoves them into the pockets of the fresh pair of sweatpants he’d found in a drawer upstairs, reminding me that I should have grabbed a pair for Silene before we had made our way downstairs.

“I mainly remember my childhood. Not all of it, of course, but some. The basics, really. I remember having an older brother that I was really close with until he graduated from high school and moved out of our parents house. Though, I don’t remember what he set out to do, but I suppose it doesn’t matter because I graduated a year later and went to MIT. Studied computer science, got my bachelor’s and then…I don’t really know what happened after that.”

He ends on a shrug and then looks to Adonis, surely as a way to move the direction of conversation to the big guy in the room, but Silene doesn’t let him off so easily.

“You expect me to believe you know that little of yourself? You don’t remember what you’ve been doing for the past, what, two or three years? Not even a little bit?”

The question is fair, if not expected. It would make sense for more recent memories to resurface first. His dark gaze meets hers in a daring gesture, one I wouldn’t ever expect from him. Not when I’m slowly remembering more and more and know it’s not in his character to engage in any type of altercation if he can help it at all. He’s more the type to de-escalate, to stand back and only insert himself when necessary, and yet he looks to be picking a fight with the one person here who wouldn’t second guess sinking a blade into his throat and watching him bleed out.

“Yes. I have no reason to lie. The truth will come out eventually.” They face off for another moment, her unrelenting gaze freezing even me in place before I finally cut in between the two of them, making sure she doesn’t do anything else that couldjeopardize her position further when she’s barely made it into their good graces.

“I’ll go next,” I offer, hoping it’s enough to distract them, but it only pulls Nate’s attention back to me. He gives a curt nod and small smile, while Silene continues to glare at him with so much mistrust that I wish I could look into her mind and find out what she’s thinking. Though, Carmen did warn us about what we’d find if we just listened long enough.

Destruction. A vile and wicked thing.

Taking a step forward, I go ahead and tell them what I remember, however useless it is. I tell them about the house and how I know that I’ve been here before. Tell them that the clothes upstairs are remnants of laundry from using the space as a safehouse after high stakes missions.

All of their attention bounces back and forth between Silene and me when I get to our relationship, something we had kept hidden due to Mr. Delgado’s fraternization policies. A “conflict of interest,” is what it was labeled as, but neither of us cared. I spoke of her more than myself, and when I finish, all eyes are on me. All except one pair, that stared at the cushion to her right, shoulders pulled back and spine straight, putting on a show of being uncaring, but I see right through it. I see the cracks in her carefully constructed mask she wears, I notice her rapid blinking and the occasional anxious bounce of her leg.

I almost turn away to give her a moment, before I notice her go completely still before slowly turning her face toward me.

“We’ve been here before,” she states in a way that feels more like a question than a fact, but I slowly nod, knowing she’s not really asking me anything, but turning something over in her own head. Her thoughts, racing one after the other, each one pushing the last out of its way to reach the forefront of her mind. “How did we get in and out?”

The question leaves me breathless as I try to figure out the answer, something that might makeherbelieve me, but there’s nothing there. No memory resurfaces that could make me feel useful in this moment where I desperately hope that I could be to her, and I can tell she knows that by the way her brows scrunch tightly together. She aggressively rubs the area from her left wrist to thumb—an anxious tell that rarely makes an appearance.

“Strange,” she mumbles, barely audible, but loud enough to know none of us will be privy to her thoughts roaming aimlessly.

Everyone else seems to feel the same, but no one voices their own questions, but instead moves on in a way I know Silene never will. Instead, the deep rumble that is Adonis’s voice cuts through the lingering curiosity in the air as he begins to tell us what he has remembered. Like Nate, it wasn’t much that was useful, but it was recent. His memories were of training days with Silene and me as well as the nights of him and William hitting the bars after longer missions away from home. His cadence was steady and sure with each word spoken in a way that feels rehearsed to me. His head doesn’t so much as tilt, as if he is reading directly from a script etched on my face. Not once does he look away from me. But his eyebrows do pull together and his fists clench and unclench several times over as if there’s more to the story that he’s telling.

A daring gesture, one that begs me to second guess or question him. I refuse to do as such, though. I know better than to pick a fight I can’t win. No matter how suspicious it may be, I’m smarter than that. Thankfully, so is Silene. Or maybe she just didn’t listen to a word he said, not bothered with anything other than something that may prove useful, and in her eyes, he might not be worthy of that title in this moment.

However, I don’t feel as if I have any room to speak, seeing as my memories are nothing more than a mirage of what led me to her.

“Carmen,” her hesitant voice tears me away from my thoughts as I refocus on the scene around me. Everyone’s attention is locked onto the quiet woman who seems to be entirely made of her fears and discomfort. I’m not sure when she had shifted her body and unlaced her pinky from Silene, but now she looks at nothing and no one. Anxiety is etched into her every breath and movement. I can see it in the way she picks at her nails and the irritated skin around them. She has pulled her feet up and onto the cushion of the couch so she could wrap her arms around her long legs.

“I’m here,” Silene says. She reaches a tentative hand out to Carmen, a silent offering of comfort and support, that she willingly—albeit, slowly—takes.

I notice the way that Nate shifts toward her. Even if it’s only one foot that’s now closer to Carmen than the other. A small but tentative step forward. I find it strange that he does this every now and again. I find it even stranger that he had nothing to say about her when he seems to always be searching for a reason to be near her. He never questions or challenges her the way he has the rest of us, and I wonder if maybe his fondness of her is similar to Silene’s. He seems to care for her in a similar manner, though I’m not sure Carmen realizes it.

Si definitely catches it though.

“I don’t remember things the way all of you have, at least it doesn’t seem that way…to be quite honest, I’m not even sure how to explain everything,” she starts with a shaky and uncertain tone. Silene, ever present, gives her a silent and reassuring nod. A way to tell her she can continue whenever she’s ready.

“The second I saw Silene, I had an odd sense of déjà vu, or something similar to it at least. I wasn’t sure how well we had been acquainted or how close we had been, but I knew that, around her, I felt calm. Safe, even. The cold bite of the iron railings reminded me of my childhood. Bitter, harsh and unforgiving. There was no picture, but just this feeling that growing up hadn’t necessarily changed my circumstances, whatever they may have been.”

Her hand, still clutching Silene’s, tightens so much that I know it has to be painful, but Silene never wavers. She remains present, firm and strong, never flinching away from Carmen’s touch. An anchor, I realize, ensuring that her friend doesn’t drift too far away.

“I saw the binds of the books on the second floor and remembered the words that I would write to escape the reality I was born into. The words I had given in the hopes I would one day leave. To survive.”

A shuddering breath releases itself from in between her lips as a tear slowly rolls down her cheek. Still, her gaze remains faraway, distanced. As if summoning an old reality is a task so heavy, it does nothing but weigh her down and chips away at her current self so much that even dragging her eyes away from the ground would be too much effort.

“At the sound of the birds chirping, I had heard the voice of my mother singing. When they were struck down, I felt waves of grief that I know were not just an echo of something that has long passed, but a reminder that all things come to an end eventually.” Another tear falls, chasing the words that have been spoken as we all process the odd memories.

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