Unravel Me (25 page)

“My father had an entirely separate life I didn’t know about and instead of being
dead like he should be, he gave me a
brother
who almost tortured me to death in a
slaughterhouse
—” He runs an unsteady hand over the length of his face, suddenly cracking, suddenly
slipping, suddenly losing control and his hands are shaking and he has to curl them
into fists and he presses them against his forehead and says, “He has to die.”

And I’m not breathing, not even a little bit, not even at all, when he says,

“My father,” he says, “I have to kill him.”

I’m going to tell you a secret.

I don’t regret what I did. I’m not sorry at all.

In fact, if I had a chance to do it again I know this time I’d do it right. I’d shoot
Anderson right through the heart.

And I would enjoy it.

I don’t even know where to begin.

Adam’s pain is like a handful of straw shoved down my throat. He has no parents but
a father who beat him, abused him, abandoned him only to ruin the rest of the world
and left him a brand-new brother who is exactly his opposite in every possible way.

Warner whose first name is no longer a mystery, Adam whose last name isn’t actually
Kent.

Kent is his middle name, Adam said to me. He said he didn’t want to have anything
to do with his father and never told people his real last name. He has that much,
at least, in common with his brother.

That, and the fact that both of them have some kind of immunity to my touch.

Adam and Aaron Anderson.

Brothers
.

I’m sitting in my room, sitting in the dark, struggling to reconcile Adam with his
new sibling who is really nothing more than a boy, a child who hates his father and
as a result, a child who made a series of very unfortunate decisions in life. 2 brothers.
2 very different sets of choices.

2 very different lives.

Castle came to me this morning—now that all the injured have been set up in the medical
wing and the insanity has subsided—he came to me and he said, “Ms. Ferrars, you were
very brave yesterday. I wanted to extend my gratitude to you, and thank you for what
you did—for showing your support. I don’t know that we would’ve made it out of there
without you.”

I smiled, struggled to swallow the compliment and assumed he was finished but then
he said, “In fact, I’m so impressed that I’d like to offer you your first official
assignment at Omega Point.”

My first official assignment.

“Are you interested?” he asked.

I said yes yes yes of course I was interested, I was definitely interested, I was
so very, very interested to finally have something to do—something to accomplish—and
he smiled and he said, “I’m so happy to hear it. Because I can’t think of anyone better
suited to this particular position than you.”

I beamed.

The sun and the moon and the stars called and said, “Turn down the beaming, please,
because you’re making it hard for us to see,” and I didn’t listen, I just kept on
beaming. And then I asked Castle for the details of my official assignment. The one
perfectly suited to me.

And he said

“I’d like you to be in charge of maintaining and interrogating our new visitor.”

And I stopped beaming.

I stared at Castle.

“I will, of course, be overseeing the entire process,” Castle continued, “so feel
free to come to me with questions and concerns. But we’ll need to take advantage of
his presence here, and that means trying to get him to speak.” Castle was quiet a
moment. “He … seems to have an odd sort of attachment to you, Ms. Ferrars, and—forgive
me—but I think it would behoove us to exploit it. I don’t think we can afford the
luxury of ignoring any possible advantages available to us. Anything he can tell us
about his father’s plans, or where our hostages might be, will be invaluable to our
efforts. And we don’t have much time,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll need you to get started
right away.”

And I asked the world to open up, I said, world, please open up, because I’d love
to fall into a river of magma and die, just a little bit, but the world couldn’t hear
me because Castle was still talking and he said, “Perhaps you can talk some sense
into him? Tell him we’re not interested in hurting him? Convince him to help us get
our remaining hostages back?”

I said, “Oh,” I said surely, “he’s in some kind of holding cell? Behind bars or something?”

But Castle laughed, amused by my sudden, unexpected hilarity and said don’t be silly,
Ms. Ferrars, “We don’t have anything like that here. I never thought we’d need to
keep anyone captive at Omega Point. But yes, he’s in his own room, and yes, the door
is locked.”

“So you want me to go inside of his room?” I asked. “With him? Alone?”

Calm! Of course I was calm. I was definitely absolutely everything that is the opposite
of calm.

But then Castle’s forehead tightened, concerned. “Is that a problem?” he asked me.
“I thought—because he can’t touch you—I actually thought you might not feel as threatened
by him as the others do. He’s aware of your abilities, is he not? I imagine he would
be wise to stay away from you for his own benefit.”

And it was funny, because there it was: a vat of ice, all over my head, dripping leaking
seeping into my bones, and actually no, it wasn’t funny at all, because I had to say,
“Yes. Right. Yes, of course. I almost forgot. Of course he wouldn’t be able to touch
me,” you’re quite right, Mr. Castle, sir, what on earth was I thinking.

Castle was relieved, so relieved, as if he’d taken a dip in a warm pool he was sure
would be frozen.

And now I’m here, sitting in exactly the same position I was in 2 hours ago and I’m
beginning to wonder

how much longer

I can keep this secret to myself.

This is the door.

This one, right in front of me, this is where Warner is staying. There are no windows
and there is no way to see inside of his room and I’m starting to think that this
situation is the exact antonym of excellent.

Yes.

I am going to walk into his room, completely unarmed, because the guns are buried
deep down in the armory and because I’m lethal, so why would I need a gun? No one
in their right mind would lay a hand on me, no one but Warner, of course, whose half-crazed
attempt at stopping me from escaping out of my window resulted in this discovery,
his discovery that he can touch me without harming himself.

And I’ve said a word of this to exactly no one.

I really thought that perhaps I’d imagined it, just until Warner kissed me and told
me he loved me and then, that’s when I knew I could no longer pretend this wasn’t
happening. But it’s only been about 4 weeks since that day, and I didn’t know how
to bring it up. I thought maybe I wouldn’t have to bring it up. I really, quite desperately
didn’t
want
to bring it up.

And now, the thought of telling anyone, of making it known to Adam, of all people,
that the one person he hates most in this world—second only to his own father—is the
one other person who can touch me? That Warner has already touched me, that his hands
have known the shape of my body and his lips have known the taste of my mouth—never
mind that it wasn’t something I actually wanted—I just can’t do it.

Not now. Not after everything.

So this situation is entirely my own fault. And I have to deal with it.

I steel myself and step forward.

There are 2 men I’ve never met before standing guard outside Warner’s door. This doesn’t
mean much, but it gives me a modicum of calm. I nod hello in the guards’ direction
and they greet me with such enthusiasm I actually wonder whether they’ve confused
me with someone else.

“Thanks so much for coming,” one of them says to me, his long, shaggy blond hair slipping
into his eyes. “He’s been completely insane since he woke up—throwing things around
and trying to destroy the walls—he’s been threatening to kill all of us. He says you’re
the only one he wants to talk to, and he’s only just calmed down because we told him
you were on your way.”

“We had to take out all the furniture,” the other guard adds, his brown eyes wide,
incredulous. “He was breaking
everything
. He wouldn’t even eat the food we gave him.”

The antonym of excellent.

The antonym of excellent.

The antonym of excellent.

I manage a feeble smile and tell them I’ll see what I can do to sedate him. They nod,
eager to believe I’m capable of something I know I’m not and they unlock the door.
“Just knock to let us know when you’re ready to leave,” they tell me. “Call for us
and we’ll open the door.”

I’m nodding yes and sure and of course and trying to ignore the fact that I’m more
nervous right now than I was meeting his father. To be alone in a room with Warner—to
be alone with him and to not know what he might do or what he’s capable of and I’m
so confused, because I don’t even know who he is anymore.

He’s 100 different people.

He’s the person who forced me to torture a toddler against my will. He’s the child
so terrorized, so psychologically tormented that he’d try to kill his own father in
his sleep. He’s the boy who shot a defecting soldier in the forehead; the boy who
was trained to be a cold, heartless murderer by a man he thought he could trust. I
see Warner as a child desperately seeking his dad’s approval. I see him as the leader
of an entire sector, eager to conquer me, to use me. I see him feeding a stray dog.
I see him torturing Adam almost to death. And then I hear him telling me he loves
me, feel him
kissing
me with such unexpected passion and desperation that I don’t know I don’t know I
don’t know what I’m walking into.

I don’t know who he’ll be this time. Which side of himself he’ll show me today.

But then I think this must be different. Because he’s in my territory now, and I can
always call for help if something goes wrong.

He’s not going to hurt me.

I hope.

I step inside.

The door slams shut behind me but the Warner I find inside this room is not one I
recognize at all. He’s sitting on the floor, back against the wall, legs outstretched
in front of him, feet crossed at the ankles. He’s wearing nothing but socks, a simple
white T-shirt, and a pair of black slacks. His coat, his shoes, and his fancy shirt
are all discarded on the ground. His body is toned and muscular and hardly contained
by his undershirt; his hair is a blond mess, disheveled for what’s probably the first
time in his life.

But he’s not looking at me. He doesn’t even look up as I take a step closer. He doesn’t
flinch.

I’ve forgotten how to breathe again.

Then

“Do you have any idea,” he says, so quietly, “how many times I’ve read this?” He lifts
his hand but not his head and holds up a small, faded rectangle between 2 fingers.

And I’m wondering how it’s possible to be punched in the gut by so many fists at the
same time.

My notebook.

He’s holding my notebook.

Of course he is.

I can’t believe I’d forgotten. He was the last person to touch my notebook; the last
person to see it. He took it from me when he found that I’d hidden it in the pocket
of my dress back on base. This was just before I escaped, just before Adam and I jumped
out the window and ran away. Just before Warner realized he could touch me.

And now, to know that he’s read my most painful thoughts, my most anguished confessions—the
things I wrote while in complete and utter isolation, certain that I would die in
that very cell, so certain no one would ever read the things I wrote down—to know
that he’s read these desperate whispers of my private mind.

I feel absolutely, unbearably naked.

Petrified.

So vulnerable.

He flips the notebook open at random. Scans the page until he stops. He finally looks
up, his eyes sharper, brighter, a more beautiful shade of green than they’ve ever
been and my heart is beating so fast I can’t even feel it anymore.

And he begins to read.

“No—,” I gasp, but it’s too late.

“
I sit here every day
,” he says.
“175 days I’ve sat here so far. Some days I stand up and stretch and feel these stiff
bones, these creaky joints, this trampled spirit cramped inside my being. I roll my
shoulders, I blink my eyes, I count the seconds creeping up the walls, the minutes
shivering under my skin, the breaths I have to remember to take. Sometimes I allow
my mouth to drop open, just a little bit; I touch my tongue to the backs of my teeth
and the seam of my lips and I walk around this small space, I trail my fingers along
the cracks in the concrete and wonder, I wonder what it would be like to speak out
loud and be heard. I hold my breath, listen closely for anything, any sound of life
and wonder at the beauty, the impossibility of possibly hearing another person breathing
beside me.
”

He presses the back of his fist to his mouth for just a moment before continuing.

“
I stop. I stand still. I close my eyes and try to remember a world beyond these walls.
I wonder what it would be like to know that I’m not dreaming, that this isolated existence
is not caged within my own mind.

“
And I do
,” he says, reciting the words from memory now, his head resting back against the
wall, eyes pressed shut as he whispers, “
I do wonder, I think about it all the time. What it would be like to kill myself.
Because I never really know, I still can’t tell the difference, I’m never quite certain
whether or not I’m actually alive. So I sit here. I sit here every single day.
”

I’m rooted to the ground, frozen in my own skin, unable to move forward or backward
for fear of waking up and realizing that this is actually happening. I feel like I
might die of embarrassment, of this invasion of privacy, and I want to run and run
and run and run and run