Chapter Six.
"You can"t just leave her to die, Riley. You can"t just leave her to die."
When Riley heard the voice, spoken from somewhere in the darkness right ahead of him, he felt his muscles slacken and his stomach turn. The hairs on the back of his neck stood right up. The main reason they stood up was because he knew who spoke them. And he knew where this was leading, just like it always led.
He tried to struggle free of the darkness that surrounded him, but he was trapped, like he was locked in a cell of his own making.
"You can"t fail us."
He tried to speak, to protest, but his lips wouldn"t open. In fact, it felt like he didn"t even have any lips at all, which was the cruellest thing, because there was so much he wanted to say, so many things he wanted to get off his chest.
"You"ve failed us, Riley. Just like you always fail."
"No," Riley said. And this time, the words came out. "I-"
"You failed us. Unless you do what you have to do."
It was at that point that a light burst through the total darkness.
It was then that the figures speaking to him emerged from the blackness and into the light.
Jordanna was standing opposite him. Her dark hair hung down onto her shoulders. It looked greasy. Her skin looked pale. Much paler than Riley remembered.
But as she edged closer, Riley realised why she looked so pale.
There was a blade wedged right through her torso.
Blood was still dripping down into the unknown blackness below.
"Jordanna, please-"
"You made a promise. A promise to me. A promise to Chlo. A promise to yourself."
"I want to get Kesha back-"
"Then why aren"t you doing anything about it?"
Riley lowered his head and felt the throes of guilt and the gnawing l.u.s.t for vengeance suffocating him once more. "I"m trying. It"s just-"
"These things take time?"
The second voice came from Jordanna"s left. And it didn"t take a genius for Riley to figure out who it was.
Chlo.
Chlo was in a different state to Jordanna. She had both of her arms, and her head was fully intact. But there was a shadow to her, as well. A memory sparked in Riley"s mind of how she had looked back at him when it"d been impaled on that stake.
A memory that made Riley want to vomit.
"Chlo," Riley said. "I"m sorry."
"Don"t say sorry," she said, walking closer towards him. "I told you to keep Kesha safe."
"I tried. I-"
"You haven"t tried hard enough."
"What the f.u.c.k do you want from me?"
Riley regretted shouting right away. He regretted it because the angrier he got, the more the memories and the guilt of his past resurfaced to the forefront of his consciousness.
He saw Ted dying in front of him.
He saw Anna dying.
He saw Pedro dying.
He saw everyone he"d cared about, dying.
He felt something on his arm then. A light touch.
When he looked up, he saw that Jordanna was opposite him, completely fresh-faced, completely intact, completely alive.
"We"re your family," she said, moving her soft hand up Riley"s arm in a way that he longed for so much.
She looked to her side at Chlo, and Chlo smiled up at Riley, too.
"We just want you to find Kesha. We want you to make Mattius suffer. For what he did."
It was when Chlo said those final three words that Riley saw it happening all over again.
The slicing off of Chlo"s arm.
The slamming of the machete into her skull.
The stabbing of Jordanna.
"Okay," he stuttered. "I"ll do it. I"ll-"
"You owe it to all of us, Riley. Not just to them."
That voice. It was so familiar, yet so distant. Riley hadn"t heard it in a long time. Not in his visions, not at all.
But he knew who it belonged to.
He saw her stepping forward, closer towards him.
Her dark hair.
That ever-present sarcastic smile.
The freckles peppered across her slim face.
"Anna," he said.
She stood in the middle of Jordanna and Chlo. Blood trickled down her face, where the bullet that Chlo had fired way back during the battle of Heathwaite"s had pierced through her skull.
"You owe it to all your family. All of your dead family. Otherwise, it"s on you."
Riley felt the guilt building, then. He felt the l.u.s.t for revenge intensified.
Anna was right.
Chlo was right.
Jordanna was right.
He had to get his revenge on Mattius.
There could be no more waiting around. No more stalling.
He had to get his revenge on- Just then, in the click of a finger, Riley saw fireworks.
Chlo"s head split in two before his eyes.
Blood spurted out of Jordanna"s chest and covered him in blood.
And Anna...
Nothing happened with Anna. She just drifted away. Disappeared, like a ghost returning to wherever she"d come from.
But the further away she got, the less Riley remembered about her. The less he remembered the way her hair fell, the freckles across her face.
He remembered- "Riley!"
He gasped, and jolted upright.
It was pitch black. He was in bed, totally alone. Caked in sweat.
He covered his face with his hands and fell back onto the sheets. Just a dream. Just another dream.
The longer he lay there though, the more certain Riley was that he"d heard someone shout his name and wake him up. It didn"t feel like that"d happened in dream world. It felt like it"d happened in reality. It felt like...
He saw it, then.
The door to his cabin was ajar.
Tapping in the wind.
Riley"s stomach turned. All kinds of possibilities and scenarios ran through his mind. Maybe someone had been here. Maybe the camp had been compromised. Or maybe this was just another torturous dream.
He cleared his dry throat and stood, still a little woozy from the sudden waking up. He walked over to the door, checking his room to make sure it was completely clear.
When he reached the door, he peeked outside into the darkness.
There was something eerie about this place at night. It was just a camp in the middle of the woods at the end of the day. It had fences and gates and people defending them, sure. But it still felt so exposed.
He squinted into the moonlit darkness and didn"t see a thing.
He was about to head back into his room when he saw that the door to the cell area was open.
Riley gritted his teeth together. As an instinct reaction, he reached for his knife.
If he"d been thinking straight, he might"ve sounded an alarm right there and then.
If he"d been in his right mind and hadn"t just woken up, he might have let someone know before walking slowly towards that cell area.
But walk towards it he did.
He crept slowly through the fallen leaves. His breath frosted in the cold air. The more he walked, the more convinced he grew that someone was watching him. Following him, even. Waiting to strike.
He got to the door and he walked even slower, then. He strained and tried to listen for a sound. Again, the possibilities spiralled in his mind. Bob had escaped. He"d got out of here. Someone had let him go.
He eased open the door, taking a final look over his shoulder.
Then he went inside.
He walked slowly into the cell area. It was so dark in here, but he was used to the darkness. His eyes had adapted. One of the perks of the new world.
He walked right towards that last door on the right.
The one where Bob was.
Because that door was completely open.
Riley lifted his knife and held his breath. If he had to defend himself, he would. He wanted Bob alive, sure. But he wanted to survive to save Kesha and get his revenge on Mattius more than anything. That was the most important thing to him.
So he waited a few seconds. Counted down from three.
Then he stepped out and looked into Bob"s cell.
Bob was still there. That was the surprising thing.