Sirens.

You think you hear an ambulance, such a familiar noise. You want it to come closer. You want it to come just a tiny bit closer.

You're almost there.

You're much older. You look like you're in your mid twenties if you had to guess. It's not the facial hair that you've grown that catches your attention—or the glasses you've grown accustomed to wearing after your vision started to go bad—a condition you inherited from your father no doubt, but it's instead a tiny speckle of dried drool that runs down your lip off of your lip. Drool that sputtered up when you were dying. and now remains on your body after the horrible fact.

Devon Campton it'll read on the autopsy. Yours won't be the only one filed, not even close. Bonnie & Noah Marshall, Dante Ramsey, Craig Portsmouth, Sherry Chimes, plus several others whom you never met.

You remember.

March 18th, 1997. It was a nice breezy morning, you woke up feeling particularly energized.

Alex was gone.

You two had a falling out almost ten years ago—not long after your last memory at the mansion. She lasted another four months before breaking down and leaving the family. You tried to reason with her, but she just wouldn't listen.

You remember getting angry.

Really angry.

You tried calling her every day. Nobody ever answered. You couldn’t leave to look for her. You loved him. She left. You loved her.

It was an impossible choice then, to leave or to stay. You're sickened by that knowledge, knowing how stupid everything sounds, and yet you still made it. How could it have gotten so messed up? Time begins to rewind, the drool on your lips begins to re-salivate and slowly climb up back into your mouth and the life returns to your eyes. You float back up to your feet like a street performer and reach for your stomach and then throat as you begin to spit up the pills you'd downed in ritual to Noah Marshall. You move your arm to your eyes and then away as your tears are sucked from your sleeve up your cheeks and back where they began. It all goes backwards until the phone comes out—everything resumes when you press the dial button.

The phone begins ringing, you're alone in your bedroom in the lofty mansion—long upgraded from the shared room of years past. You're sweating profusely and pacing around with the large phone craned in the small of your neck, pressed up against your ear.

“At the beep please leave your name--” the automated voice calls out.

“Fuck! Alex you stupid cunt answer your goddamn phone!” You call out, breathing hard. “I'm sorry, look, I'm sorry for what I just said, but you need to answer. I know it's been a long time since we talked but you need to pick up your goddamn phone.”

There is silence as you reach your desk on the end of the room, lying on top are three pills of varying shapes and sizes. “Listen, if you won't pick up, which I know you will eventually, then I'm gonna start getting mad. I really fucking hate it when you ignore me. Gosh, I'm so sick of you when you do this, you know?!”

“No no no no no,” you say to yourself, putting the phone away from your ear. “Gosh, I'm sorry. Alex I'm so fucked up and I'm in too deep. I don't know what to do. Is that what you want me to say? Do you want me to beg? I beg you to pick up your goddamn phone because I need to talk to you! If you don't then all of this will be your fault.”

A bell rings off in the distance, once, twice, three times. You look off through your window to the balcony in the center of the courtyard. Bonnie's figure is silhouetted by the moonlight behind her as she rings the bell. This was the signal that Noah had prepared for the beginning of their ritual. Once the bell had rung three times each of them would—from their own quarters—ingest the three separate pills and supposedly move on to the next life. “This is all your fault, you fucking cunt. I did everything for you, and you threw it all away like it was nothing. After all of this I kept your present to me—you know the one. Consider this the end, I'm through. Fuck you.”

With that you toss the phone at the wall. It smashes against it and falls to the floor in two pieces. You realize the blue crystal is nowhere to be seen, so you must have been true to your word that it had been gotten rid of, but you're curious to where it went. You wipe the tears from your eyes and snatch up the three pills in your hand and swallow them whole. You remember the seizures, the spasms. You remember how much it hurt and what it felt like to die. And then you woke up.

Cross stands in front of you unmoving, watching your every move. Behind him is a giant wall with many markings that are unfamiliar to you. They're carved into the wall and glow with a bright blue light. You look like you're in some sort of cavern with a ceiling that doesn't seem to end.

“Welcome back.”

“There's too much,” you begin, “too much to even say. I'm sorry.”

He cocks his head, “You're apologizing to them? I guess that's nice enough, I doubt they forgive you, but it's nice.”

“I'm Devon,” you say, coming to terms with it.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“That does seem to be your name, the one called Alex confirms it as fact,” he says, a tone almost cordial.

Almost.

“I brought you—Alex that is—into that mess. I raped you. I pushed you away, and I blamed my death on you,” you say, it coming together like a giant puzzle. Pieces remained shrouded in mystery, but you're starting to see the bigger picture.

“You're getting there,” he says.

“Why is this happening? Why is all of this happening?” You say, your voice breaking. “I don't want to be here, I just want to die,” you say, expecting tears, but none come. “I'm sorry. I can't say I didn't do it because I remember it. I remember feeling what I felt when I did it. I'm sorry,” your head falls, but you realize your entire body is restrained in a position not unfit for a crucifixion.

“You asked me earlier if I wanted to make you cry—to break you if I recall your exact words,” he says, pacing to your right. “No, that isn't my purpose, but I can say it's a very big motivation for Alex. Me? I'm not so emotionally attached. Although we do go great together, her determination and my strength,” he says.

“Her...that's the first time you said her.”

“Ah, yes. I'm getting privy to the memories that you were just shown—they're kept secret from me normally, something I don't fully understand, however. But I must say, you are a fine piece of work, and to have a creature such as you in the body of a supposed hero of this world is almost too sweet to not frame in a picture...which is subsequently why you're hanging here now.”

You feel useless as your body refuses to move even a single muscle.

“Don't even bother. You're being restrained by Arc Light restraints. Strongest in the galaxy, only the best for my prize shot.”

“Why don't you just kill me? Let her take over and kill me and be done with it?!” You scream, louder than you intended.

He walks up right to your face, “Because, Devon. I don't ever want to be done with it,” his eyes glow a dark shade of red.

“What happened to you,” you say, not wholly a question.

“I think residing with me has something to do with that,” he pulls back, “The fact that I have dominant control suggests that the others within us control a factor of our personality and emotion—them being her outbursts and your sudden morality.”

“You think Roland is still inside of me?” You ask.

“It makes the most sense out of anything I've seen today. Those with the stronger will take dominant control, while the other inside controls their emotions, morality, general personality. So somewhere inside you Mr. Duschand still waits, he just doesn't seem to be as willing to talk.”

Your sudden morality. It hurts to come to terms with the fact, but what he's saying does make a sort of sense. Knowing the things you did and the justifications you made for them, it could only be now that you're listening to someone else's morality that you see things so differently.

“I have many things in store I need to take care of before I plan to have more fun with you, so I'm going to be taking my leave,” he says, you don't care to respond back. “However, before I go, I do want to introduce you to a friend that's been listening to our whole conversation,” he says as he takes out a tablet and holds it right in front of your face, pressing a button on the side that holds it in place in the air. The screen turns on and suspended just like you are is Piscar, he's beaten and bloodied, but you can see his chest rising up and down ever so faintly. “Enjoy,” Cross says before jetting upwards through the darkness. You lose track of him after a few seconds.

Piscar's alive. Good. You don't know where either of you are, bad. You're both restrained with no visible way to escape, bad. You're still alive, still debating. “Hey, can you hear me?” You figure you might as well give it a shot. If he could hear you as Cross had claimed then maybe he could help you come up with something. Granted, if he could come up with something to get out, he probably would have been able to get out before you even entered, but maybe there's something the both of you can do—anything to keep your mind busy and away from your guilt. Anything to save hope. You have to believe that there's a reason that you woke up inside Roland Duschand, that you were given a second chance. You have to cling to it with all of your life, or at least what's left of it.

“You're the one who saved the Capitol,” a voice so quiet that under normal background noise you wouldn't have heard it.

“It's good to see you breathing, sir,” you say.

He chuckles, you can see the glimmer of his teeth shine as he slowly picks up his head. You can see he's missing an eye, blood had dried down the left side of his face where it once streamed. “It's half good to see you, but not so much in this context.”

“Maybe not, but I still think we can find a way out,” you say.

“We're not getting out, not with these Arc Lights. Think of them like magnets, with our waves as specifically coded magnetic material.”

Shit.

“O-Okay, well, Jesse and the rest of the team I came with will find us...wherever we are, and they'll find some way to get these things off of us, right?”

“Are you trying to reassure me or yourself?”

“Both?”

Another chuckle. “Even if they found us they wouldn't be able to unlock these things. There's a reason they're banned throughout the galaxy. They're not cheap, either, so Cross must really intend to keep us here as his portraits. What for, escapes me.”

“Aside from being just like, evil?” You say.

“Well, I figure that's how he was able to muster up the willpower to do it—maybe even that friend of yours inside of him?” You wince.

“What I want to know is why. He must have some plan up his sleeve, maybe-” The screen flutters with static, cutting out the audio. Cross flies down and hovers just in front of Piscar, making sure to look back at the screen, the eyes flash once before he turns back around. He raises his right arm, you can see golden marks line his body, marks you recognize from the very same power armor you're wearing. The walls around them begin to shine, the carved letters on the wall in front of you begin to glow with the very same light. The lights fill the screen in front of you. Piscar's scream is cut off before the lights fade.

Cross is the only one left standing in the room. Piscar's restraints have fallen to the ground, and he looks back to the screen just before it cuts out—he must have smashed it. You're left to your lonesome wondering if Piscar's still alive. You hope that was just some fancy teleporter, but something in your heart tells you that probably isn't the case.

Your head drops and you close your eyes.