CHAPTER 3: WRAITH

A lot of time and a lot of nothing had happened since I had blacked out and woken up in this place.

The days had begun to blur and I know that term is overused, but believe me even darkvision doesn’t help with keeping track of time when you are in a lightless cell underground. If it hadn’t been for the routine, I would have lost my mind and likely never slept. Not that I slept well, everytime I shut my eyes, the helplessness of the night I changed and became this monster returned.

As far as I could discern, I had been down here for at least a week since I first woke up. Maybe longer for all I knew. Every ‘morning’ a short pulse of piercing sound would wake me, its circuit going dead before I could open my eyes. 

Then, I would shake off the torn remains of that night’s thin blanket, my spikes having shredded it in my disturbed sleep. After a count of about three hundred mississippi's an ancient dumbwaiter system built into the cell wall, with an opening smaller than a phonebook would be used to lower a meal down to me. 

After returning my empty tray to the dumbwaiter, I had about six hundred mississippi's to go to the toilet, use the cell’s cold shower and dress in the jail’s blue baggy jumpsuit.

 I would sense the circuit for the cell’s intercom come alive moments before it even made a sound, then my interrogation would start. The guards were too afraid to be on the same floor as a monster like me, let alone in the same room.

I usually lost track of time at this point, it was hard to keep count, while not answering the same questions over and over. Eventually they would give up and I was left alone, bored for what must be hours until my evening meal and a fresh blanket was lowered in. After again returning my tray I would try to sleep. 

I’d been left to stew in my misery with nothing to do and frankly speaking, I was bored out of my mind. My cell had no books, not tv and not even so much as a rubber ball for bouncing, nothing to keep me entertained. If I weren’t contemplating banging my head against the wall for entertainment, I’d probably be impressed by the lengths they were going to prevent me from having anything that might help me escape. 

That included light, electricity and heating. My blackout had them scared, hell it had me scared. I didn’t want to repeat that, I didn’t want to possibly hurt people or feel that consuming emptiness.

Which was why I had an entire night dark floor to myself and the only circuit they left on, was an extremely low voltage emergency strip light along the corridor outside, with only enough light to be visible but not illuminate anything. And no cameras.

In my boredom I had explored every inch of my cell and I guess I could be thankful it wasn’t too small at 7 paces from the door to the back of the cell and another seven paces across. 

The dumbwaiter and its small opening was at the rear of the cell, near a bolted down metal table and chair. Set in the wall just above the table was the dreaded intercom and in the opposite corner was a curtainless, no privacy, shower, toilet and sink. The bolted down frame and thin mattress of my bed lay against the same wall as my desk, thankfully as far as possible from the lidless toilet.

I knew this underground floor was fairly large from the echo of my voice and I was sure there must be other cells, but they were empty. The only noises down here were me, the intercom and the occasional squeak of a rat. They weren’t very social.

In my attempts to fill my time down here, I’d learnt the stone walls made for great acoustics and like a shower, there was an allure. On the night I changed I had noted my new voice had a very pure singsong quality and I loved it. Starting at first with single scale exercises, then graduating to any songs I could remember the worlds for, I began to sing.

At first I began singly merely to keep myself sane in this mind numbing isolation, but like I really liked my new voice and singing really grew on me. I enjoyed hearing the notes my voice could reach and before long I had run out of songs I knew the lyrics for and had begun crafting my own. 

I’m sure this became yet another reason for the guards to avoid this floor and they were probably talking about the creepy girl singing in the darkness. Yup that’s me. But anyway, back to my morning routine.

I was again counting to six hundred mississippi's while I showered and dressed, reaching two five hundred and seventy two as I sipped up the front of my jumpsuit and the intercom buzzed to life. “Wraith, it is question time again, I hope you will finally see things our way and cooperate,” the distorted voice of my interrogator had returned. 

Since I’d first woken up in this place they had called me Wraith in the absence of any means to identify me without my cooperation and grudgingly I had to admit it sort of fit me.

“Wraith, you have been charged as an accessory to the murder of several civilians and a police officer, as well as the assault of multiple individuals including two more officers through the use of your powers. Witnesses place you at the scene of the crime and state you knew the main suspect Jakob Adler by name. If you don’t cooperate with our questioning, who knows what might happen, maybe someone might forget about you, forget to send you meals…”

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The voice let the threat hang in the air, waiting for me to respond. I doubted they would go through with it, but also I was isolated in a dark cell, had not been read my rights, had my phone call or met a lawyer so I decided not to press my luck.

I took a deep breath and considered what I would start with. “I am not an associate of Jakob,” I ardently refuted.

“Nor was I an accomplice. You think I was helping him? I was trying to stop him after he killed that officer. I knew his name because my foster parents are customers of his, he deals weapons and drugs in my neighbourhood.”

“What you said matches what we have on his rap sheet. It seems you do know him, but I doubt your story was truthful. But… Tell you what, how about you give me your name and I’ll actually go look into validity of your tale and see if we can drop those accessory charges,” the intercom mangled his good cop attempt, but I was willing to play along, I didn’t really see any harm in giving him my name.

“My name is John Doe Smith, I am seventeen and from Görwood,” I had barely finished speaking when my interrogator interjected.

“John Doe Smith? Think you’re being funny do ya? Or that I would fall for such an obviously fake name? If you’re not going to cooperate you can stay down there in the dark where you belong forever, you fucking creepy monster.”

The intercom and it’s circuit went dead and I found myself again in darkness.

Stupid! Stupid, stupid stupid… We’re both stupid. Arrrghhhhhh! 

I forgot how ridiculous my state given name is. Sure it sounds like a fake name, but that asshole didn’t even given me any fucking benefit of the doubt or a chance to explain myself. Fuck!

I banged my head on the cold steel table and took a deep breath, followed by another and another until I felt the anger cool.

...He might still check and if he doesn’t, is it that so bad?

“Look at the upside Wraith, you always hated that name for more reasons than you can count, Wraith is hardly a worse name and it means you can make this a clean break. A clean break from John Doe Smith, from the Andersons, from Adler and every other shitty thing in your past,” I reasoned with myself.

Dropping the subject before I trapped myself into fixating on it, I took a drink from the sink’s faucet and prepared myself for another round of singing. 

My cell’s silence wasn’t interrupted by me starting to sing, but instead the sound of thumping, crying and screaming from what must be a cell in the floor above me. Listening carefully I could just make out a voice, a girl I thought, but I couldn’t tell anything more about her from it. 

The occasional words breached the concrete ceiling and she seemed to be repeating herself, so over time I started to piece together what she was saying.

“Let me out! ...don’t belong ...re! I want... mum! She... ... looking... me!” I could feel myself growing increasingly agitated and concerned. I wanted to comfort her but I couldn’t and for the first time since I was placed down here, I began to feel trapped.

To an extent I had been content to sit down here content, safe from and to the outside world, aside from the boredom I had everything I needed to survive down here. But now? Now for the first time since I was placed down here, there was something wanted to do beyond the concrete walls, that I wanted to do. 

That feeling of instinct from the night I changed returned and I wasn’t sure why, but I knew I needed to let myself do what it wanted. Sensing what it wanted,  I let myself raise my arm and pointed the palm of my hand at the corner of the stone ceiling. A started yelped as a ball of darkness shot out of my hand and a wave of a fatigue washed over me.

Tiny bits of concrete were raining down on my table, creating small pings that rang out as they landed on the metallic surface. The girl had gone silent. The ball of darkness had blasted a small hole in the ceiling’s corner the size of my fist. I found myself stepping onto the chair and climbing up onto the table. I looked up through the hole and a young girl stared back.

The girl had to be around her mid teens and her hair was black, dyed if her brunette roots were telling the truth. She wore the remnants of what looked like alternative makeup, the ruined remains of dark green lipstick and smokey eye liner were still visible. The girl had brown eyes, but they were bloodshot and swollen from crying.

I realised I was staring and I felt my cheeks grow hot. Awkward...

“Sorry about the hole… My name is Wraith, I wanted to talk to you… Did you want to talk?” I honestly prayed that my appearance wouldn’t scare her. She dragged the course sleeve of her jumpsuit across her eyes and sniffed.

“I want my parents... I want Kalia… I miss them… I don’t know why I’m here... “  A look of horror took over her face.

“They were fighting! I died… I died! The morgue! I woke up… They took me!”

The girl was obviously distressed and what she was saying was unbelievable, but no more so than what I had been through. She’d died? Hell, she might actually have it worse than me and that’s saying something.

“You look like you need a friend. They call me Wraith, can I hold your hand?” I gave her my best attempt at a comforting smile and watched as she choked back a sob and nodded.

“My name is Kelly… Kelly Newhall…” 

I stretched up and carefully inserted my hand up into the hole, slowly wiggling it to keep my forearm’s spike from catching on the rock. As my hand entered her cell, she grasped it and with my thumb, I soothingly stroked the back of hand. 

A hug was impossible and I didn’t have much experience with them, but I tried to get the feelings across. I think they got through to her.

We silently held that embrace for as long as I could stand before we finally let go. I then sat on my table and stared up at her through the hole where she lay, looking back down at me in the darkness. 

We talked for hours. About my parents, being kicked out of home and everything since and she told me about back home, her family, the kids she hung out with, about the Emergence and her friend Kalia. 

Eventually I heard the dumbwaiter lowering my evening meal and I warned her to hide the hole before the guard’s bringing her meal noticed it. Before covering it with a spare jumpsuit, Kelly flashed me the first beautiful smile I had seen grace her face and whispered one word.

“Thanks.”