The Gamma's Dark Witch

25 - Aftermath

(Cam)

She was released from the hospital that night. I dealt with the aftermath, which was mostly just minor repairs. I was a bit smug that my backup plan worked. I didn't actually believe there would be an attack, but finally, my over-precautions paid off, and Jackson and Isla were anything but immensely grateful.

That's not why I did it, But still; it helped that, for once, they didn't think I was overplanning and finally saw the merit of the other plans and protection I put in place.

Nisha sat in front of me, back to her usual confident and steady self, seeming to forget that last night she was unconscious. Actually, after she woke up for good, she didn't mention the fact that she practically saved my life again. I bet she was storing it for another time to use against me.

Or maybe it's because she wanted to save you because she feels the bond. Or maybe she's just a d.amn decent person - Axel growled

I shook my head to get him away. “Can you contact them?” I asked her.

“No.” She looked down at her open hands. Her shoulders sagged slightly. “I have never been apart from them when I found them until the time I came back here on my own.”

“Do you know where they would have gone to?”

“I don’t, we follow, we follow a purpose.” Her brows bunched. “Sometimes we stay for weeks, sometimes days. I have rarely been to the same place twice.”

“You must have seen a lot of this world,” I murmured without thinking.

She shrugged. “I guess. I haven’t got to appreciate much of it, though. Many of the places we’ve been have been secluded. I’ve never seen a city in person. Every time I catch a glimpse of this world, what I see on TV or movies, I feel like I’m from another time.”

“It’s hard to blend in when you..” Look like that. Ethereal, unearthly beauty.

“Look like a monster.” She finished for me, and I frowned, shaking my head. I needed to get back to the conversation. She was doing something to me.

“Those… markers. You said you’ve seen them before? That you’ve often stopped by them when they’re near.”

“Yes, they’re an indication that we are safe there.”

“Everywhere you go has one?”

“No.” She shook her head.

“How do you know where to find them?

Her starry brows tugged together. “Soleil knows where they are. I think she seeks them sometimes, whether it's on our travels or near where we stay. I don’t know. I can’t sense them until we are near. I’ve never tried.”

“I need you to write down every place you’ve seen one of those... Markers.”

She glanced up at me, and her hair shifted weightlessly over her shoulder. My breath caught, but I ignored it. “I don’t know exactly where they were. I just started mapping out my surroundings,”

“Anything you can remember about them. The weather, surroundings outside the clearings.” I was desperate to make sense of it, there had to be a pattern, and things were rarely random. Not something as big as this.

Once I could assess some semblance of a pattern, then we could figure out what it meant and where we could find Soleil. And what all of this meant. That question tugged at me after seeing that charred clearing. I could smell that strangely sweet ash as it clung in clumps to my boots.

“Do you know where they went?” I asked her again. Her star-flecked eyes met mine and she shook her head as if she was annoyed I even asked. “We need to find them or any others like you. We need answers.”

(Nisha)

“Answers to what? I know what question I’m asking, but what are you?”

What was I made for, who made me, what Soleil was really looking for the other night, what my purpose is, if my sisters knew that we were created from something else, if we were safe if they were safe.

“For some sort of clarity. I need to know what she wants so that I can assess her motives. Why would she be after the babies? What would she need them for?”

“I don’t think she was..” I started.

“Whatever her motives go against mine,” he snapped, his eyes cold. “I don’t trust Soleil. I haven’t from the moment I met her. I know she was the one who tried to break into their nursery, and we have a front door with a d.amned doorbell. She wasn’t paying them a visit.”

I knew it was her too, I saw the grainy picture on the camera, and even through that, I sensed her, my mentor, the closest family I had in this void that was life. But I didn’t know what that meant. If she wasn’t being honest with me, if she wasn’t protecting the babies, then what else was false?

"I Feel as if I accept any of it to be false, then it all has to be, and I don’t-” My voice broke, and I took a steadying breath. “I don’t know if I could handle that."

"But-" he started.

I pinned him with what I hoped was an icy stare. "Could you handle it if Jackson turned out to be someone else? If he wasn’t the good guy, you thought he was?” I asked.

“But he is,” Cam almost growled back.

“But what if he wasn’t?” I countered.

“I grew up with him-”

“I grew up with her.” I jutted my chin holding his gaze. He opened his mouth to say something but didn’t.

After a long while, he said, “I’m sorry.”