The Freaks

chapter twenty-eight

"This doesn't make any sense," I say to Brianna for what feels like the thousandth time, my mind still whirling from everything that happened.

She keeps a safe distance from me, her boots splashing in the water as she shifts from foot to foot. "Why doesn't it?" she asks in her normal British accent, tearing off a strip of her uniform to wrap around a wound on her arm. "I'm a Freak, I've been one since I was twelve." She winces when she pulls the material even tighter. "Why don't you get it, Jackson?"

"My name's not Jackson," I snap, the words scraping harshly against my dry throat.

"Fine!" She scoffs and crosses her arms over her chest. "What is your real name?"

I shake my head slowly, looking down at the ground as I say, "It doesn't matter anymore. The person who I was before no longer exists."

I bury my hands in my hair, red still present in my eyes. It's not as intense as it was only a couple of minutes ago, but it's still there. I still feel the anger coursing through me, the fire and lightning ready at my fingertips if need be. If Brianna tries anything funny.

"So why don't you get it then?" she repeats, impatience lining her tone.

"Because you've killed Freaks." My voice is one volume away from shouting. "You shot that boy in the head back at the office block, and I don't even want to know how many others you've probably killed."

Brianna looks down at the floor, sighing softly before raising her gaze to mine again. "Listen," she says calmingly, shaking her head at me slowly. "I did what I had to do to survive in a world filled with people trying to kill me. It wasn't easy. When I saw my opportunity to pretend to be a Soldier, I took it." She looks down but doesn't take another step forward. "It's what I had to do. Surviving isn't as simple as staying alive, you know."

"No, it wasn't what you had to do," I reply. "You didn't have to kill them, Brianna—if that's even your real name."

"It is," she replies quietly. Then her eyebrows furrow as hisses through gritted teeth, "And what about you, huh?"

I stare blankly at her, not able to respond.

She does take a step forward this time, like she has a death wish. "What were you doing here, playing a Soldier?"

I would take a step back if there wasn't a wall behind me. "Saving the Freaks!" I shout, the red getting brighter. "I would bring the endangered Freaks to safety to protect them from them." I point to the now-dead bodies around me, some charred, some drowned from the amount of water, some poisoned from the smoke. All caused by me.

Brianna laughs, like this is some kind of joke. "Well, I guess all of that was for nothing then." She shakes her head and spreads her arms out wide. "Look around you, mate. Look at all of this bloody mess you made."

I do as she says. All of the walls and floor are black, burned and ruined forever. The fire and lightning I produced caused a catastrophe beyond words. The Soldiers are all now dead, by the smoke or whatever else, including Nox—a friend that trusted me from the start of the mission.

"I killed all of them," I say quietly, not wanting to hear my voice any louder. "Every single one."

"Not all," Brianna says, looking at me and not the Soldiers. "I saw a handful of them run out of the building before you burned down the whole place."

My heart drops at the fact that there are some left alive. I feel worse knowing that they survived, because I want them all to be dead so they won't cause us any more pain. I look around at the bodies once more, feeling an odd sense of detachment from the whole situation.