Efferent

Chapter 25

The first to person to breach the barrier of trees that surrounded us hardly had enough time to view us, standing openly in the center before he was grabbed roughly around the neck and tossed quickly to the side. He fell slumped against the wooden tangle of branches serving as our wall, unmoving.

"Who is it?" Clark asked, panic shaping his wordy into breathy syllables. "Who was following us?"

Blaise grit his teeth, a muscle twitching in his jaw as he pushed Amelia behind him, to block her gaze from viewing the body. "I do not know," He spat out, "The traitor killed him too fast for me to identify him."

But I knew. My eyes were glued to his unseeing ones, pointed directly at me, I was sure. He was young, younger than I, and most likely too young to even know his percentage. He probably had not had his first reading, had not even finished schooling.

And now he was dead.

"Afferent," I breathed out, "He was Afferent." Upon hearing my shaky voice, Clark, with even as tired as he was, tried to shelter my view from the dead body gazing at me from the corner.

"You beast!" Clark raged, although his face grew paler with each word and he leaned heavily on my hold, "You monster! Have you no morals? He could have been innocent!"

"He was innocent," I interjected, a sob choking my words. "He does not have control over his own actions, his own words-." Another Afferent followed suit, as Travis blatantly ignored our pleas, as we were too tired, too weak to take a stand against his violent offense. All I could do was watch.

"Ardyn, stop." Clark wrapped his arm around my shoulder to turn me away from my gazing, my eyes unblinkingly staring from the body and then back to his face. "You will only make it worse for yourself, later."

"Stop," I repeated, stealing Clark's words in a whisper before raising my volume "Travis, stop!" My volume grew with the roaring level of panic that swelled in my chest as I repeated it over and over, "Stop, Travis, stop!" But his control had long since left, Clark was too weak to stop him, and the damage had been wrought.

Then each met their end, in varying ways. The branches would strike at the oncoming waves of mindless soldiers and come away bloody, or they would fall to the ground, limp where they were once ordered to stand strong.

Amelia clutched at her ears, her eyelids shut although they fluttered behind their sheltered darkness. Blaise watched, silently standing behind her. "Stop, Travis," I called out, pleading. "No more, please."

"No more?" He scoffed. "There are no more, now." His eyes had sunken in, dark circles appearing beneath and only added to his sinister look. I looked up, eye watery, unable to travel directly to his gaze for they caught on too many gruesome sights along the way.

"Too far," I whispered, "You took it too far."

"And?" he turned on his heel away from me, unveiling the clearing from its tangled wrap of trees, restoring them to their original state. "You can punish me fittingly when your powers are restored."

I grabbed Amelia's had in my own, trying to fill my body with a comforting conviction, yet I hesitated, releasing the last of my agitated thoughts and guilt onto his shoulders. "I can not punish you worse than your own conscience will. You will see, and you will live to regret your actions."

I walked through the first opening I could see, Amelia, Blaise, and Clark trailing behind in a daze. I lead them past the still bodies, and kept walking long past twilight, before I deemed it far enough away from the massacre for us to rest.

Travis filtered through soon after, silent and brooding, although he created another border around us for the night. "How much longer," I asked him once we were all settled, "Until we reach the facility with Walter's formula?"

"A day, with rest." He paused, "It would have been less, had you all not over extended your reach." I scoffed and we fell silent, and he lit a small fire. "I won't you know," He whispered, after Clark had collapsed onto the cool ground, Amelia and Blaise upon the limited towels and huddled close behind.

"What? Regret your actions?" I grit out, gazing at a small fire in front of me instead of meeting his eye.

"Live to regret them." He clarified, then fell silent. He inhaled sharply, and sat down closely to me, eyeing the others sleeping across the flames. "They took that away from me when they took my Efference."

"Is that true?" I inquired wearily, "I am unable to discern fact from fallacy when you are concerned. I think it is much safer for me to distrust you than to accept your word as gospel."

"Why would I lie?" He rested his chin on his knee. "When I took the percentage test, I received a nine. Not because I was not smart." He glanced over at me. "I could do any equation, solve any problem the instructors could put in front of me."

I quirked my eyebrows, intrigued. "Go on," I insisted, "Tell me your story."

"What most people tend to forget is that brain function is not limited to intelligence level." Travis stretched out his hand in front of us, flexing each of his fingers, tightly closing it into a fist and then releasing it. "It also determines physical ability. Movement, speech patterns, muscle development, the body's innermost workings and communications."

"And?" I turned to face him, eyes completely focused on his demeanor. He froze, inhaling sharply.

"I was paralyzed, from the neck down. I had been in an accident, lost all mobile function." I stiffened, but he continued. "I was smart, wicked smart. But no matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I fought, or thought, I couldn't feel a thing."

"Until the injection..." I added, he nodded, stretching out his legs and I fell back in awe. "How long had you been paralyzed?"

"Years." He offered simply. "And when Katherine took it away, she slowly but surely killed me." He glanced up, fire burning in his eyes, despite his frozen expression. "Because with each passing day, Ardyn it gets harder to move, to control my body's responses."

I clutched at the wet ground as he built up to his final sentence, his main point. "And with each passing day, I am that much closer to realizing that I can not go back and live as I once did, immobile and at the will of strangers." He pursed his lips, and nodded once, firmly. "I would much rather die."