10 - Number 072

Black. It is often referred to as a cursed color by the friars, but really it is not a color at all. Black is the lack of color, so why must it be called a color when that is what it is least? Black is the oblivion that cannot be felt with hands or eyes or ears, but only by the soul. When a soul feels blackness, the heart yearns for something it has lost, but cannot get back again. When the soul feels blackness, something deep down, even if the physical mind does not notice, is irreparably broken.

So why do I feel blackness?

I opened my eyes to the darkness. I was sitting on a wooden chair in a dark room with no noise, no movement, no feeling.

There was blackness everywhere.

I didn’t remember losing consciousness, and I didn’t remember how I got to the room, either. The air was moist and my skin was damp, and for some reason it was cold. I hadn’t felt cool air in months, and it brought along with it a tempting nostalgia, but that wasn’t what bothered me. What bothered me was the dripping sound that echoed from somewhere nearby, though I couldn’t locate it using just my ears. I didn’t get out of the chair, either, though I could, as there was not anything physically holding me back. I sat as my eyes fully adjusted to the black, though it didn’t allow any more to really be seen, and waited for something to happen, for someone to save me from my thoughts.

Then I remembered. I remembered Thirré as she said all those things, and Oriole as she brought me back to reality. And where was I now? It certainly didn’t feel like reality, but then I remembered being dragged into the darkness. There was only darkness after that. Only black and the ragged breathing of the collectors as they dragged me away in my vulnerable state. Again, I didn’t struggle. Again, I did nothing as someone was taken away, but this time it wasn’t Lillian.

This time it was me.

I listened as the dripping noise became louder and more constant until it was a pour, then it stopped and there was silence. I didn’t allow fear to work itself anywhere near me, because this was nothing to be feared compared to the night raid. I sat, willing to accept anything fate had for this wrongdoer, but there was just silence and darkness. Eventually, I decided that nothing was going to happen for a very long while if I didn’t do something, so I got up out of the chair I was sitting on, though I couldn’t guarantee it was a chair, and tried inching forward. I tried, but quickly found out that upon standing up, my feet had gone numb, and I stumbled down to my knees. I felt the cold ground through the thin fabric of my pants and shivered.

I felt at the floor, which wasn’t wooden, as most of the Ridge was, and wondered what liquid was dripping seconds before, but my answer came to me as I crawled forward on all-fours and my hand met a familiar icy substance that soothed my mind through contact. I couldn’t see, but I had a creeping suspicion of the matter.

The orange liquid from the field outside Mithle...

But how? All I knew was that it either traveled with me—which was entirely possible—or it was both here and at Mithle.

I remembered the cold but soothing feeling before I went unconscious that fiery night. Any other survivors... would they have been taken to Naihabi Ridge also?

Unless I was the only one.

No, Lillian made it out. I was sure of it. She had to.

The cool liquid slithered up my arm and onto my shoulder, but I lifted my arm and flicked it, sending the gooey liquid splattering back on the floor. I got back to my feet, steadier this time, and felt forward with my foot before stepping. The liquid tried its way up my pant leg, but I flicked my leg and it retreated. Why would this liquid possibly be at Naihabi Ridge? Unless they took me away from the Ridge all together, but that was unlikely.

I stepped forward, then bumped into something and fell back a few feet. I held my breath to preserve the silence in the tension, and reached out with my hand hesitantly. I felt empty, cold air on my fingers, and I dared to move forward again. Nothing. The thing that was there was now gone.

Which meant something other than the liquid was in the room with me.

I shivered, then paused. I was sure I had heard a shuffling noise two seconds before. I swiveled around in all directions, but it didn’t do anything since I’d have been better off blind in this darkness. I stopped, my breathing heavy, and heard the shuffle again. I think I accepted that I was at least a little bit frightened at that point, so I didn’t really understand why hearing a monotonous voice didn’t seem all that surprising in that moment.

“Number 072. Consciousness confirmed.”

The silence was broken, and I was full-on ready to get my heart rate down.

“What do you want with me?” I yelled into the abyss. “What have you been doing with the rest of the people at Naihabi Ridge?”

Silence. I felt the liquid squirming up my leg, but I didn’t care. The silence dragged on, and then, “Affirmative.”

A loud shuffling followed, and then a deafening squeal hit my ears. It must have been so high a frequency that no one else could hear it, because I had been past the summoning building before and never heard it. I crumpled to the ground, pressing on both of my ears to block out the screech, but it proved futile.

“Audibility: ninety-eighth percentile.”

The sound stopped and I gasped, removing my hands from my ears. I felt a hot liquid on my palms and in my ears and my eyes widened. How much hearing had I lost just then?

Before I could process my thoughts, I felt a prick on my arm. I went to feel what it was, but my arm went numb and a tingling feeling spread throughout my body. I felt my arm while I could and yanked a circular needle-type thing out of it. I tried to throw it as far as I could, but my arm was losing its feeling and I only tossed it about five feet based on the weak clanking sound that followed, then my legs started going numb from my knees down, and I fell limp to the ground.

Paralysis?

I fought against it, tried to move, willed my mind to speak, but I laid useless on the floor. I couldn’t even do so much as to stop the orange liquid as it overcame me for the second time with its soothing chill, and then the darkness let out to the unnatural peace.

+++

A bright light shone in my eye and I cringed away from it. I attempted to turn my head and move to look around, but I felt tight belts around my shins, hips, two around my torso, and one across my forehead, which were probably meant to act as restraints.

I wasn’t sure whether I should’ve been surprised or not, considering where I had been what seemed like just moments before, which brought me to the question that had been itching at the back of my mind: where was I, exactly?

I finally managed to move my head to the side, loosening the restraint, and get my eyes away from the light that was aimed directly at my eyes as if it’s only purpose was to blind me. Then I heard the same monotonous voice from earlier as it echoed through the otherwise dark room.

“Vision: eighty-seventh percentile.”

The light flicked off, and for a fleeting moment the darkness completely overcame the space, but then everything was white and overwhelming. I couldn’t see, and my eyes stung and watered as the light surrounded me. I struggled against the belts, but they only constricted and tightened my breathing into short gasps until I had to stop to keep from passing out. The brightness was overwhelming and somehow infuriating, but I held my tongue and laid still against the restraints. They would kill me if I struggled enough.

I looked around, as far as around went with a belt across my forehead, and saw two, maybe three figures standing at the other side of the area, which was another plain white room roughly the size of my bedroom back in Mithle, and a nightmarish flashback weaved its way through my defenses.

Dark smiles, shadowed faces, and long, white coats. Super strength, monotone voices, and the first wake up call to the harshness of the world outside of home.

My breath hastened and I tried to forget, but my thoughts only darkened.

The voices, the threats, the twisted smiles.

I struggled helplessly against the restraints, and the figures noticed and walked over to the bed I was on. They looked down at me from each side of the bed, and I slowly recognized their faces, dread clouding my head and building in my stomach.

White coats, mechanic expressions, deathly intent so strong I can smell it.

I twisted and struggled against the constricting threats trying to keep me down, the pain in my chest and legs worsening with every movement, and the female monster held my right arm down with the horrifyingly familiar strength from all that time ago. I tried against my body’s will to escape, but the pain only worsened. My legs went numb, and it felt like my ribs and arms would snap if they were held any tighter, but I wouldn’t give in. I finally went still when one of the coated things brought out a glimmering silver blade. He didn’t do anything with it, but he got the message across thoroughly. I watched, each breath bringing in more air as the restraints went back to normal, as the third one brought out the same needle-type thing I had felt in the darkness, only the little cylinder attached to it was filled with the orange liquid. The liquid squirmed inside the glass and I cringed.

The coated figure brought the needle toward the arm that was held down by the other monster, and I started thinking of any final wishes. They were probably going to dispose of me using that needle, which was probably used as poison, and I would die. Was this the fate of all the rest of the people at Naihabi Ridge? What about Master Romia and her gang? What about Torin and the others in the eastern quarter?

I silently gave them all my final farewell, and I thought of my family as the needle slid into the skin of my arm, and then my body exploded in searing, unbearable pain. I screamed and writhed as the fiery agony spread instantly through my arm and down my body and into my head. Everything went fuzzy, flicking in and out of blackness, but my body kept feeling—kept conscious, as the worst desperation overcame me. I stopped hearing my own screams and the scratching of their pencils on their boards and I knew, in that moment, that I would never see through this blackness. I would never heal from this fatal wound as it tore through my body. I thrashed against the restraints as they choked me, and I wished it would end. The burning pain boiled through my blood, and I lost my breath. My mind exploded in agonizing ice while the rest of my body felt like magma. I started to feel the pain ease in my legs as they lost their feeling, and I felt the climax as it passed, and my arms went numb. I couldn’t breathe, but that didn’t matter as long as the icy lava left my body. I would do anything for it to just be over.

I gasped as my body pulsed with numbness. I felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing. I didn’t breathe, and I didn’t live. Was I finally done?

My sight returned, my body still numb, not to a bright light with coated figures, but to red and fiery orange and gold, then to cold blue and white and silver. They blended together, but did not clash. I watched, no longer on the bed, as a bodiless voice spoke into my deafness.

“You shouldn’t have let me into your body,” it said, without entity or emotion, as a mere echo of a thought.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t respond, but it read my thoughts. “You did not choose this, but I did not choose this, either. I merely say this to your soul as it withers, and this has happened so many times because of me. It’s tiring.”

“Who are you?” My voice found me before I found it. It was raspy and low, but it spoke.

“I am nothing. I cannot be described, but I can tell you that I am not meant to be here.”

“Where—”

“You. We are in your soul, where no one else can enter.” The voice echoed, and the wave of breathtaking colors swayed.

There was silence. I couldn’t respond. I had felt blackness in my soul before, through all of the darkness, but that was clearly not what I saw now. What was here was stunning light, swirling around as if in a pool of paint, but these were not normal colors. I couldn’t quite explain it, but these colors blended together to make even more splendid colors, when really if I were to mix orange and silver, it would not be so breathtaking at all.

“You must find a way to get me out,” the voice continued, “or I will continue to wither your soul until there is nothing left of it. That is what has happened every time I have entered a soul.”

“How many times have you done that?” I didn’t register its last sentence through all of the colors.

“Too many. It is improbable that you will be the last, unless you can get me out.” I heard a sadness seep through the afterthought, even though I couldn’t physically hear its voice. “I am a poison and a cure. I kill when I enter something physical, but I can save when I am free.”

The pace of my thoughts slowed and I started to realize just what it said. “You’ll... wither my soul?”

“I am incapable of telling lies.”

“And I’ll die?”

“If I do not leave your soul, yes.”

I froze, though I technically wasn’t moving in the first place, and suddenly the thought of death was terrifying. Why must I die when I finally find something marvelous?

It wasn’t fair. I couldn’t die now. Not now.

“You cannot dwell within your own soul for this long. You must regain your physical body and find a way to rid your soul of me.”

“Wait, can you be in more than one soul at once?” I pleaded, as the colors began to push me out. “Have you ever done it before?”

“No one has survived long enough for a second to come along. Luckily, I have discovered a way to delay my effects, giving you more time to get me out. You mustn’t wait. As soon as you regain consciousness, start searching for your cure.” The colors started fading and my senses started returning to the fiery, frigid pain. It became hard to concentrate on what it was saying. “Eighteen months is all I can give you. Use them wisely.”

Before I had time to take in another breath, the ocean of lava overcame me and I finally left consciousness behind me, entering black peace at last.