Chapter XV

Michelle

BALLING HER HANDS INTO fists, she gritted her teeth so hard she thought they might shatter along with her body. She squeezed her eyes shut as a roaring pain clamped down on her chest like a vise sinking its teeth in. "Mommy, please! Stop! It hurts!" Her eleven-year-old voice sounded even tinier then it really was as she pleaded.

"Just a little longer," came her mom's soft, cajoling voice through the pounding in her skull. "It's almost complete."

At her mother's last sentence, a bolt of electricity shot through Michelle's body and she screamed at the top of her lungs. The room around her lit up white as electricity circulated through the clear glass parts of the machines.

Tiny fingernails dug into the leather armrest as pure energy rippled through every inch of her body. Within a few seconds, the jolt ceased and she flopped down, draped in the padded seat, her wrists and ankles still cuffed to the chair.

Sweat poured down the sides of her head and she panted harder than she ever had before as she tried to suck in all the oxygen in the room. In that moment of silence, she knew immediately that something was wrong. Trying to pry open her aching eyelids, they felt like they had been glued shut. "Mommy," she croaked. "I can't...I can't hear her."

Her head flopped to the side and through her blurring vision she found another chair exactly the same as the one where she sat—slanted and padded in brown leather, the cuffs clamped shut—only it was empty. What remained of the sister, once trapped as Michelle, was a steady stream of black smoke rising off the chair from a pile of ash.

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes and burned her skin as her world crumble. Flinging her head back towards the woman standing in front of a panel, glancing frantically over a chart, Michelle cried, "Mommy! Where is she? Where's Ma—"

"Hush, child!" Mom tapped the glass screen on the panel. She turned a few dials and clicked several buttons before stepping off the raised platform and making her way to Michelle's side. "We did what was best. She was never going to survive anyway." Mom adjusted the metal helmet around Michelle's head before meeting her eye to eye with a gentle smile. "What you did was extremely brave." She hurried back over to her panel and flipped a few more switches. "And it was the right thing, despite what others thought."

Aiming her eyes toward the ceiling as hot tears poured down her temples, she heard her mother's soft tone in her head again.

"One last time, my girl." She jerked her head towards her mom, her eyes widening as panic flooded her chest and churned her stomach. "If this doesn't work, then your sister's death means nothing."

"No, wait!"

Mom pulled a lever on the panel and the electrocution resumed. Bolts of purse, white hot pain seared her body and she tensed and arched her back against the seat. She released the loudest, gut-wrenching scream she's ever belt.

Along with the pain filling her veins, there came a ringing in her ears and a massive migraine as a slew of images flew through her mind. Quick flashes of a baby girl, a mother standing over a crib, and a toddler boy wrapped around the mother's leg. Another flash brought mountains with homes and apartments built into the rocky terrain and a large river flowed through the middle of the cavern dividing the city into two sections; a blue sign stood bolted to a large wall with the word Monasa scrawled across it.

A sound clicked in her head and the images vanished along with the intense agony, but she knew the discomfort from the procedure would last for days. She drooped back in her seat panting heavier than before and sweat dripping from her dark hair. Her heart felt like it would burst if it beat any faster.

Darkness filled the corners of her vision. With her chin resting against her chest, she side-eyed her mom, who continued to stare at the monitor on her panel.

"We did it!" Mom clapped her hands in victory as a gleeful smile spread from ear to ear. "We've found her!"

She heard her mothers voice, but as fog clouded her brain and unconsciousness beckoned her, she couldn't make any clear sense of the words.

Mom pressed a button her panel and a metal click told Michelle that the cuffs had opened. Mom dashed to her side as she leaned forward, trying to stand to exit the death chair, but her legs were completely numb. Instead, she fell into her mother's arms and closed her eyes. They were too heavy to hold open any longer. With her eyes now closed, she heard a wailing inside her head and she clung to her mom's white lab coat.

"Mommy, I hear her," she whimpered. She wanted to sob, wanted to cry out and scream, but any energy she had had been zapped right out of her. She felt too weak to conjure even a single tear. "I hear her screams."

Mom's soft, lotioned hand stroked Michelle's wet and clingy hair as she shushed her. "Rest now. Regain your strength. There is yet much work to be done."

MICHELLE BOLTED UPWARD WITH a gasp, her fingernails scraping against the stone beneath her. Instantly, she noticed the sweat covering her brow, and she laid a hand against her pounding heart. Frantically glancing around, she looked for her mom, the machine, or any sign of present danger, but the only thing she found was her crew and the others sound asleep in their awkward positions.

Sucking in a few deep breaths, she panted and pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She shuddered as vivid images of what her mother used to do to her and her sister as children replayed on a loop in her mind, and she placed her chin between her knees.

She clenched her jaw, heat rising in her cheeks, and she choked down the overwhelming desire to punch the wall. She wanted nothing more than to forget about her mother and move on, but these memories just kept coming. Night after night, her childhood played on like a movie.

She despised her mother for forcing her to endure things no child should ever have to. It was her mom's fault that she was in the Dome, and it was her fault that Madilyn was dead. Even after everything Michelle had done for her, joined Agcorp's army to become their elite soldier despite their hatred for people like her...she still wasn't good enough.

She rubbed her eyes with the thumb, index, and middle finger of one hand, and a sudden panic fluttered her heart. A soft hum danced around in her brain, and she gulped as the color drained from her face. She shivered as a string of words floated through her mind like a whisper in the wind that went directly from her ears to her brain.

Her face hardened.

She couldn't reply. Not if she wanted to stay free from the monster.

Ignoring the voice that called her name, she lowered herself back down, a rock sticking between her shoulder blades, and she stared up at the black ceiling with her hands folded across her chest—her jacket scrunched beneath her head.

Often times, the beast would plague her sleep with awful memories of what had happened to her and Madilyn during their childhood—that memory being the worst. She knew it was just another sign of the days to come. The day when she would lose the battle like she had many times before.

She knew the enchantment wasn't permanent, despite what the witch had said. It was in there, itching away at the barrier between her and monster.

Sighing, she laid there slightly shaking. For a moment, she thought it was from the cold draft filling the cave from David's ever changing form, but she quickly realized it wasn't. At least, not all of it.

The shaking informed her that her time was running out.

She turned over on her side, staring at Nathan's peaceful slumbering face, and she knew that sleep wasn't going to be as easy for her.

The thought of that beast returning made her queasy. It had taken several hard years to fight it off, and now she had been free for nearly three just to lose the fight all over again.

Her eyes squeezed shut as vivid images of her planting an arrow in a civilians leg flashed through her mind. She could still hear the cries of every. Single. One of them.

She hugged herself in a tight squeeze. She never wanted to be that person again, but if these memories were rearing their ugly faces nightly, then she had to assume that the monster wasn't far behind.