Of Freedom's Fall (Death Prediction Project #3)

I look up as Julian’s face comes into focus, thinking this must still be some drug-induced nightmare and that I’m not actually awake.

“What are you doing here?” I question regardless.

He bends down and picks me up by the collar of my shirt pulling me up and pressing me back into the concrete wall.

“Listen, Pied Piper, you made my life at Copper Cove, Hell after you left. You stole my girlfriend and destroyed my reputation. You thought I was going to let you get away with all that? Well, you’re not. I joined the army and exploited my connection to you and Maya to get here all so I could take her back. She will be mine,” he growls.

This teenage bullshit again, seriously? Why didn’t the guy grow up and accept that maybe, just maybe, Maya didn’t like him? Or that she deserved better, not necessarily me, but she did deserve better than him.

“You know it’s not your choice. It’s her’s. She’s a person, she has feelings and rights just like the rest of us,” I state looking up at him. “Also, I’m pretty sure it was my reputation that was called into question after I skipped town.”

I can see his eyes narrow with anger, one of his hands comes off my collar and hits me across the face. I bite my lip as the pain registers, causing it to bleed and he drops me to the ground. I reach up and touch my lip, looking at the blood and then glaring back up at him.

“How many years do I have left, Pied Piper?” he asks in a condescending tone.

“Why would I tell you?” I spit back.

“Cause that’s your job and if you don’t, every day, every week, every year that I’m alive I will use to make your life Hell, just like you did to mine,” he growls. “They made you to predict lives, that’s your purpose on this planet. Now do it.”

“You know what, Julian?” I reply. “I think I’d rather not.”

He reaches forward and grabs my collar again pulling me closer to him again.

“Than have fun in here, withering away,” he growls and lets me go.

He stands up and walks back towards the door, the lights flicker on as the door shuts behind him and I find myself in a ten by twenty concrete room, that is windowless with two lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling. There’s a crappy single bed with a metal frame in one corner and a security camera in another top one.

I ignore it and turn to the bed. I put my foot up on it and roll my pant leg up to get a look at the graze. I unwrap the bandages, the wound has scabbed over and seems to be healing fine but I’m no expert. I really wish I could take a shower, wash off all the dried blood and grime from the last few weeks, but I highly doubted that was going to happen.

I re-wrap my leg to keep it from getting infected from outside germs at least and turn and sit on the bed, which is hard and uncomfortable. I feel like Cinderella, sleeping in her stepmother’s basement in barely livable conditions.

I still didn’t know what had happened to the others. I get up and approach the camera, I look up into the lens.

“If you’re going to hold me here, the least you could do is tell me what happened to the others,” I shout at the camera.

“That’s not how this works, kid,” a man with a comedian’s voice answers.

He sounds old, I was expecting Julian to answer.

“And who are you? Who died and made any of you king?” I asked sarcastically.

“No one died, the government just said we could,” he replied. “I don’t make the rules, kid. I just enforce and follow them.”

“And that makes you better? What if I was your kid? My mother and father are out there. Whether they willing gave me up or the DPP took me, I was a baby. I should have been enjoying my childhood instead I spent the first two years of it locked up in a lab, drugged, poked and prodded with needles and then for fifteen years after I had to live with being called crazy because I could hear songs coming from people,” I fire back. “Because of them, I could have been normal.”

“Normal is overrated, kid,” he replies.

“Not when normal was taken away from you,” I throw back. “All I’ve wanted, all my life, is to have friends, a lover, and play the piano. Is that too much to ask for? Everyone wants most of those things.”

“Things don’t always work out the way we want to,” he continues.

“Don’t quote cliché lines to me, you don’t know anything, they probably pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for you to sit up in your little camera room and watch me. You can do whatever you want as long as you don’t talk about what goes on here, right?” I counter.

He didn’t answer and I had my answer. I was right. I sit down on the floor hoping this won’t last long, that Porter and the others are out there looking for me. I hope that Harriet is okay. I could imagine what Porter was feeling right now if she wasn’t. I hoped he was confiding in other people since I couldn’t be there for him.

I missed him, more than I’d missed him the week he went away for Thanksgiving months ago and more than I had ever missed Maya when she was taken by the DPP. I started thinking about the two of them a lot. Being away from both of them for an extended period of time made me think about how I felt for both of them. I attempted to sort through my feelings, but my brain was a mess. The terrible sleep, drugs, and hunger wasn’t helping me either.

I heard footsteps in the hall outside. I followed the sounds along the wall until they reached the door and the door screeched open. A soldier, I pegged at not being much older than me stood there for a second. He gave a slight smile. He was holding a bottle of water and a sandwich. I didn’t move. He walked in and set the tray down on the bed. He turned back, looking at me again and I met his gaze.

I spotted his name tag on his uniform, Frazer. He walked back toward the door and hesitated before pulling it closed behind him glancing at the cameras. The entire encounter was weird. Did he feel sorry for me? You think you’d destroy all the sympathy a soldier could have for a test subject before sending them into the same room with them. It could be dangerous otherwise.

I got up once the footsteps disappeared again and looked at the water and sandwich. I thought they were going to let me wither away. But I guess they could just torture me until I broke, they needed me unless they ended up finding the last death predictor who was in New York, I still had no clue where I was.

I picked up the water bottle and unscrewed the cap. I sniffed it but I guess most drugs don’t have smells so I’d have to take the risk if I didn’t want to die of dehydration in the next three days. I put the water bottle to my lips and took a sip.

“We’re not going to poison you, kid. We need you,” the comedian’s voice comes back causing me to jump and almost spit and spill the water.

I glare back at the security camera before continuing to drink the water. It's half gone when I stop. I inspect the sandwich but it seems like your average ham, tomato, and lettuce sandwich. I eat half of it before pausing to make sure I don’t feel any ill effects before eating the other half. I set the tray by the door and keep the bottle under the lip of the bed.

“It’s late, kid. I’m going home. See you tomorrow,” the comedian says and the lights shut off again leaving me in darkness again.

They must have confiscated my phone after what happened with Maya. I wish I could just see the photos I had of Porter, both the ones I’d taken and the ones his mother had sent me. I curl up in the bed, they took my coat, my boots, any of the outside winter attire I was wearing, I guess I wouldn’t get far because of the cold then if I got out. One thing I was glad they hadn’t taken was the sweater I was wearing. It was Porter’s, it smelt like him and it reminded me of him. It made me feel less alone in the cold, dark room, sleeping on the hard, metal frame bed.

I hoped they were coming for me. It was all I had left now.