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The girl pulling the trigger was not Kennedy Roswell.
She looked just like her. Just like her, drenched in scarlet, her supporting hand trembling beneath her weapon. She didn't feel it.
Through the eyes of someone who used to know her, she was all but unrecognizable. Eyes of abyssal brown glinting, washed out by white lights. A red fury burned behind them, a passion. A look in her eyes that tore into one's soul, despite her stature.
No one expected the innocent little girl to shoot them between the eyes.
Least of all her herself.
It was a ritual, now. A violence, a wrath, burning through her veins, simmering, that turned to a deep, helpless sorrow, sobbing and tearing at her hair and scratching her skin in a futile attempt to hide the remorse.
And then it would be nothing all over again. She'd feel nothing. She'd be called back, receive her punishment, and feel nothing at all.
The silencer sounded, the recoil of the gun digging into her shoulders. A heavy breath expanded through her lungs, released through a shaking chest. The ringing in her ears, which never left, seemed to only grow louder with every second.
The victim at her knees begged no longer. She'd looked at him and wondered about him. Who was he? A name was just a name. Allen Watson. It meant nothing to her. But was he a father? Was he a brother? What had he done to warrant this?
The fire in her eyes was slowly dimming. Choked and smothered until the rain came, the clouds from whence it came so dark, so thunderous and heavy, and yet so weak.
The trembling in her legs had grown, and then they gave out. Her bare knees scraped against the carpet as she fell.
The blade withdrawn from her boot nicked her skin, drawing scarlet. Physical pain was easy to ignore. This anguish needed something to overshadow it. Something to distract her. She couldn't cry, not again, not when she knew the consequences.
And still, she couldn't help it. Biting her tongue, pulling her hair, doubled over on her knees. She'd been doing this for months. She'd been doing this. She'd learned how to stop feeling.
Something had snapped.
Fingernail marks pricked the skin of her arms as she held them tightly to one another. Red eyes and a barbed wire throat, a heavy weighted chest. This place, covering her, consuming her. Every candle on the wall more like a beastly flame than a flicker. Every folding chair a silent reminder of what could have been. Dim lights overhead, the massive screen on the wall shining in white.
Silhouetted in the projection, the girl who was not Kennedy, could never have been Kennedy, rose again. She was something, and nothing. Both unfeeling, and burning. The only trace of her abandoned sobs was her running mascara. That outfit, that dreary costume they'd given her, had been made to make her just like some sweet, innocent girl, only now it was covered in the blood of her six victims. She'd ruined the blouse.
They'd be here soon.
Purple ballet flats held a muffled sound as they pressed against the bloodstained carpeting. There were no wounds on her, and yet she was breathing heavily, her hands still shaking. She wasn't angry, not anymore. She wasn't crying.
She was scared. Nervous. The closer she got to the door, to the Attendants come to get her, the louder her ears rang.
She made up her mind, then. She knew what to do.
The entrances were wide open. Were.
The click was almost silent. The doors closing in the frame.
Her blade, inserted through the bars. Tied with the ribbon from around her waist. Her bloodied hands pulled against them, then pushed. It'd hold as long as she needed it to.
She looked back out at the theatre. High up now, looking down on everything but that glowing white screen.
She ran.
Down the ramp, the stairs, she ran. Her fingers dragged across candle after candle, yellow wax embedding itself under her fingers. Like dominoes they fell one after one. As each toppled, rolled, caught on carpet and wood, she watched. And then she began on the other side. Run to the top, knock them all to the bottom.
When they came for her, she was there. In front of the glowing screen, the fires burning orange and red and cool white. They rose through the room, heat tearing at her flesh, her eyes. The flames hadn't reached her yet. They would. She would burn in this movie theater.
The doors burst open. Too late. She would die here.
She would never die.
She would never die, and they had made sure of that.
She wished she could.
Maybe if she burned, every bit of her, they'd never be able to recover her. They'd never be able to bring her back.
She was there, kneeling, looking at the tired corpse of someone whose last moments had been spent begging. She wasn't bothered by the fire, not yet. But it would reach her, and she'd scream. She'd cry and beg for it to be over. Her skin, her hair, her sinews and tendons and everything beneath. Fire was her friend, here and now. Fire was everything, and it took everything in its wake.
Faceless Attendants called out her name. They couldn't see her in these flames. They would, soon enough. She looked at them, and back at Allen Watson.
Suffer the same fate. Burn in this theater, with the hopes they could never bring her back.
And when they finally saw her, it was too late. She was begging. She was screaming.
And then it was over.
For just a bit.
The flames and burns melted away, skin against cold metal, light in her eyes, the shrill digging against her skull worsening with every lumen. Her eyes shut, instinctually. The black was welcoming.
She wanted to go back.
This wasn't where she normally woke up. They'd done something, brought her somewhere else. Tied her down.
She couldn't move. Skin on metal, rubbing against chains.
She could feel it coming. That punishment. She was worn down, but she couldn't numb herself like she usually could. She was biting back tears again. She was fine, she was fine, and if they saw this it'd be a far worse reprimand.
A figure behind the light. She saw them move.
But this wasn't an Attendant. This was the woman herself. Horrible, vile.
“You know what the consequences are.” The smoke-torn voice rang deep through the room.
She did. She knew.
She would never die. She wanted, more than anything, to die.
The sound of a blade flicking open rang through the silent, black room. The silver glinted in the white light.
The blade touched her cheek. Dug deep into it.
She couldn't help it. She sobbed.
One cut.
“For deviation.”
Another. A continuous line, jagged and unsteady. Purposefully. Painfully. Slowly.
“For disobedience.”
Crimson seeped from beneath her skin, dripping onto her blouse.
“For destruction.”
Liquids mixed, a broken melange.
“Remember your sisters.”
A threat.
The last cuts came, slowly, deliberately, silently. No reason attached to them.
The pain stopped at the bottom of her cheek, just below her lip.
There was no other word said. Helen retreated into the shadows. A door closed somewhere in the distance.
The light flickered off.
The dark was no longer welcoming. The dark was cold. The dark had trapped her. Bleeding, sobbing, head burning with the drilling of her skull. Her ears ringing in the dead silence.
Something made her feel like she was no longer human.
She would never die. She could never die.
Hours ticked in her head.
Then they freed her. Finally. They freed her.
And Helen told them all, then, every student. Fire training would begin soon.
She'd done nothing but give her a new idea. She'd thought it meant something, but it meant nothing. Nothing but a scar on her face, a warning that things could get so much worse.
And a new way for her friends to be tormented. All her fault.
She couldn't do this again. She wanted to die, not fight. But she couldn't die. And still,
she couldn't fight.
Fighting would get her family killed. Helen knew that was the one thing that would keep her obedient.
She would never die.