Chapter 2: Asylum

A return home yields different results. Things get weirder and more people join the fray of the strangest Thursday in Aleksander's life.

The keys that I somehow had led me to a Lincoln Town Car, the model being right out of the 80's. I didn't know specifically what year the dull white car with almost grey-white vinyl roofing belonged to - but I supposed it didn't matter much. I just sat in the driver's seat for a moment. I had just barely gotten my license and I had grown use to my mom's minivan that I had used for practicing before I had went into the MVD and took the driver's test. This was a little different. It was a still a car, but it was different. The interior was some kind of pleather - crimson in color, but fake nonetheless. The inside of it looked as if someone had a fun time with a knife too, yellow stuffing leaking out of some areas of the seating. Whatever the case it was time for me to go. I could spend time observing the inside of whoever's car this was - but the only thing my mind wanted to do was move to the next thing, to find out what the f**k was going on.  

I started up the old white luxury car and waited for the radio to kick on. Might as well have some tunes to sooth my mind while I felt like I was loosing it. I wasn't sure what was real anymore. Maybe all those voices and how time stopped had been some kind of trick my mind was playing. It was hard for me to believe that too deeply however, as Marla's memories of me had returned. She knew who I was and saw the same strange people that I had seen. I couldn't be going crazy. Whatever was happening was real. I brushed my hand through my lengthy sweat streaked hair - I hadn't even noticed I had been sweating as I had been. I wasn't quite sure if it was just the usual heat of this place or if it was a product of all the stress I had randomly taken on. 

"...escaped from the psychiatric hospital. The staff of that hospital say that he is not believed to be dangerous, but if he is seen it is advised that - " someone was saying on a talk radio station. I changed the station, not wanting to hear the news at the moment. The next frequency the radio tuned into was a station playing a song that I had listened to a number of times, a song whose lyrics haunted me now as I heard them. It was a song called "Lonely Soul" by Unkle. I was eager to switch off the radio as soon as I heard the lyric "I'm gonna die in a place that don't know my name", but I left it be. Instead I pulled out from the parking lot and zoomed out from E.S. High School's parking lot. I floored it down the two-lane road, the sun shining in such an opposite way to how I was feeling. If this was a movie this would've been the perfect time for a rainstorm.

                                                        

I pulled just in front of my house, a brown color with a nearly matching but slightly more reddened roof. Caden was in there, my little brother. His school was so nearby that he was able to walk there by himself. It was less than a five minute walk over to where he would have to go to second grade. He liked the walk too. He would tell me how he would walk half of it with his pal from class and the two of them would talk about TV shows and stuff they find on the internet. In my heart I knew this was a dumb idea, this would only hurt me...to see my brother that I cared about so much look me in the eye and not know me any more than he would know the UPS man or the pizza delivery guy. 

I had to see him though. He always knew how to cheer me up, to help me get my mind straight. I wasn't sure how he did it, he was so young and he didn't know much about the world yet - but maybe that's exactly how he helped. He reminded me of myself before I started to grow annoyed with the world I lived in. I was only 17 but I felt like I could easily be in my thirties with the amount of cynicism I levied on a fairly frequent basis. I went up to the green painted door, the front door to a home that I might as well declare not my own anymore. 

I knocked three times, hoping Caden was still around and hadn't already left off for school. It was too early for that to have happened, but for all I knew he left early today to hang out with his friend a little while before he had to go to school. If he had no memory of an older brother, it would make sense to want to spend more time with friends than he usually would. 

"Hello?" I heard his voice. Already I was feeling better. I knew though it wouldn't last long. I wondered if I would even get to see his face. Mom and Dad had always taught Caden to not open the door to strangers at the door. Instead I saw myself in the door's window. It wasn't as clear as looking into a mirror, but it was enough for me to look at. Other than Marla I was the only one that could recognize this face. It was a faintly rounded one; I always knew I could lose a few pounds. I had a pronounced jaw however; Marla and Naomi would poke fun at me for it sometimes. I wasn't sure what color my eyes were this time, as they weren't always the same hue. Depending on the lighting and what I was wearing it could be green or it could be brown - but overall it was hazel by color. My hair had some length to it too. It was nearly to my shoulders, tied up in a pony tail. 

I had my hair this long for a while now. Ever since I was thirteen I had picked up listening to metal. I didn't quite listen to it as much nowadays, but the look seemed to stick with me. Perhaps it was time for a haircut - but I had much more important things to deal with first. One of those was finding out who exactly it was I was indirectly quarreling with and why. 

"Hello?!" Caden asked again, louder. It was then I glanced down to the floor mat and noticed the note from earlier that I had ignored. It was the envelope, the one from "Dean". I scooped it up and opened the letter with haste. There was a message written out:

Hey there Aleksander. I knew you wouldn't pick this up the first time around. I guess I should've addressed it to you on the front if I wanted you to bother with it the first time around. You don't know me yet, but I just wanted to apologize. You are the Paradox Key. You don't know what that means yet, and it will be a while before you know truly what that entails - but I will tell you here and now that it will be a difficult road. There will be war, there will be death, there will be confusion. As the Paradox Key your life must unfortunately be cut short and, as the Paradox Key, only you can do the deed. Just know that your death does not mean the end of your journey - rather it will be just the beginning. Time will reveal all answers.

- Dean

P.S. Don't worry about your Caden. You two will become bonded, stronger than you have ever been. He will save you and you will save him.

I read it over and over again, taking a few moments to take in its message, as it was written in elegant cursive. My first thought was: "who the f**k actually writes in cursive anymore?" After that there wasn't much left of the letter that was useful. The letter only provided for more questions than it did answers. Strangely though, its reassurance was somewhat satisfying. I wondered though about it's meaning when it spoke of Caden and how he and I will save each other. I knew though for all that I could wonder about things, I wasn't going to get answers to anything just yet. That being said I resigned after only a handful of minutes from trying to get any more meaning from the letter. I sighed, putting my hand to the door knowing that this letter was the best I was going to get here. My home was no longer my own. 

"I love you Caden," I whispered quietly. It was my own kind of farewell. As I stood there briefly, not wanting to let go of my home and my brother within it I heard the whine of a siren slip into my ear. I gasped, both angry and proud of Caden's quick reaction to a person loitering around the front door. People always complained about how slow acting the police were, but here they were already pulling around the corner. Mom had picked this house out because of that, close to the elementary school and close to the police station. 

"You there! Don't move! Hands in the air!" they hollered as soon as they were able to park just in front of the sloped driveway of my home. I turned about and walked partway onto my stone-filled lawn. All the homes' lawns were like this in the area - Arizona in general had a poor environment for grass to thrive. There wasn't a time more than now that I had wished I had a grass lawn like people who lived in other towns. I would be made to kneel and be cuffed over the unkind texture below me. With the sun gaining its place in the sky, the stones were by no means cool either. 

I obliged the two police officers commands, raising my hands up. My heart raced. I had ways to prove my innocence and to who I was, but knew that it would only cause more trouble than it would help me. Perhaps this was my way to defeat whoever was trying to coerce me into killing myself, by simply going along with this and refusing to give in. Dean (who I'm fairly certain was the voice of the one called Chronos) had written a message directly to me that I was some "Paradox Key". He had spoken about it briefly too when I had heard his voice. Whatever the f**k "Paradox Key" meant, I wanted no part in it. I just wanted my life back.  

That winged man from earlier who tried to kill Marla - he seemed to be the one who started all this. He was the one who had killed me and caused those two voices to have to solve whatever problem my death caused. He was the one who stole my regular life from me. By forcing Chronos and that other being to erase me, he had indirectly accomplished his action of killing me - it just happened to be that my physical form continued on. What I wouldn't give to see that winged b*****d again so I could give him a face full of my fist. I could take pride though in knowing I foiled his plan to kill Marla. 

"Alright, hands behind your head! Knees to the ground!" they ordered next. I remembered how things would go. I remembered how it went on the TV and in movies. I knew though that it was stupid to try running. That s**t never works.

Soon enough my rights had been read and I was in the back of the patrol car with cuffs on. They seemed to take a minute to scan through the old 80's town car I had drove here in. The cops themselves looked fairly stereotypical in some aspects. One was bald, a dark patch of hair at the end of his chin and his eyes were beady and blue. He probably was once a motorcycle cop, but he walked with a limp. Likely those days were behind him. His seemingly permanently annoyed expression etched onto his pale white face gave a feeling that he didn't quite enjoy his job. Maybe he never did. I wasn't sure. I was just some kid taking some guesses at a man's life based on what little I could see. 

The partner to the first cop was a dark skinned man, thin and with a much kinder face. He was cleanly shaved, though his face looked a bit more worn than his partner. Something about his presence gave the idea he was more experienced, not just as a cop but as a person. It was odd too because he appeared physically older than his pale skinned partner, but his mannerisms were much younger in their ways. 

"Alright. I think we've about cleared this old Lincoln out. Looks like this was that kid we got the anonymous tip about, that boy that called us up was right. The escapee has his papers in the glove box, pretty much shutting the book on any other possiblity," the dark skinned cop stated. The pale skinned shook his head. 

"F****n' nutjob. How the hell did he manage to slip out of the hospital? Ain't he supposed to be all drugged up n' s**t? On top of all that...why the hell would he tote his papers around?" the pale skinned officer questioned. 

"Not sure, Bradley. The kid is about my son's age though, from the same psychiatric hospital too. I wonder if King knows him," the dark skinned cop mentioned. After hearing their exchange (and this feeling was starting to become quite redundant) I was once again thrown into a state of confusion. Somehow they had found papers stating I belonged to a psychiatric hospital? How was that even possible? I was supposed to have been forgotten by everyone, but now I was given this false labeling as being a patient to a nuthouse? Was this some sort of joke to play with my sanity? I had been questioning if I was just crazy before, but once again I was made to consider the possibility. Perhaps Marla knew who I was because she also was a patient there.  

If what I had experienced before had been some part of an illusion or fantasy created from my mind - that would mean I had friends or family that truly existed, I was just confused as to who and where they were. If I was truly crazy then I wasn't forgotten by anyone. If I wasn't crazy...well...I felt like I was going to go crazy pretty soon from all this weird bullshit. I wasn't sure which one I wanted more to be true. 

"Oh yeah, sorry 'bout that Carmichael. Forgot you had a boy in there. How's he doing? Getting any better?" Bradley questioned, straightening up his tone. 

"No. He keeps claiming that he saw angels. We keep a religious household, but to be completely honest - we just did it for King's sake. Me and the wife don't really follow that stuff. We just thought it'd be good for King to go to church and make some friends, get him away from all that social media and video games and stuff. World's so much different than when we were kids," Officer Carmichael stated. Once again I was left to simply wait and listen to two voices of people who held power over me and there was nothing I could do but wait. Back when time had stopped on the bus when I had thought I had died - it was all frozen, not by temperature but by the fact that nothing was moving. Neither myself nor anything else was allowed to even budge. It was an odd sensation to experience time completely stop in its flow, eerie even. It'd be like looking at river rapids and then as you watched, suddenly the water became calm by no other force known to you - it simply stopped with a blink of your eyes.  

Now it didn't matter if everything was paused in place or going a thousand miles per second. I wasn't going anywhere that these two weren't going to take me. From the sounds of it, I was likely headed to whatever hospital I apparently belonged to.  

"You and Josephine threw the boy into an insane asylum just for that?" Bradley challenged. 

"Hey, Bradley - they're called 'psychiatric hospitals', it ain't polite to call 'em that. And of course not, there was more to it than that for our decision. King became absolutely, positively certain that he was saw what he saw and that we had actually seen one of the angels as well. He claimed the angel erased our memories and that's why we don't remember it. He then told us about the second angel: a woman this time. He said her face was wrapped up like a mummy and that she told him that he was ordered to find a girl named Zoe and help comfort this 'Zoe' person until whoever she was waiting for arrived. There's a whole story I could spill about it, but we need to get going. We got to take the kid back, after that I can tell you more. Maybe we can go get a coffee or something - it's almost our lunch break," Officer Carmichael mentioned. My eyes widened at the mention of the angels. The mummy faced angel woman sounded just like the one I had seen earlier who restored Marla's memories. Apparently for whoever this kid was, she had helped him restore his memory. 

I now found the fact that I was headed towards where this kid named King was to not be so unappealing. It was greatly worrying though how much things seemed to fit. It was almost like I was in a mine-cart, sitting on the rails just going along where I was supposed to go with little control of which way. Knowing the power that Chronos (or Dean or whatever his name was) and that being whose voice sounded like a crowd - it was very well possible they had me on a path that was predetermined. Regardless this King kid could have answers or at least be some help to me. I just hoped that Marla wouldn't become too worried when I didn't show up after school. There had to be some way to let her know that I was okay.

                                                                     

The two officers took me to hospital. It was an old building, something that looked very much like a classic 1950's insane asylum. It probably was too, the tiles at inside appeared greatly weathered by the feet of what was getting closer and closer to a century's worth of crazies. This old building was where I was to be readmitted...for the first time. The logistics of it were weird, especially for me, considering I never had been to the place before. Somehow I had escaped before I had actually arrived. Was that even possible? Considering all that had happened recently, I was coming to question the possibility that anything could happen. Perhaps this was all some strange experiment and I had been abducted by aliens at some point and I just don't know it yet. Maybe the angels are real and I've gotten myself twisted in the matters of the afterlife. Or maybe I was crazy all along. I honestly didn't know anymore. 

"I'm sorry? I see he has papers, but...I've never seen him before," the nurse at the front desk mentioned.  

"His papers say this hospital specifically. He's got an ID on him, there's a signature here from his parents, and more. Where the hell else are we supposed to take the damn kid? Someone here gave us the anonymous tip that he escaped and we did our job. Now do yours," Officer Bradley said with a less than negotiable tone. It didn't matter much to me how polite he was. For now I was going wherever people were telling me I had to go. Fighting would only land me in jail and apparently I was about to go somewhere that wasn't completely far off from that. They'd treat me nicer here, drug me up too. I wasn't a criminal...not yet. 

"Fine, fine - no need to get hostile, officer. We'll take him off your hands. Hope you have...a nice day," the nurse woman said with some difficulty. It was most definitely forced. With the kind of trouble she had to deal with on a daily basis with whoever was in this hospital likely stressed her nerves far enough. It seemed to show on her face as the wrinkles started to dominate what was likely once the skin of a lively young woman. She looked nearly into her earlier forties but if I had to guess she was probably much younger than that. Perhaps that was just the look of people in this day and age, looking much older than they really were. I figured I'd probably end up much of the same way if the stress continued as it was, with me trying to solve whatever the hell was happening to me. 

The nurse waddled her way over to me. Her belly was rounded, showing herself as possibly pregnant and her auburn hair was tied in a bun, keeping her with a professional look despite her turquoise, pajama-looking scrubs. 

"Okay...mister - " she began and waited for me to answer. 

"Lethe," I spoke quietly. She glanced down to my shirt and seemed to take notice of its artwork. 

"You're a fan of The Heavy? You look more like a metal guy to me," she mentioned in the politest way she probably could. 

"I used to be a big fan of metal - still am, just have been listening to other stuff recently," I said honestly. Such a question seemed out-of-place for me to be talking about considering everything else that had come to pass. Of course, the nurse couldn't know what exactly had happened to me. She probably could never even guess it if she tried. I know I sure as hell wouldn't have been able to. Angels? Time stopping? Reversed death and erased memories? Who the f**k would believe me? They would think for sure I belonged here. 

"I always was a fan of Venom. Anyways let's get you...back I guess? Are you sure you've been here before? I don't remember ever seeing you around," the nurse mentioned. I shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly. 

"I don't know, I'm crazy," I sassed her. She gave me a slight face of contempt for my comment, but quickly retracted her expression. Perhaps she had to do so in fear that I may go into a mental breakdown otherwise. I had no idea. Maybe that's what you had to be careful for with a bunch of crazy people. 

"Okay...well, let me just take you to the rec-room. Since you've apparently already been here I suspect I don't need to show you around?" she asked nicely.  

"No that's fine. Thanks," I returned her kindness. I was lying though, I had no idea where anything in this place was or how to get around. The nurse didn't seem to leave though. She stood patiently waiting with her hand extended towards me. 

"Huh?" I said in reply to her gesture. 

"Come on, you know the rules if you've really been here. No shoelaces," she told me. I made an audible noise to acknowledge her statement, as if I had merely forgotten and as quickly as I could I removed the laces from my shoes. The first step into making myself at home in a nuthouse. With that done the nurse left off, likely to resume her more charming duties...stuffing pills down a violently resistant kid's throat, making sure another kid is using the restroom properly, and whatever else her daily responsibilities entailed. I shuffled my feet across the static inducing thin green carpet of the rec-room and observed its openness. There was a certain forced atmosphere, a passive-aggressive message of "be friendly, or else". People were scattered about. One was huddled in an almost fetal position at one corner of the room. Some more were spread across various couches and beanbags.  

There was a sizable flat screen in one corner of the high ceiling room. It seemed to look like any other TV, yet all its appliances were under lock-and-key. Apparently if someone wanted to use the Xbox, the DVD/Blu-ray player, or whatever else - expressed permission and likely supervision was going to be necessary here. It made sense too, gaming consoles were by no means cheap. Any nutjob who decided to go apeshit on any one of the devices would be an expensive outburst. I wondered though if I was being too harsh on my would-be comrades. I glanced over to the very end of the room that lead to three thick glass windows taller than myself. The uncovered windows let in an almost overbearing amount of sunlight into the room. There was an empty pool table of respectable quality near the three windows. With all the stress of what had been going on, a simple game of billiards looked quite enticing. First thing's first though, I had to find the one called King Carmichael. 

"You!" I heard a voice call to me. I swiveled around to see a person, walking with good pace at me in a way that didn't look like he meant well. He was dark skinned and held a serious look to his face. It seemed to be who I needed to look for coming right to me: King Carmichael. He looked much like his dad without all the weathering and slightly different features in some parts that probably came from his mother. Despite his current expression he had a very kindly face: permanent smile lines on either side of his mouth, somewhat puffy eyes, and a brow that looked like it would appear slightly raised no matter what the expression.  

"Me?" I said dumbly to his callout. 

"Yes, you. Zoe is looking for you! You finally showed up," he said seriously. I had no idea to know whether or not he was actually crazy. I didn't believe him to be, he had been called crazy for seeing the same two winged people that I had seen. Still though there was always the possibility he was crazy and he saw the same winged people. 

"Who the hell is Zoe?" I queried right away. He didn't seem apt to answer my question before he decided he would clutch onto my arm and try to hoist me away by force. I wrenched my arm back with equal force. 

"Come on, it's important!" he said again. 

"I don't know who you are or this Zoe person! Just wait a goddamn minute," I urged him. He let me go and scratched at his bald head. It was another aspect he didn't share with his father. The hair on his head was absent, but he had a light smattering of facial hair on his face. 

"Sorry. My name is King. I know everyone in here probably says this at one point, but I'm not crazy. I know it's hard to believe, but two angels came to me - one of them even left me with a mission. Tell you right now, I was thinking I really was crazy...that is until I actually met the girl one of the angels told me I was supposed to help out. That girl I'm supposed to be helping is looking for you. Her name's Zoe. Zoe showed me a picture of you and I got excited when I saw you strolling into the rec-room. I know I just said a lot real fast, but please - you got to believe me," he pleaded. 

"Don't worry King, I believe you. My name is - " I began. 

"Aleksander. I know. Come on she's in her room right now. She'll be f****n' ecstatic that we were able to - that you just happened to walk right into - " King was saying, his words starting to jumble together. Whatever drug they were using to keep him calm and controlled seemed to either not be working or they had not yet administered it. 

King nearly dragged me down a hallway until we reached room 9A. There was a black haired girl sitting in a way that almost looked like some kind of Buddhist mediation ritual. I noticed briefly that the back of her top had a strange outline of something. Maybe it was some sort of disfigurement on her back. I didn't want to be impolite and stare. Instead I glanced back to King as he tiptoed over to her and tapped her on the shoulder, causing the pale skinned girl to jolt in response. She gazed up to him, initially in fear, but it quickly dissolved into a friendly grin. Her eyes were quite a dazzling color of blue. Even not looking directly into them, it was like two sapphires resting in the whites of her eyes. King pointed to me and her head followed his gesture on a swivel. Her face was a freckled one, innocent. She almost appeared like a frightened rabbit. Whoever this Zoe girl was, King had made it apparent that she had an utterly important goal of finding me. I hoped she would soon tell me why. 

"I can't believe it. It...it's really you," she said with tears quickly welling in her eyes. Once again I felt the now all-too-familiar feeling of utter bewilderment. The blue-eyed freckled-faced girl who I knew nothing of ran and embraced me like a long lost friend or relative. Not wanting to be impolite or awkward I gave her a half-way hug in return. She kept herself there, crying. 

"I-I'm sorry...but, who are you?" I questioned her with some tact in my delivery...well as much as I could muster, I suppose. 

"Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I should've known that it would be like this. He told me it would be. It's the only chance I'll get to see you though, I'm just going to enjoy it any way I can," she admitted, obviously dancing around some facts she had hidden away. 

"Who's 'he'? Who are you to me? What is going on?" I said, unloading some of the many questions in my head. My mind was basically a beehive swarming with buzzing little questions. I had a feeling that the hive would soon burst and all the bees would be left to shoot out at whoever was unfortunate to receive their sting. 

"I'm sorry, I can't answer those questions. Even for you I can't do that. Goddamn it Tumiel - why did he have to fall to the evils as he did? He was born with too much power," she said wistfully. I glanced over to King as to see if he knew to whoever this girl was talking about. He shrugged his shoulders, showing me without words he knew as much as I did about whatever the hell she was spouting on about. It was just another name for me to not know and have questions about. Tumiel? King? Zoe? Dean? Who were these people? 

"What the f**k are you talking about?! Can someone just talk normal for once?!" I finally slipped some out some of my frustration. She peered into my eyes with surprise at my little angry outburst. I don't know who I was to her, but apparently it would be a rude awakening that she wasn't going to get the pleasant reception she might've hoped for...not if she was going to continue to be cryptic in a time I was already so lost in what it was exactly that I was facing. 

"The curse of being the Paradox Key. I'm sorry...this will make you feel better about me. I don't want to do this. I expected between me and you it would've come natural, but that would be hoping for...well I don't want to say," she mentioned. She grasped at my forehead, the very same way the mummy-wrapped woman had grasped at Marla's head earlier near the football bleachers at school. For a second I wondered if Zoe was the mummy-wrapped woman, but she was a different size than that woman and she was absent that woman's wings. Still it was uncomfortable, whatever it was she was doing.  

I tried to wrench her hand away from my head, but instantly I felt a sense of calm. For a brief moment I felt an intense love for this stranger named Zoe. It was as if a sense of infatuation deeper than my feelings for Marla had overcome me. The feelings shifted to a lesser level of intensity however, as my love for Zoe slowly dialed itself down to love shared with a relative or close friend. It was not quite on par with my love that I had for my brother Caden but it was in that same real of feeling. 

"And now for this to ease your questions," she said, not yet letting go of my head. I felt my head grow extremely heavy, like it was made of some dense metal. I struggled to keep my head up, but just as I felt like the weight was growing to be too much she released her grip and my head returned to its normal state of burden on my neck. 

"What'd you do to me?" I asked right away. I felt a great deal more at peace with her. I no longer wanted to shout or holler at her for answers. It felt unfair to yell at her, whoever she was. 

"She zapped you with those magic hands of hers. If you want to see something even more - hold on, can you close that door?" King requested. I nodded shutting the door to room 9A, Zoe's sleeping space I could only assume. 

"Alright, you ready?" she prepped me. 

"For what?" I answered. King nodded with a goofy smile on his face. I wasn't sure about King yet, but he seemed likable enough so far if not a little overly animated at times. That was likable though as I was a sort of grim kind of person, even before all this seemingly never ending train of "what the f**k?" 

"Check this out, dude," he said almost smugly. Zoe began to unbutton her blouse, a purple colored piece with frilly sleeves. 

"Hey, hold on here. I'm all for seeing a girl without her clothes on - but is this...kosher?" I checked. 

"Don't worry I've got a bra on...besides with what abilities I have, I can make it so you shouldn't register any feelings that would be...questionable. Even if you do I have ways of making you forget if that first part doesn't work," she stated. I nodded, wondering if she had already done that to me. Right now I just wanted to see whatever it was she was going to show me. She continued, unbuttoning her shirt and letting the violet colored top slip down her shoulders. It was quick for me to see what she was trying to show me.  

"A one-winged angel?" I said with a hollow tone. She had shown a single feathery wing, now outstretched and free. Her feathery appendage was just like that of the winged people from before, but she had only one of them rather than two. It was now confirmed on three different occasions that I had been dealing with angels. Something that I had always known as being fake, something that was always just a mythological being from religious text books - they were real. I almost wondered if Zeus and Odin would show up together on the back of a griffin, to spout even more cryptic prophetical nonsense. Honestly, if it happened I wasn't sure if I'd be all that surprised anymore. 

"I use to have two. Me and my brother fought and it got violent. I took his right wing and he took my left," she said and pointed to a sizable patch of scar tissue on her shoulder and down her back. 

"Your brother ripped off your wing? What kind of b*****d is he?" I challenged, thinking about my brother Caden. Even thinking about seriously injuring him made me feel uneasy. 

"An unfortunate boy who couldn't help but be corrupted by the power he inherited," she stated sullenly.  

"I'm not sure if it has to do with whatever powers you might've used on me - but I'm here. I'll protect you as long as I can. I don't know the details, but if your a*****e brother ever tries to lay a hand on you again I'll make sure he regrets it," I promised Zoe sincerely...or at least I think it was sincerely. There weren't any memories to back up such strong feelings of trust I had for Zoe, but somehow it didn't matter. It couldn't be natural that I felt like this. This had to be because of whatever she did to my head. Perhaps she had done the same to King as well. 

"I'm here too Zoe. We don't know each other well, but consider all three of us don't have many friends - I think it'd be a good idea for us to stick together," King chimed in. I nodded, agreeing with him. I didn't know him well yet, but it was easy to imagine him becoming a good friend quickly. She smiled tearfully and hugged King briefly, proceeding to latch onto me just after. 

"We have to escape this place. I want to spend more time with you," she said with conviction. I wasn't sure how we would do it, but I could agree to her resolve. I would ask what questions I had for King and then we could work our plan of busting out of here. When we were all free I could go and find Marla. From there I would continue to defy God whichever divine entity it was that was trying to force my hand to suicide.