The Final Countdown

"Mars," His voice shouted out to me from a while back, but his footsteps were getting more paced, closing the large gap that was originally between us. He used the name he always called me when we were enemies when we met in high school, but a name that I started to like when I fell for him. That's not the case in the present. The name grew the same heat of anger inside from the older days, but more intense. I didn't want to listen, but I didn't have any options.

"Mars," he repeated again, like I didn't hear him the first time, "I knew there's always been something about you that you weren't telling me. All those times you'd faint at the exact time a storm would strike that the forecast couldn't predict, it happened too much to be a coincidence, and I want to say you have reason not to tell me about it, but I can't put up with that anymore. You have to tell me what's going on. I'm locked up in a prison cell, and the next second I'm so drowsy I pass out before I can fight it. Now I'm in some sort of dream, but I choose what I say and do. I can tell this isn't just a lucid nightmare. This is different, and you have to explain as much as you hate me. I'm in your mess now."

"Calm yourself, friend. Your lover or whatever you want to call her while you guys are on a break, can kill you both ultra quickly once stuff starts if you stress her out, so chill, and I'll explain." Blake intervened before Camdyn could take things to too dramatic of a situation to put up with, and I couldn't be more thankful, though his wording was kinda sucky. Still, if he had done it sooner, my ears probably wouldn't be ringing as bad as they are, but Blake spoke something at least and that means it didn't get worse. I kept my full vision, side and all, in an angle that could only see both Blake and Shyrene, to avoid the ex.

"Ellie has the power of the sun because of generation inheritance. If there's a storm that means that either her or her enemy power was too powerfully depressed, and it weakened her body's ability to function. She couldn't have told you because if she did, you'll lose the privilege of the sun being in your life, which means you'll eventually die, and she could die too. Now that you're in her subconscious, you can know. So congrats, I guess, but you both have a high possibility of dying again here too."

"Very good, Blake-y. A successful act of communication. Congrats to you too. I'll take it from here now though, alright?" Shyrene butt in before Camdyn could say anything, but his expression was pretty obvious that he'd say something along the lines of 'what the hell'? - so it could be better she included herself in the conversation.

It's clear though that her take on the matter was that Blake's approach was too textbook-like and emotionless, but I didn't find it necessary that we got empathy out of this. Especially not for this idiot lover from the past. I can't say I care about what happens to him, in whatever form; emotionally, physically, or whatever else. Of course, I wasn't going to say anything. The flow of things was the way things will be.

"Camdyn, right?" She confirmed, to get a nod out of him, "like Blake said, you're in Ellie's subconscious. While she's currently in the OR, you were generated to help her through the levels that are going to come up. So even though you guys are currently split up in distanced locations in real life, you'll get this opportunity to re-connect here."

I scoffed, my arms crossed, and touched up with an eye roll. My words came out more sarcastic than I intended them to, but I wasn't sorry. "Like I wanted that to happen."

Camdyn heard me fair and square, but he acted like he didn't. Instead, he only changed his positioning, standing in a more involved way, to show he was listening to what Shyrene had to say. She gave me a glance and a small tilt of her head, before she looked back at the newest arrival who was hoping to get what she meant, but failed to. "What do you mean by levels, madam? I'm inside of her head to play a game?"

"In certain terms, yes, I guess you can say that."

"What does the game revolve around then? I should know if I'm gonna be stuck here and it's impossible to get out. I don't want to die here." Camdyn was getting a little fed up with my attitude that he had to go off about my inner self being the worst place to lose his life, but when the man at one time had me at gun point, and I was someone considered lucky to be alive, I couldn't think he had the right to be so pissed off.

"This place is where Ellie has been forced to go whenever she falls asleep. It's the power's way of letting her live her life, but at the same time teaching her how she's different than other people are. People like her can never catch a break. Because she's going to be asleep for thirty hours, the levels are more intense and threatening, mostly because if they were easier, eventually the brain will register it as reality out of getting used to it, and she'd begin to get the two mixed up. With the difficulties in mind, she's granted with an open door to help, which has came to being you."

"Am I stupid or did that not answer my question?" Camdyn asked. He was growing impatient, and the more he did the angrier I got. Anything he does is just going to have that effect on me.

"Fear." Blake shouted about, the answer to almost everything while Shyrene was still trying to lay things down easy. She looked at him, sighing, but didn't try stopping him, and he took that as granted permission to explain it himself. "The game revolves around your biggest fears and staying calm while you're facing them, or in your case, helping Ellie to stay calm. Because you're in her head, she can read everything you think once the game is rolling, but you can't read her. If she's stressed - Shyrene and I become a problem. If she's calm enough - we're helpful."

"I'm not afraid of all that much and I didn't think she was either, but you're making this seem a lot more serious than I'm taking it as, so I'm assuming I'm not following." Camdyn stretched out his fingers, embarrassed admit his truth. The man's a police officer or was before he went to prison, and he's a smart guy whose not used to the concept of not understanding.

"Silly." Shyrene found his words unbelievable, and almost worthy as a laughing stock. "Everyone is afraid of a lot more than they think they are, and even if Ellie herself doesn't know what she's afraid of - the memories she has, her past experiences - the levels are going to figure that out and use that against her. Same goes for you. If the two of you don't figure out how to work together, it doesn't look very bright. I'm sorry."

Camdyn shook his head, face palming shortly after. "This is completely impossible. There's a whole other world existing in my ex-girlfriend's head and it's potentially fatal. Great."

"What? Sorry I didn't hear you. Oh! You said 'your mind is an amazing place, sweetie'? Thank you! I know it is! It's extremely complex compared to the average person, isn't it?" I mocked him, acting like he's given me a compliment.

"Just do what you can to support her instead of start fights. Men have a tendency of being dumb like that. That's what Shyrene claims a lot." Blake said. He spoke with an accompanying shrug, like he better understood women than anyone else could, - more than a woman herself could, - but for some reason his approach was settling, and didn't make anyone cringe. "When the level starts up, there's going to be six of me, and six of Shyrene following you two around because you have twelve lives. We'll face the level with you for as much as her state is happy and doing well and fight with you against the enemies or obstacles, but if it turns for the worse, we'll be part of the opposite team. This can happen suddenly and there's nothing that can change it except the source.

"You can choose to kill one of the twelve of us off if you're attacked by us, but this will take away one of your lives as well, because we play for both teams as we're 'instructed'. If you manage to pass a level while in a chaotic state of mind, the next level will be even harder, so it's best that you get through everything with the calmest state to have the best chances. So it's important, life-altering actually, that you keep your woman happy."

I exhaled, frustrated. "His woman my foot."

Camdyn took the chance to gesture at me from head to toe, up and down back and forth. "And how exactly do you expect me to make this happy? I've done everything I could to make ends meet, and yet it's not enough. I'm always falling short."

"You shot me, okay? And I didn't even know it was you the entire time that it traumatized me for years. That crap would haunt my thoughts 24/7."

"But if you'd only understand! I didn't shoot you because I wanted to, it's because I had to for you to live. I shot your arm, Ell, and the initial shooter was going for your heart. If I didn't do it, he would've done it. If I would've missed, he would've done it for me! I did it for your own-."

I stomped my foot, my hands clenched and my muscles aching because of how tight they were. "My own good? Really? But how possible is it for a gun shot wound to be for my own good? If that's an excuse, or it's fake, Camdyn Sacar, maybe it would've been better if you just let him shoot me. Because how is that phrase, 'I fell in love with my fricking shooter that sickened my mental health' supposed to be swallowed? It's not meant to be, is it? Because it's not even supposed to make a sentence. It doesn't make sense. It's not logical. It's stupid."

"Mars," he said again aggravated, combing his hair back between his fingers, but he didn't add anything to it. He had turned to both Shyrene and to Blake, looking over their expressions; their concern and their worry, I always knew it was there, but when they watched us fight it was getting more evident. He dropped the topic with me, talking to them in place of it. "Blake, Shyrene - we're going to die, aren't we? Her and I, we're actually going to die because we won't get along."

Blake stiffened, a glare from Shyrene shutting him up from the brutality his honesty could have, and in his tense state, he decided on something else. "I really do hope you two will fix this. Her heart chose you to be here for a reason, so maybe you'll figure it out if you try. For anything I might do to you before you guys can get there, I'm sorry in advance. I really am. It's like standard procedure in the cop world. I have to, and I don't really have control."

"He's right. I don't know Camdyn, if you're going to die. But if the risk isn't taken, Ellie will die for sure after coming this far. This way she does have a chance, and Blake and I are relying on that chance for ourselves too. We're in the same boat." Shyrene studied Camdyn's face, apology written all over hers. He bit his lip, blinking a little too much at the approach she took the convince him, and though it was scary to me to have to listen to coming from the girl who cares about empathy and tried to always bring the spark of hope into the conversation, it was surprising that it's what convinced him not to quit on me. Shyrene continued. "So sincerely, for myself and you all I hope you'll get along too, because the game will start in thirty seconds."

The man with the dark hair that I used to liked to touch, the man that I used to kiss and the man whose good nights and good mornings I used to cherish more than everything in the world - it was dawning on me how much he didn't belong here and how pissed he could be that he is in the first place, but I caught him form a peek at me, so rapidly a camera couldn't have captured it.

"I'll do my very best." He said.