“What are we doing out here again?” a zombified Alexandra coldly questioned up to her best friend as she sat in the peachy center of Bridget’s enormous palm, knees pulled to her chest in a display of symbolic defense.
“We’re going to settle things,” Bridget announced coolly as she stepped off the end of the porch and into the expansive landscape that encompassed her backyard. “No matter how long it takes.”
“Settle things,” the Alpha repeated back grittily, unable to bring herself to feel dread at such ominous ambiguity. Even if things could get worse, and by now she knew full-well they could, she didn’t care.
What did it matter any longer? What could her emotions count for? Why bother trying to understand? Two weeks into her incarceration and twenty minutes overdue for a third session, it was just a waste of energy to feel anything.
“Yes,” Bridget swallowed as she marched across the loping grass hills and past the towering clusters of trees that didn’t even reach up to her knees.
Alexandra blinked as the breeze whisked against her skin and into her watering eyes. She peered across the expanse of the exotic ecosystem making up the Cades’ acreage, her eyes finally locking on her friend’s ultimate destination as Bridget trod across grassy slopes like they were anthills.
A low-hanging cliff ran along the side of the creek near the back wall of the yard, far too high for Alexandra to have dreamed of reaching on her own, but perfect as a bench for Bridget. The Omega stretched a leg to cross over the crashing waterway the girls had so long ago spent an afternoon damming up and swung her other limb over, lowering herself onto the marbled overhang. She allowed her colossal bare feet to slide into the frothy rapids and enjoy the coolness on the skin between her toes, but not deeply enough to block the flow of the water. Bridget’s elbows rested on her knees and her halcyon locks hung in a canopy above her friend, blotting out the sunlight directly behind her head and making it hard for Alexandra to make out her massive expression through the shroud of shade.
The violent rush of icy liquid clashed with a quiet trickle that nevertheless managed to have its voice heard amidst the auditory onslaught, and a fine mist was clouding its way even this high up above as Alexandra peered uncaringly over the edge of Bridget’s hands and to the rocky drop below.
“What are we going to do?” Alexandra said at last, loudly enough that her voice could be heard clearly over the creek’s sputtering.
“Make everything right again.”
“So what does that mean? You’re going to try to hurt me until I agree to lie about everything?”
Bridget’s face twitched as though she’d been poked in the eye with a sharp stick, but she maintained a steady platform with her palm.
“No.”
“Okay. Let me think, then. I bet I can guess it,” Alexandra continued, pressing a finger to her chin and tapping it thoughtfully, now neck-deep in apathetic abandon. “You’re gonna spit on me? I’ve heard a couple Alphas say that’s what happened in their sessions with other enforcers. That would be a good one. That would really teach me a lesson.”
“No.”
“Damn it! All right, moving on. Let’s see, what would be just… fucking awful, but it wouldn’t exactly cripple me, so you could still feel good enough about yourself afterward to keep on doing this. Gosh, this is a tough one…” Alexandra simpered, shocked that she hadn’t been silenced with an angry retort yet, but shrugging it off just as easily.
Bridget forced herself to swallow a volcanic lump in her throat and blinked away a flash of moisture that was beginning to glaze over her irises.
“I’m not going to do anything to you, Lexi. Not now.”
“Oh, good. What, so we’re just gonna talk it out, woman to woman, until I just give in? Is that the plan?”
“Yes.”
“Great plan!” Alexandra proclaimed enthusiastically, throwing both thumbs up as high as she could reach.
“Lexi,” began the Omega, fighting back a fresh quaver in her tone, pleading with her agonized green eyes as well as her strained utterances. “Please. Please, please, please. I know you’re in there somewhere. The real you. All I want is to understand what happened. If… you just tell me, we can start to fix it. I swear, I’ll… I’ll do everything I can to help you, to make this easier on you, but you have got to work with me.”
The Alpha hung her head. Somewhere deep inside, she felt a twinge of warmth hearing these impassioned words from her best friend, who sounded like she genuinely did want to start some kind of healing process for the imagined reality she had become so absolutely convinced of.
And then she was reminded of how little her words meant now.
“Make me understand, Lexi. I’m begging you.”
Closing her eyes now, Alexandra clasped her hands in her lap and exhaled with storied resignation. She felt exhausted, partially from having slept so little these past two weeks that she probably could conk out in Bridget’s hand if she leaned back too far, but mostly from the fruitless struggle she’d been keeping up all this time. Why was she fighting so hard? Why resist when they all wanted the same thing?
They wanted a monster?
They wanted a Beta-maiming maniac?
They wanted the twisted offspring of Alma Warren?
They’d have her, then.
“All right, I admit it,” Alexandra announced nonchalantly without waiting another moment, opening her eyes and establishing a militant staring contest with the titanic being above, holding her body stiff as a petrified board.
“What?” Bridget gaped after a pause, so aghast that she didn’t notice her phone buzzing urgently in her pocket.
“You heard me. I did it. I attacked those Betas on that walkway. I picked them all up, put them on the ground, and chased them around. And then when they couldn’t get away, I started stepping on them. Not like I needed something from them, obviously. They didn’t do anything to me. I just… felt like doing it. It seemed like a lot of fucking fun,” Alexandra continued on, spitting out the last words of this proclamation with grim satisfaction.
“Lexi…”
“No, no, I’m ready! I’m ready for the world to know the truth,” blurted the Alpha. “I mean, why should I be ashamed? They’re just a bunch of Betas. Who gives a shit about them? Their hopes, their dreams, their lives? They should be grateful I paid them the slightest attention. They should be grateful I chose them to entertain myself with.”
“Lexi, you’re… you’re not…” Bridget tried to object, her throat far too dry and her synapses erupting with far too much emotional bedlam to come up with any better defense. Her lips hung slightly open as this madness unfurled.
“Don’t try to stop me, Bridge. You’ve won! You’re gonna get everything you wanted out of me. I’m standing here right now and admitting the truth.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes I am, and here it is: Betas are all dirt. Nothing more. They all deserve what happened to them. Every single one of them. Hell, I let those ones off easy. I only threw one of them, and she might even still live. I guess I was just being lazy. I should’ve held her up higher before I let go.”
“Lexi, that’s enough,” Bridget cut in. A tremor was running up her arm now, uncontrollable, like a separate entity shaking her to the core, but the Omega managed to quell the motion with her practiced focus.
“Are you kidding? I’m just getting started here. I mean, if we’re going for the truth here, we might as well just have a giant fucking pow-wow and get everything out in the clear, so we both know where we stand.”
“This isn’t you. I know this isn’t how it happened,” Bridget insisted quietly, unable to get her voice to a higher volume due to shock.
“Oh, because you just know me so goddamned well, is THAT it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, then try this one on for size, if you think you can read my mind,” Alexandra spat as she rose to her feet, her fists curled into white bundles of hot flesh and fury. “As soon as this is over? As soon as you let me out of your pretty little cage and put me back on the street? I’m going to do it again. But correctly this time.”
“L-”
“Don’t interrupt me when you’re on the verge of uncovering the dark secrets of one of the worst Alpha criminals in the history of the world!” bellowed Alexandra, her voice stone-cold and without a single pause for breath as she wagged a disapproving finger up at her enormous handler. With complete attention thus achieved, the Alpha’s words lowered into a throaty whisper, tingling with palpable poison in every syllable: “When I get out there again, I’m going to grab every Beta I can get my hands on. I’m going to eat them. I’m going to step on them. Tear their little heads off like berries, smear their guts on their toy houses, and write jokes about the whole fucking insect race with their juices as ink.”
“Lexi, STOP!” the Omega howled with a sharp crack in her voice, unleashing her feeling at last and nearly bowling her friend over in her hand with the concussive force. By now, Bridget’s wrist was shaking so hard that even wrapping the fingers of her other hand around it didn’t help much, but she could hardly register it, so focused was she on the unfolding nightmare before her as her friend seemed to come undone at the seams and release a hurricane of unbridled insanity.
Again, her rumbling phone went ignored.
“You think you know me? You think you know what goes on inside this head?” Alexandra challenged with a venomous cackle, laying a hand in her hair demonstratively. “Everybody was thinking it. I know. And now, you can see they were all right. I am my mother’s daughter. I’ve finally become what I was supposed to be all those years ago. I’ve become what I should’ve been before you showed up and tried to tame me. Like your own little pet.”
“That’s not true. N-N-None of that is true,” Bridget contested woefully, hot tears now rolling unchecked down her overheated cheeks. She’d been restraining for the last few minutes, but at this final smattering of hysteria, there was no holding back.
“Oh, it’s not, is it, Ms. Omega? If you’ve got all the answers, then, what is it I’m getting wrong here?” Alexandra demanded, placing her hands aggressively on her hips and stomping her foot on the plush floor of palm flesh.
“I never tried to… t-tame you. N-Never. I just…”
“You just what?”
“I just needed you as much as you needed me.”
“I find that pretty fucking hard to believe.”
“It’s t-true,” Bridget croaked, shutting her eyes to unsuccessfully slow the salty floodgates as her arm continued shaking with seismic force. “You think we… we see ourselves as untouchable. But we’re not. I don’t know how to help save a world. But… but then I m-met you, and… and…”
“Yeah?”
“You… reminded me how to be brave.”
“Oh, great. Just great for me. So what does that make me in the scheme of your big master plan, then?”
“You’re my sister. And I love you.”
At this, Alexandra froze, internally torn asunder, but she managed to make it through with a desperate grunt. She was committed now. And as long as she continued to stand alone in the truth, there was no going back.
“Well, then, I guess I’m just not who you thought I was,” the Alpha declared with gut-punching finality. “I guess I turned out to be a little… fucking… freak after all.”
“NO!” wailed Bridget at the top of her shredded lungs, her cry echoing over a mile radius as she reached the height of her strife, and in a moment that seemed to shatter the flow of time itself in the minds of both girls, the Omega’s shuddering hand experienced one last spasm that bucked Alexandra into the air.
The Alpha tumbled head over heels, flying outward into the inviting chill that beckoned with the promise of compromising release, and careened toward the violently thrashing current of the creek far below.
Bridget’s mouth opened again to silently scream out her friend’s name as her brain finally registered what had happened: the breaking of her most vital personal rule. She plunged toward the ground, crouching as quickly as she could and thrusting her palms out to catch the tumbling Alpha, who passed between them before the Omega had a chance to cup them.
As though in the distance, Bridget’s ears rang with an urgent shriek, repeating her name again and again and again, but she couldn’t possibly have tried to understand it now as she felt her stinging heart go on strike in her railing chest.
Alexandra crashed into the water, the force of her fall pulling her directly to the bottom and creating a sickening impact on the rocky basin that was even heard by Bridget over the savage splashing.
“BRIDGET!” screamed out the voice again, somehow closer than before, but the Omega paid it no heed again as she scooped both hands into the water before the current could take hold of Alexandra. She felt her friend’s limp body flail against her palms in the icy rapids and she pulled her up, hardly able to keep herself from trembling, the tears having stopped as she entered into a walking catatonic state.
She knelt down by the creek’s edge in the soft grass and opened her palms as tenderly as she could, allowing Alexandra’s sputtering, soaked body to be delivered safely down. After a throatful of water spilled from the Alpha’s lips, the semi-conscious young woman opened her mouth and began to moan with exponentially increasing pain.
Alexandra’s right leg was bent completely forward at the knee.
“STOP!” Evelyn Cade bellowed in desperation as she finished sprinting across the yard and reached the two girls, though her daughter was lost in a horrified trance above her tiny sprawled friend, too lost in the unbelievable moment to comprehend anything tangible in her reality.
“Oh my God…” the elder Omega gasped, instantly on the verge of tears herself, as she whipped out her cell and began dialing for emergency services, knowing that trying to handle the greatly damaged Alpha themselves could potentially lead to even greater injury in her weakened state. “What happened?”
“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to,” the words spooled out on a robotic autopilot, the enforcer having barely even noticed that her mother was present, let alone understood.
“Bridget, we need to give her some space. Move back.”
The words went completely unheard. Bridget’s hands were placed reverently over her knees. Her body was paralyzed in an upright position, her lips were ashen, and her enlarged irises had become swirling ice water.
“Alexandra. Alexandra, look at me. Stay awake with us,” Evelyn pleaded, leaning over the Alpha, but careful to give her plenty of room. “Please stay with us.”
It was like being trapped in a nightmare, but with each stabbing inhalation into her lungs, the Omega realized with metastasizing horror that she wasn’t about to wake up.
“Bridget, please listen to me,” Evelyn choked out, returning her gaze to her daughter. “She’s innocent. Alexandra is innocent.”