The Main Character
Chapter 15

As soon as MC opened her eyes she immediately regretted it. The sunlight was blinding. She turned over, reaching for her covers to shield her eyes with but no such luck. She wasn’t in her apartment in Sector 7. She wasn’t in the metropolis at all. She was outside. Truly outside.

There was a dull ache in the back of her head and radiated from her nose. When she investigated, she could feel a bump on the back of her head that was crusted over with dried blood. She brushed off her hands before gingerly touching her nose. It was broken and bloodied. She got up, looking for something to eat or drink. She must have been unconscious for about a day. She was parched, lips dried and cracked. Additionally, he felt sick with hunger. She clutched her stomach and she hobbled along. Alastair was nowhere to be seen. She could guess what had happened to him.

It was all over. So why leave her alive?

Out of the corner of her eye she saw that blue flower. The flower that smelled like Jack, of the drug that killed him and her other friends. She walked over to it and tore it out of the ground. Stomped on it. Spit on it. There was nothing else should could direct her rage at so she destroyed this patch of periwinkle flowers that smelled so nice. This was the flower that responsible for all those people dying. This was where they got that chemical from that made them kill themselves. She stomped on it again and again until it was completely obliterated and then kept going. When she had tired herself out she sat quietly. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t mad anyway. She was just so incredibly frustrated and still confused.

Nothing she had done had mattered. Was her art even real? How could she have made art about the place she lived if she never really knew what it was like. She was living in a bubble within a bubble her whole life. Was her life even real?

Her head hurt.

Were her relationships even real? Did any of those people really care about her? Even just a little?

She buried her head in her arms. She stayed there for a few hours, contemplating her life, going over every encounter she had had without someone outside of her sector. Her emotional anguish trumped her hunger or thirst so she stayed sitting there. In a soft bed of grass with her head buried in arms for a few more hours before she heard soft footsteps through the grass.

At first, she didn’t want to look. She had no idea who it could be, but no hope that it would be someone she wanted to see. Who would that even be at this point? It had occurred to her that Simon Colmes may have changed his mind and that it was someone coming to kill her, but she still didn’t move.

It was Finch. Of course. She befriended one of the only people that could find her outside of the metropolis, and only a few days before. Of course, she had been dropped in the exact spot that Finch and she had had their picnic. What good fortune…

“What a coincidence, running into you here,” he smiled at his own joke. He walked toward MC but she didn’t move.

“Coincidence or rescue mission?” She was skeptical of his motives. For all she knew, he could be working for the Colmes’. She had completely lost her grip on reality. She had no idea what was real and what was happening. She had tried to stop, or at least slow all this from happening, but with no avail. She realized she had to submit to the plotline of her life.

“I just want to help.”

“Well, I’m hard pressed to think of even a single thing that could help the situation I’m in right now, but you’re welcome to try. I mean you’re more likely to know than me. I’m just a puppet.”

Finch could sense the hurt in her voice, but had no desire to comfort her. “You’re right. I can’t say what I’m going to offer you is exactly help. But…” He sighed. He wouldn’t look at her. Finch knew that in her eyes, he had deceived her. He had. But he had to. Either way, she was upset with him, understandably.

“I’m not really sure I want your help. I think I’d rather just be alone. I always seem to get where I need to be, so I’m just going to lay here and let that happen. It’ll all work out in the end right? It always does.”

“You’ll die!” he protested. “Slowly.” He wanted to make sure she got his point.

“Well, I could always just kill myself, right?” She sneered childishly.

“MC, there are other metropolises. I can take you there. You can start over. You can have another life.”

“I’m tired of being a cog in someone else’s machine. I’m like a checker piece in a game of chess! It’s unbearable and embarrassing. It’s like I don’t have any control over my life. Honestly, I’m almost certain I don’t. There have been too many coincidences for this whole thing not to be planned. I don’t see how moving will stop any of it. Thank you for the offer, but I’m not going to go with you. I’m staying here. I want to be the only one who can dictate my life, even that will only be for a few more days.”

Finch didn’t want to hear it anymore, it hurt to hear. “Don’t you want to know what it was at least? How he killed them?”

“Like if fucking matters at this point,” she croaked. “Wait,” she smiled sadistically as she continued, “was it fucking ninjas?” Her smile at her own joke faded when she saw the look on Finch’s face. He seemed so unimpressed with her.

“He drugged them. Coated one of whatever pill they were taking with an herbal compound,” he walked over the stomped flowers and picked on up. He shook them in her face, “from these little shits. But obviously, we’ve both in contact with them…and I know I’ve thought about it a lot lately, but clearly, I haven’t killed myself. And clearly neither have you.”

She sat and thought about what this meant. She knew it was the flowers once she was given time to think about it. Why else would they have been such an important memory or such a big deal to Finch. She knew there was something special about them and since whatever was making people kill themselves would have to be something no one would be able to uncover, it made sense that it would be something ‘outside.’ Her face was completely expressionless.

“I just thought you would want to know…” Finch hadn’t thought past telling her. Clearly it had not convinced her to get up and try life again. He walked over to where she sat and tossed the flowers at her feet. “She’s just going to sit here in a pool of her own self-pity until she dies. There’s nothing more to do here,” he thought to himself.

Without any more words, he left.

She closed her eyes.

But his smell, it changed to smell like that flower. I don’t smell like it. Maybe I’m immune and he wasn’t…

What if they had tried to kill me, but they just couldn’t.

What if they hadn’t mean to kill Jack, what if it was meant for me?

She had no idea what anything was anymore, what she was. Was she even real? She closed her eyes and waited for something. Anything. When nothing happened she decided she’d walk. Walk deep into the wilderness and find some clarity.

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