Chapter Fourteen

Chapter 14

I Want to Die

Shiho's POV

Akemi hadn't come back from the robbery yesterday afternoon. I was still pacing, pacing, pacing, in my lab, restless from worry. Eventually, I fell into slumber at some point. I woke to the sound of a newspaper slammed onto my lab table. I saw a flash of white teeth and silver hair. "Gin…"

"Front page, take a look at the picture." I looked at the photo of Akemi, dead. Shot through the chest, death by collapsed lung. Other culprit has not yet been apprehended.

"No way," I whispered, shocked. "Not possible!" My voice rose to a scream. "She can't be dead, she can't be! She said she would come back! She told me that!"

"There's no room for traitors in this Organization," Gin whispered cruelly. "If she was that willing to desert, then she might as well die. I have the gun in question right here." He pulled a handgun out of his pocket, black and deadly.

"You bastard…" I growled through my teeth. "You dirty son of a-" His hand clamped over my mouth, and I felt someone tie my hands behind my back.

"Nice entrance, Vodka," he commented to his comrade. "A couple of days without food or drink should take care of your attitude, right?"

He snapped his fingers, and Vodka started dragging me out of the room. A gag was stuffed in my mouth, so it became impossible to scream all the swears that I wanted to. I tried to kick Vodka, and make him let go, but to no avail. A fist smacked into the top of my head, and I fell unconscious…

I woke up in a dark room, filthy and disgusting, handcuffed to a railing that ran against the wall. I pulled on it, and tried to unlock it, but I knew it wasn't going to be that simple. Ow… My arm stung as I tried to pull again. I pulled back the sleeve to reveal a streak of ugly bruises running down the length of my arm.

Now, with no one to be angry at, my fury turned to sorrow, and soon enough I was crying. Akemi was dead. She was really dead. She wasn't coming back to me. Not ever.

"Give me liberty, or give me death." I never thought that she would actually go that far. That she would actually die to try to free herself, and free me. And she never would have thought that the robbery was actually a plan to kill her off. Akemi almost always saw the best in people, and tried to avoid what was bad. Always, always, always...

Hmm? I felt a foreign object under my legs. What's this? It was the newspaper that Gin had slammed in my face and locked into my prison. His idea of a torturous joke. I examined it more closely now, trying to remember my sister. There was a girl holding her hand, crying. The captions named her Mouri Ran. Where had I heard that name before?

I thought back to the newspaper that Gin had slammed on my desk almost a week before, a caption highlighting the death of the famous high school detective, and the girl among the grieving. How interesting, both her and I were victims of Gin's cruelty. I wondered how it must feel, losing a boyfriend. It couldn't be nearly as bad as losing a sister, the only person who had ever mattered to me.

Our parents were long dead, killed in an accident over ten years before. I hadn't even gotten a chance to know them, so when they died, it didn't even hit me hard. But now, I wasn't so sure. The iron cage I had locked my heart in was starting to break, and once it did, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I didn't want to escape my prison. I wanted to escape the world.

They should to change it to, 'Give me liberty, and give me death.' I thought. If you really want to be free, the only way is to die, right? To escape this stupid place, and move on to whatever's out there.

I knew what to do next. With my free hand, I reached into the hidden pocket of my lab jacket to reveal the poison I kept inside. "APTX 4869…" I whispered to myself. Akemi would be against this. She'd tell me to live on, if not for myself, for her. But she wasn't here anymore, was she?

I lifted it up to my mouth, and hesitated. Would it hurt? How would it feel? Would I join Akemi? Stop! I cleared my mind before I had chance to change it. If I thought too far, I wouldn't have the courage to swallow the poison. Placing it on my tongue, I gnawed open the capsule with my teeth, and swallowed the contents. Nearly immediately, I felt the change.

The world seemed to be shaking, like there was an earthquake. My head pounded furiously with pain as my heart raced faster and faster. The air seemed to become thinner, and my lungs didn't seem able to process it. I started to regret my decision, until I heard the hallucination of my sister in my ear. Shiho… That was right. I'd join her. Nothing to be afraid of.

The pain was nearly overwhelming now, and the last of my breath was being gathered for one last shriek of torture. "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" I screamed, as my heart felt like it was being wrenched apart. Then silence.

Was I dead? The pain had stopped, so why was I still in my prison cell?