I wonder sometimes, would a thing already messed could become worse?

Would a fruit already rotten,
dissapear into dust?

Would a person already hurt....
experience betrayals more corrupt.

~ from Axel's notes

--------᪥-------

☘︎ Axᴇʟ Hᴇʀɴᴀɴᴅᴇᴢ ☘︎

Impulse.

It is something one should never act on.

But more often than not, we find ourselves doing the irrational. Acting without a thought, without a consideration. Becoming a willing fool.

I found myself doing just that; letting Eve rest on me the other night, holding her close until she awoke. Getting into the pool, touching her, feeling the softness of her skin under my fingertips, just because I couldn't stop myself from being enchanted by the spell she cast.

She was like poetry embodied into a woman; the dusky tone of her skin blending with the aquamarine of the pool waves, the sun peeking between the mountain-tops forging a halo behind her form, the little droplets of water creating a path down her cheekbones, sliding over with a silken pattern from her neck to the valley of her cleavage before disappearing in the water she was immersed in.

I'd never thought myself to be envious of those water droplets trailing down her body, never thought my hands would itch to trace the pattern they created. Then she'd thrown back her head, exposing the column of her throat and her laugh was akin to the gentle hum of a bird in early morning. So peaceful, it bought a smile to your face. Her entire presence affected me in that moment in a way I wasn't really sure I objected, in a way that made me want to do impulsive things.

Just the way I felt during the. . .gunshot.

It happened in an event of sudden notice. I could feel my lips curving into an amused smile at the handicraft bracelets, I could sense the strange warmth encapsulate my heart in its lilting muse and then I saw the red beam of laser light pointed right at her throat. There was none on Tori when I'd taken a quick, alert glance. But there was one on her.

I didn't think, I didn't stop to wonder why everything in my being had stilled with terror, why I even cared. I'd simply acted. I'd simply lunged.

The runaway was on the ground in a matter of seconds, my arms holding her down, pinning her wrists to the floor and my body shielding hers. People were screaming and scrambling around in the market, stalls held by cloth fell amidst the chaos.

My eyes watched Eve's face; her sharp breaths and furrowed brows, the mess of her hair falling into her mouth.

But then her face was blurring in my vision. A dizziness I didn't understand was taking over my nerves, a feverish heat elgulfing my body. I tried to hold up, tried to keep covering her in case there were to be more gunshots, but there was something. . .wrong.

I see the runaway's brown eyes widen in my hazy sight and there are emotions I've never seen on her face before; shock, horror and panic. Then her eyes glaze over and all those emotions dissipate until her face is a sheet of white mask-as if she's thinking of something else, as if she's not here, as if she's teleported to another place on another day with a similar situation.

I don't understand why I want to ask her what it is she is reminiscing, I don't understand why I want to know if it was terrible, I don't understand why I want to tell her that sometimes this happens to me too. That I too get transported to a memory I do not wish to recall. . .

Before I can muster up the words though, my eyes droop shut and I'm falling-limbs loosing balance and my weight crashing on her.

....

☘︎ Eᴠᴇ Kᴀᴠɪɴsᴋʏ ☘︎

Blood.

His blood on my hands.

The realization that it was there because he tried to save me.

It triggered a memory.

A memory I didn't want to remember. A memory that made me want to scream. A memory that reminded me of someone who had done the same for me once and suffered the consequences. Grave and horrifying consequences.

It was like I was at two places at the same time; Axel's blood seeped from his clothes, staining the skin of my hands crimson the same way Kai's had. . .

◇◇◇

"You're bleeding, Kai Park. What did he do to you in the torture chamber?" Shaking him to snap out of it, the sound of my voice was stony like the little cell we were in.

From the cell across the isolated corridor, the eight-year-old twins Meri and Zia, were watching us silently-their hands gripping the iron rods, both of their one eyes missing but the other one focused on us. Michael was sitting on the cemented floor with his knees upto his chin, a sadistic smile on his lips as he observed the frustrated desperacy in my actions while I tried to get a word out of Kai. It wasn't anything new for them, but they liked watching other's sufferings because we were all sick in the head.

Kai's usually soft and straight brown hair was wet with blood, as though his head was banged against something hard multiple times. His hazel eyes were unfocused, lost in a world only he knew.

"Did Bartholomew bang your head against a wall?" I asked for the fifth time, trying to locate where the bleeding was coming from.

I was angry, I wanted to hurt someone, something. I wanted to bang Bartholomew's head against a wall and watch his skull shatter, I wanted to cackle at the sound of the crack.

Kai doesn't answer for hours. But he settles down on the floor, keeps staring off at a wall and mumbling,"We're all going to burn."

"Kai Park, do you want to preach us on how we're all going to hell, is that it?" Michael commented from the next cell, his lilting voice making the taunt sound more menacing and degrading. He was laughing through his words even though there was no sound. Michael was the most unhinged one out of us, sometimes I think he's even worse than me.

"We're going to burn." Kai says again on autopilot, like he's repeating the words someone-Bartholomew-whispered into his ears, "Our skin will melt, our blood will seep, the pain will be so strong not even prayers will save us, we'd be black dust in a matter of minutes. Gone. Just gone."

I was sitting beside him on the floor now, trying to identify the strange unsettling feeling in my gut as I watch the pool of blood surrounding his hunched form. I couldn't figure out why my hands were shaking, why when the blood slides further and sticks to my palms flattened against the floor, I want to snatch it away. It was fine to bleed this much, wasn't it? No one told us how much one could bleed before they die.

"Kai, I want to kill them all." I say staring up at the ceiling. We couldn't die without making them burn.

Kai snaps out of whatever trance he was in at my declaration. His breathing quickens and he's in front of me in a second, his blood-soaked hair in his eyes, the crimson liquid leaking onto his face and making his usually soft asian features turn into a morbid portrait. Gripping my shoulders, he speaks frenetically, "You have to get out of here. They're going to burn us all down."

"He's lost it. Finally." The tone of Michael's absolute satisfaction nicks me in the gut.

No. Kai has to remain the only sane one out of us. For all of our sakes.

"They're leaving! In the torture chamber, I overhead something. We're in a place called North Korea and something went awry with the agreement these people had with the government here! So they're going to lock this place up and burn everything and everyone in it! You have to get out of here!" The distraught expression on his face is so pure, for the first time a flicker of awareness seeps into my soul.

But then Kai Park's eyes roll back and he's falling on top of me, his blood coating my hands from his clothes.

"I told them I was the one who put the acid in Pugsley's eardrop. But they know it wasn't me. You have to. . ." The last word he mutters in my ear before loosing consciousness is, "Run."

◇◇◇

"Snap out of it!" Someone was shaking me.

I couldn't focus. My sight was stuck on the place of that memory, on that desolate cell. On Kai's bleeding body on me. On the fact that they hurt him because he took the blame in my stead.

Just like how Axel took the bullet in my stead.

With a gasp leaving my mouth, the surroundings clear to the present. Victoria has her hands on my shoulders, jolting me to get out of my delusion. Yuvraj held an unconscious Axel up against him. Right, he was shot.

Focus, Eve.

I spring up on my feet, shaking my head to get the residue of the memory out and rush to Axel's side. Looping an arm around his torso, I let his limp head rest on my shoulder, making sure I don't put pressure on his left shoulder where it bled the most profusely.

"Get the car, we're leaving. Contact the doctors at the resort." There's an icy undertone to my voice I couldn't shake off. For an instant, I felt like the dark and demented Daisy from that place but I couldn't get myself to be wary.

Yuvraj goes to do as said, while Victoria helps me hold Axel up. I can hear the shallow beating of his heart but my mind feels numb, "Find whoever did this." I state, watching the chaos around us, not daring to sneak a glance at Axel.

This wasn't supposed to happen again.

"I will." Victoria's voice is as lethal as it could get and at that moment, I know we share the same thought.

The person who did this, they were going to suffer ten times worse.

....

Trust is a fickle thing-never consistent, never easily given.

Which is particularly why, back in the resort, Tori and I sit in the master bedroom to monitor every move of the doctors and nurses as they work on Axel. I force myself to watch the way they remove the bullet etched deep under his left shoulder blade, I force myself to watch every flinch and sharp breath and half-concious groans while the procedure continues.

By the time they're done and gone, it's nearly night and there's something dark creeping into my soul.

The paleness on Axel's face, the silence resonating in the room and the immobile way he lay there, makes me clench my fists, the nails creating crescents inside my palm. He acted emotionless most of the times, but he'd never looked so pallid. He barely spoke but he'd never gone so mum against his will. The tantalizing action of his body captured your attention everytime he moved, but now he was there on the bed motionless.

He shouldn't have taken that bullet in my stead. It wasn't meant for him.

Anger boils under my skin, pulling me down into that deranged place I am at when I'm Daisy. I try to remember appa's advice telling me to not snap, but there's a void hole in that reasoning all of a sudden.

"Did you find who it was?" I ask menacingly soft, keeping my eyes on Axel, surveying the way his bare chest moves up and down as he breathes, the way the monitors beep in tune with his heartbeat. He's just a feet away from me on the bed but I can't bring myself to touch him knowing why he's unconscious right now. The doctors said it'd take him hours to wake up. Hours.

Victoria dictates her progress with a calculated calmness, "There wasn't any cameras in the market place. But I always carry a device that hacks the microphones of every electronic in 100 meter radius. So I'm surveying through those audios and trying to locate the device that has the highest volume frequency of the gunshot. That way, we know where the sound of the gunshot was most strong, the electronic device either belonged to the shooter or the people close to the shooter. I'll hack into the device of that microphone once I find it and then locate the person. It might take a while."

My fist clench harder, but I try to distract my mind how appa had thought me to when I'm spiralling; Talk about things unrelated to the issue at hand.

Glancing at Victoria's form on the couch next to the window with her laptop on her lap, I question absent-mindedly, "Why do you keep that device? The one that hacks into people's microphones?"

Victoria gazes up at me for a fleeting second before focusing back on the laptop screen, "You forget there are people who want to hurt Uncle Xel and me too."

"Why?" I follow the movement of her snake as it coils in her hair before slithering down to her shoulder, lapping it's tongue against her neck.

Victoria looks at me again but this time her gaze remains, "Uncle Xel's parents are criminals. My parents are criminals. My parents might be wrongly accused, but Xel's weren't. His parents massacred children in the name of cultic rituals, they were messed in the head and refused to accept it. Those families whose children they killed, they're after every living Hernandez. Everyone knows this after a little digging with the french society. How come you do not know this?"

That was the million dollar question. . .did I not know?

"How long will it take?" I opt to bring the matter at hand, giving up on distracting my mind.

Victoria goes silent for a minute, proceeding to answer monotically, "Fifteen minutes. But we cannot be sure about how they look."

I have a suspicion on who it could be. But it didn't make sense. No one knows how Daisy looks like.

"Well well, ladies, what if I said I saw the face of the shooter?"

The flirtatious drawl of a masculine voice has me snapping my eyes to the window. To the tall frame clad in dark sweatshirt and jeans, crouched on the window sill with his head bowed, a black cap shielding his face from view.

Victoria watches him with narrowed eyes, her snake perking up to watch the intruder as well. Neither of us stir, waiting for the other to make a move.

I slump back against the bed's headboard, a sigh of exasperation escaping my lips, "I knew it was you."

The guy with the cap who collided into Vicky in the market, I knew he seemed alarmingly familiar.

Despite his silhouette blending with the shadows, I see the trickster's smile on his lips, illuminated by the flicker of moonlight peeking through the window. He lifts his cap and messes his hair in the front, even though the moment he lets go, they fall against his cheekbones. Those Romano's blend of charcoal and grey irises twinkle in mischief.

But Nikolai Romano isn't looking at me, his cunning eyes and cheshire cat grin is directed towards Victoria, "We finally meet, Venom X."

--------᪥♔︎᪥-------

VENOM X?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, NIKOLAI?! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING HERE?!👀

Who do y'all think is the shooter?

I dropped a Lil bit of a hint in the chapter, did anyone happen to find it? Any theories?👀

(P. S. I know Eve's emotions seem a bit off in this chapter, like some block-your-feelings-with-negative-ones switch went on inside her-but it's supposed to be like that. Give her a lil bit time-like this chapter-and it'll all hit her at once and maybe then we'll get to see something spicy?🌚)

BUT WE GOTTA END THAT SHOOTER FIRST.

There wasn't much happening in this chapter but I hope you enjoyed!

Anyways, next update will be on Friday, since it'll be a bit long. If I can manage, I'll try to update sooner but don't keep up hopes🏃‍♀️