The Facility

Her sleep was filled with quasi-nightmares. More than dreams but less than full blown nightmares of dark men chasing her, trying to kill her. That was not the bad part. The bad part was that instead of her, they were the ones who were dying. She was turning the tables on them and killing them one-by-one and enjoying it.

It was not just any kind of killing; it was slow, painful, even torturous ways of death that she was inflicting on them. It was if the darkness had overtaken her and her powers were feeding off of it.

The tables turned and she was chasing them now; hunting them down; breaking limbs to immobilize them before doing even darker things, before finally killing them.

Someone grabbed her by the arm, pulling her, and she pushed out. Her arm was pulled, causing her to twist and pain shot out of her hip. She opened her eyes in time to see Rudi tumble away off the seat in front of her, followed by some thuds and some mild cursing.

“Told you not to wake her,” Gemma said.

Cass sat up, peering over the seat, finding Maggie twisted around in the passenger seat, trying to help up a twisted, mostly prone Rudi.

He looked at her and said, “What the hell?”

“Rudi, I am so sorry,” Cass told him. “I was having a bad dream and… well, it was just bad timing I guess.”

Gemma snickered. “See, should have listened to me, smart boy.”

Cass ignored Gemma. “Are you okay?” she asked Rudi. She was worried that she had hurt a friend and that brought back memories from the dream. She was not like Hugo and his cronies. It probably would not be hard to kill them all and get revenge for killing her mom, but as much as she might want that, she could not. Doing that would make her a monster and give those types of people an excuse for hunting her.

Not only that, she did not think she could live with herself, taking lives just because she could. If she did that, she would become a target to be killed or captured, and she was not invincible.

Even looking over her shoulder all the time, somehow they would get her. Chances were good that she could not just disappear. They would find her eventually, no matter what.

For now, all she could do was try to protect her friends and herself the best she could and remember she was a good person.

Maggie interrupted her thoughts. “Hon, does any of this look familiar?”

Cass blinked and then looked around. Scanning the area through the tinted windows, a gleam of recognition lit up her eyes.

Putting an arm around Gemma and Rudi, who was back in his seat now, she said, “Yeah. We’re close now. Maybe twenty minutes away.”

Her heart beat a little faster and she did not know if it was because of her dreams, her almost hurting Rudi, or because she was almost home.

A home that would be empty except for memories.

Cass gave Lyle directions through the city, and back out through rural areas until nature seemed to have taken over again except for the road they were on.