Chapter 100 100
Annabeth's POV:
White.
That was the first thing I noticed. White ceiling, white walls, white floor...
So bright it hurt my eyes, these fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like angry insects, and for a second I didn't know where I was or how I got here or why everything felt so wrong.
I sat up too fast and my head exploded with pain, this sharp stabbing thing behind my eyes that made me want to vomit. My body felt heavy, wrong, like someone had filled my veins with cement while I was unconscious. How long had I been out? Hours? Days?
The room was small. Maybe ten feet by ten feet, no windows, no furniture except the metal cot I was lying on and a toilet in the corner with no seat. The walls were smooth, no cracks, no seams, nothing I could use. The door was solid steel with a small rectangular window at eye level, too thick to break through.
I was wearing different clothes. Gray scrubs, rough cotton, no shoes. Someone had changed me while I was unconscious and the thought made my skin crawl, made me want to tear the fabric off my body.
But none of that mattered. None of it.
Because where Kaelen should have been, there was nothing.
I reached for the bond the way I'd been doing for weeks now, that automatic gesture like reaching for your phone in your pocket or brushing hair from your face. It should have been there. That warm pulse of his presence, his emotions bleeding into mine, the constant background hum that told me he was alive and thinking of me.
Nothing.
Just... nothing. Silence. A void where he used to be.
"Kaelen?" I said out loud, my voice cracking on the word. Stupid. He couldn't hear me. But I said it anyway, like maybe speaking his name would bring him back, would fill that horrible emptiness in my chest. "Kaelen, please. Please answer me."
Silence. The fluorescent lights buzzed. My heart was beating too fast, so fast I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, everywhere.
I closed my eyes and reached harder. Pushed past the fog in my brain, past the heaviness in my limbs, searching for any trace of him. A whisper. A flicker. Anything.
The bond was gone.
Not blocked. Not muffled. Gone. Like someone had reached into my chest and ripped out the part of me that connected to him. Like he'd never existed at all.
No. No no no no no.
I remembered it then. All of it. The harpoon punching through his back, the tip exploding out of his chest in a spray of red. Him screaming, not a roar but a scream, the sound of something dying. Him falling. The ground shaking when he hit it. His body shrinking, the metal tearing through him on its way out, and that hole, god, that hole in his chest where I could see things I shouldn't be able to see.
And then they took me. They took me and left him there bleeding in the dirt and the last thing I saw was his hand reaching for me and I couldn't get to him, I couldn't—
"KAELEN!"
I didn't decide to scream. It just came out of me, this raw animal sound that tore my throat and echoed off the white walls. I threw myself at the door and pounded on it with my fists, the metal cold and unyielding under my hands.
"LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT, YOU SONS OF BITCHES!"
Nobody answered. Nobody came.
I kept hitting the door anyway. Kept screaming until my voice went hoarse and my hands started bleeding, skin splitting over my knuckles, leaving red smears on the white surface. The pain felt good somehow. Real. Something to focus on besides the void in my chest.
He was dead. He had to be dead. That's why the bond was gone. That's why I couldn't feel him.
Kaelen was dead and I was alone and they had me and nobody was coming to save me because the only person who would have come was lying in the ruins of a cabin with a hole in his chest and his hand reaching for me and I LEFT HIM THERE.
I slid down the door until I was sitting on the floor, my back against the cold metal, my bloody hands in my lap. The fluorescent lights kept buzzing. My breath came in short gasps that didn't bring enough air.
He was dead.
The words didn't make sense. Couldn't make sense. Kaelen couldn't be dead because he was Kaelen, because he was strong and golden and beautiful and he'd promised me things, stupid things, pancakes at Denny's and a normal life and forever. He couldn't be dead because I loved him and we'd just found each other and the bond had just completed and we were supposed to have TIME.
We were supposed to have so much time.
"Please," I whispered to nobody. To the empty room. To whatever god might be listening even though I'd never believed in any of them. "Please don't let him be dead. Please. I'll do anything. I'll give anything. Just please don't let him be dead."
No answer. Of course no answer. The universe didn't make deals and prayers didn't get answered and Kaelen was dead and I was alone.