“What is it? Why isn’t she responding?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Does she normally sleep walk?”
“No, not that I’ve seen.”
Watching my girl have a full-on conversation with someone who isn’t really there is freaking me out. I shake her gently but it does nothing to break her out of whatever is happening to her.
“Did she accidently drink some kind of mixture?” I ask Tony.
“I didn’t bring anything that could have this effect.” Tony says.
“Just give her something to make her wake up,” I demand.
“No. If we don’t know what’s causing her hallucinations, we shouldn’t try to treat her. Mixing the wrong mixtures together causes brain damage in humans,” Isabelle informs us.
“We need to know what she did today,” Jay says.
“She woke up from almost being eaten alive, she interacted with the team, smelled a flower, we talked on top of the cliff…then she came back inside the cave,” I recount.
“Tell me about the flower,” Isabelle says.
“I don’t know it was just some stupid flower. It had white and black dots. I kept thinking ‘it’s so like Emmy to find some good in this Omnis-forsaken place.’”
“What she found wasn’t good at all. The flower you’re describing is called DD: The Deadly Desire rose.”
“What does it do besides making her act crazy?” I ask.
“Once she inhaled its scent, it went inside her. Now its letting her play out her desires. But no matter what the desire is, the ending will always be death. It’s the kind of flower that Kairo would have a whole garden of.”
“How do we snap her out of it?”
“You don’t. You have to let it play out.”
“No! I’m not gonna let Emmy stay inside some crazy dream world,” I protest.
“Isabelle is right. I know a few Sellers who make a killing harvesting the DD’s. You can’t wake up from it. You can only hope that you wake up on your own before…ya know,” Tony adds.
I watch helpless as Emmy takes of her sneakers and walks out into the forest. The team is right beside me. I keep calling out to her although they tell me it’s useless.
Who is she talking to in her dream? What’s happening? Why does she look blissfully happy one minutes and worried the next?
Emmy makes her way towards the edge of the cliff. I stand in her way so she doesn’t go over. Whoever she’s talking to in her mind, just made her feel sad again. She turns away from the cliff and starts to head back to the cave.
Isabelle signals to me that that’s a good sign; Emmy may be pulling herself out of it.
Then without the slightest warning, she turns back and leaps off the side of the cliff. It takes a full second for us realize what Emmy has just done. Everything in me wanted to look down and see what happened; at the same time, I dreaded looking over the edge.
She can’t be gone. Not like this…
I look over the side and she’s hanging on by a branch. The team is talking to me but I can’t hear them. All I know it that I have to go down and get her before she falls. Everything that ever mattered to me was hanging on by a thin branch.
I start to descend down the cliff. I curse Kairo a million times for putting a Vsk at the bottom of the Lake and a force field in the air. I can’t wait to get this guy. I don’t give a damn how the Council punishes me.
I’m only a few feet away from her when I hear the sound of wood snapping. It’s followed by an earth-shattering cry from below. Emmy has fallen.
There is absolutely no way to explain what I’m feeling when I see her in freefall. It’s like someone took the sky away. Nothing makes sense. I don’t reflect on the right course of action. I don’t stop to consult with the team.
I immediately jump after her. I would rather die knowing I tried to save her than live knowing I didn’t.
*************************
As soon as I hit the water, the Vsk churns the lake in a funnel-like motion. It pulls me under with its powerful undercurrent. It is almost impossible to see anything other than swirls of discarded Angel and human body parts. But if I can somehow spot Emmy, maybe I can get her far enough away so that she can escape. I know the likelihood that she has survived this far is small but I can’t give up on her.
The strength of the Vsk nearly pulls my wings apart. I’m going deeper and deeper into the darkness. I fight to keep from being dragged to the floor of the lake where a mangled future awaits me.
I just need to stay alive long enough to find her.
I swim as far as I can and still no sight of Emmy. I turn the opposite direction and swim out, no sign of her. Finally, I can no longer avoid the Vsk. It pulls me into its center. I’m sucked up into darkness too deep to be natural.