Chapter 64: The Wheels
Smoke fills my lungs as Boston burns in front of me. The skyline I know so well is engulfed in flames, buildings crumbling like sandcastles as fire consumes everything. People run screaming through the streets, their faces contorted in terror as the inferno chases them.
“What the fuck is happening right now?” I mutter, standing in the middle of the chaos yet untouched by the flames licking at my feet.
A figure emerges from the wall of fire ahead, walking calmly through the inferno as if taking a Sunday stroll. The silhouette resolves into a woman in a black suit, red tie, and crisp white shirt. My breath catches in my throat.
“Candice?”
She stops a few feet from me, and I can see her clearly now. Three bullet holes mar her body, one between her eyes and two in her chest. Blood pours from the wounds in thick rivulets, but she doesn’t seem bothered by it. Her expression is calm, almost curious.
“Oh, so I look like Candice to you, eh?” She glances down at herself, examining the suit and the blood with mild interest. “Hmm.”
Before I can respond, she claps her hands once. The sound echoes impossibly loud, and suddenly, the burning city vanishes. We’re standing in an endless expanse of white nothingness, stretching infinitely in all directions. No floor, no ceiling, no walls, just white.
I sigh, the realization hitting me like a truck.
“Oh fuck, I just got kidnapped by Luna.”
I go to run my hands through my hair in frustration, then freeze. My hands, my broken, mangled hands, are whole again. I flex my fingers in amazement, turning my palms up and down, making fists and spreading my fingers wide. No pain. No deformity. Just normal, functioning hands.
“They work here,” I whisper, wiggling my fingers in disbelief.
Candice watches me with an amused expression. “Of course they do. This is a dream.”
I look up sharply. “I’m dreaming?”
She smiles, and it’s Candice’s warm, maternal smile, but there’s something else behind it, something ancient and knowing that makes my skin prickle.
“Something like that,” she says, walking a circle around me. The bullet holes in her head and chest continue to bleed, but the blood vanishes before it hits the white non-floor.
“Who are you?” I ask, my voice echoing strangely in this white void.
Candice tilts her head, her smile growing smugger by the second. “Who do you think I am, Adam?”
I stare at her for a long moment, studying her. My chest tightens with grief and guilt so overwhelming it threatens to crush me. Without thinking, I step forward and wrap my arms around her, burying my face against her shoulder.
“I imagine you’re the manifestation of all my guilt for getting Candice killed,” I mumble against the fabric of her suit, which smells like nothing at all. “And I want you to know is, I’m so fucking sorry. She was innocent. She was kind to me. And now she’s dead because of me.”
Candice gently pushes me away, holding me at arm’s length. Her eyes sparkle with amusement.
“Nope,” she says simply. “I’m the one who switched you from your world to this one.”
I blink several times, trying to process her words through my dream-addled brain. “Wait, what?”
“You heard me,” she replies, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
I groan, dragging my newly functional hands down my face. “Then why not just say that from the start? Why all this cryptic bullshit?”
She throws her head back and laughs, the sound echoing endlessly in the white void. “Because it’s funny!”
“Funny?” I sputter, my voice rising with indignation. “You think this is funny? My life has been a living hell since I got here! I’ve been tortured, drugged, broken, and now kidnapped by a psychopath who probably wants to murder me!”
Candice grimaces, her brow furrowing as she looks at me with something almost like guilt. “Yeah, you really caught the short end of that stick. That’s my bad.”
I stare at her, processing this casual admission.
“So what now? Are you going to save me? Send me back to my world?” I ask, desperation creeping into my voice despite my efforts to sound calm.
She shakes her head, looking genuinely regretful. “I can’t right now. It’s... complicated.”
I sigh heavily, throwing my hands up in frustration. “Then why are we even talking? What’s the point of this whole dream sequence if you’re not going to help me?”
Candice gives me an irritated look, crossing her arms over her chest as the blood continues to flow from her wounds. “No one ever has questions for me. It’s so annoying.”
“Fine. Here’s a question,” I snap, anger finally boiling over. “Why did you choose to ruin my life? Out of all the people in all the worlds, why pick me to throw into this hellscape?”
Candice’s face breaks into a smile that spans too wide for a human face, stretching unnaturally at the corners until it looks almost painful.
“You know what’s funny, Adam?” she asks, her voice suddenly echoing like it’s coming from every direction at once. “You were always into those reverse rape stories. Those novels where the gender roles were flipped. The ones where men were pursued, dominated, controlled.”
“Those were just fantasies,” I lie. “Just stories I read online. Not something I wanted in real life!”
“And yet,” she says, spreading her arms wide to encompass the infinite white space around us, “here you are, living one out in perfect detail.”
“This is bullshit!” I slam my fist against my chest. “You think this is what I wanted? To be tortured? To have my hands smashed with a hammer? To watch innocent people die?”
Candice tilts her head, studying me with eyes that suddenly seem too deep, too knowing. “But don’t you love Caterina?” she asks softly.
The question hits me like a punch to the gut. “It’s... complicated,” I mutter.
She circles me slowly, her feet making no sound on the non-existent floor. “She’s everything you’ve ever wanted,” Candice continues. “Beautiful. Powerful. Possessive. Dangerous. The perfect domme you used to fantasize about before you came here. A yandere to the very core.”
“That’s not…”
“Don’t you love Caterina?” she asks again, but this time, her voice seems to multiply, echoing from a hundred different directions, as if an entire crowd is asking me the same question simultaneously. The pressure builds in my chest like something inside me is struggling to break free.
I drop to my knees, clutching my head as the question reverberates through my skull. “Don’t you love Caterina? Don’t you love Caterina? Don’t you love Caterina?”
“STOP!” I scream, but the voices continue, drilling into my brain with merciless intensity.
Something inside me cracks, a dam breaking under too much pressure. The truth spills out before I can stop it.
“Yes!” I gasp, tears streaming down my face. “Yes, I love her! I love being around her, feeling her attention on me, being the center of her world!”
The voices go silent, leaving only my ragged breathing echoing in the white void. I look up at Candice, who’s watching me with an expression of smug satisfaction.
I bury my face in my hands, the weight of my confession crushing me. “But I’m not stupid. I know it’s just Stockholm syndrome.”
Candice snorts, crossing her arms over her bullet-riddled chest. “Who cares what it is? It’s real, Adam. Most people in this world never find love at all. Aren’t you lucky?”
I leap to my feet, suddenly furious. “Lucky? LUCKY? I’ve been kidnapped by a crazy Latina who’s probably going to torture me to death!”
Candice sighs heavily, her shoulders slumping with what looks almost like genuine disappointment. “Yeah, that really sucks,” she admits, looking away.
As she turns, I hear her mutter under her breath, “At least Claire will be important again soon.”
“My stupid fucking not-wife wife?”
Candice’s head snaps back toward me, her eyes widening slightly before her expression smooths over. “Nothing,” she says too quickly. “I didn’t say anything.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “What are you hiding?”
“Look, I’ll make you a deal, okay?” She starts pacing in a circle around me again. “If you die early, which, let’s be real, is looking pretty likely with Luna, I’ll let you choose a different world to move to.”
The offer hangs between us. I consider it for a moment, this strange bargain from this even stranger being.
“What if I want to just die, die?” I ask. “You know, actual death. Oblivion. The big sleep.”
Her face scrunches up like I’ve suggested putting ketchup on filet mignon. “That’s boring,” she says flatly. “Honestly, Adam, where’s your sense of adventure?”
A distant sound catches my attention, a metallic rattling like chains being dragged across concrete. It’s faint but growing louder by the second.
“What’s that?” I ask, suddenly nervous.
Her expression shifts to something like regret. “Sorry, it’s time for you to go,” she says, stepping toward me. “Luna’s women are moving you.”
“Wait, I still have quest…”
But Candice doesn’t wait. She places her palm against my chest and pushes. It’s a gentle motion, but it sends me falling backward into sudden nothingness, the white void opening beneath me like a trapdoor.
As I fall, her voice follows me down: “Oh, and the other Adam is fine! I put him in Skyrim!”
“WHAT THE FUCK?”
A/N: The Wheels