Young Writers Society

"There is no option to do the right thing," Jerica breathed, pulling an arrow out of the quiver to give her hands something to fiddle with. She brushed the fletching with her fingertips. "If I don't do what they say, then something worse happens. He always makes it so much worse than it needs to be."

"So do you always listen?" Evaline pressed. "Do you always follow orders?"

"No!" Jerica snapped. "That's why he was pissed at me. 'Cause you can't go back and force me to torture someone to death if they're already dead."

Evaline wanted to keep prying. "Who was the scout? Did you know him?" she asked.

Jerica didn't like this game. And she didn't like how nosy Eve was getting. So she abruptly asked instead, "What were you doing before you woke up here?"

Evaline sighed. It seemed she had pushed too much, but she did expect Jerica to eventually turn the question back on her. She decided to give her the same level of detail she gave her.

"I was in my room all day," she answered. "A friend came to visit me. She left, and after a few hours, I fell asleep. And then I woke up here. That's all. I don't see how that could be connected to your story, so they may not be related at all."

"Was anything out of the ordinary going on with your friend?" Jerica asked. "Why did they come over?"

Evaline decided to not overthink it, giving surface-level answers. "Not really. She wanted to see me. Is that a crime?"

"Never said it was." Jerica shrugged. "Only seems fair for you to tell me, since I told you why Biryn atta--" she coughed. "Was pissed at me."

Evaline glanced over at her, raising a brow in suspicion. "Attacked you?" she corrected.

"I mean..." That one was her own fault. She shrugged, uncomfortable, and looked down at the arrow, brushing her fingertips across the edge of the blade. "Making things better for other people means making them much worse for me... it's just how things work." She shrugged again. "It's whatever."

"You know, for an assassin, you're very emotional," Evaline said, not caring if it came out blunt. She slightly turned her head to gauge her reaction.

"Oh, yes, it's very emotional to acknowledge reality, my bad." Jerica rolled her eyes, feeling herself shutting down. Fine. She'd been trying to make things more pleasant between them, but if Eve wanted to continue being a bitch, Jerica could play that game.

Evaline's patience was depleted, instead being replaced by exhaustion. If this entire experience was some kind of trap, she stopping caring. Maybe it wasn't so bad. Maybe she could entertain it. Maybe she could find her own answers.

"Sometimes it is," she said nonchalantly. "To do a job like that, you have to set your emotions aside. Don't you do that when executing? Or do you do it in spite of the guilt and shame?"

"You're setting up a false dichotomy," Jerica muttered with a deep sigh. "You dissociate during and feel guilty later. You can't dissociate forever, it catches up to you eventually."