Ah, late update. I apologize. It took me a bit to find lyrics for this part. I had three I kept exchanging between, but that's not why it took so long.

Anyway, Simon goes a little bit emo in this chapter. Excuse that.

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Part Six

But you can't ignore the undertow
Is at your neck;
It will eat you if you aren't strong enough.
I'll take over;
Sleep is harder than angels to come across,
And you've been breaking promises
With the risk of losing it all.
-"This Is Not Glorious"

The motel was near the old burned building we had arrived from, so we walked to it in the bitter cold once Adam had finished my food. We were all silent as we went, but my mind was completely blank. About a block from the building, I almost fell over as an almost overwhelming wave of guilt, pain, confusion, frustration, fear, panic, and a host of other emotions came over me. I hadn't realized I was feeling that many things, but as the shrouds over my emotions were jerked away, the pain became physical and I flung out a hand to support myself against a chain link fence.

"Simon?" Dani said, laying a hand on my shoulder. I heard Adam's footsteps stop and approach me, but my eyes were clamped shut so tightly I thought they would never open again.

"It hurts," I gasped as I doubled over, my fingers still wrapped around the links of the fence, moving my arm above my head at an almost painful angle. The Vaeden twins waited in silence while I took multiple breaths in an attempt to salve the pain; Danielle rubbed my back, and I sensed Adam knelt before me, looking up at my face.

"Are you okay?" Adam asked gently. The fence creaked as my grip on it loosened; my jaw loosened, and I slowly opened my eyes as the pain subsided substantially. My head still pounded, and my arms and legs tingled, but I pulled my fingers out of the fence and moved around Adam. I didn't think I had it in me to speak coherently, and I didn't feel like trying.

"Stay out here," Adam told me when we slowly made our way up the cracked path to the ruined house. "Is this yellow or blue, Dani?"

"No," I objected, the word strong despite my jello-like limbs. Adam's command was the only thing that had managed to penetrate the cloud of emotions filling my head, and I knew my eyes were wide as I looked at him.

"Blue, probably," Danielle replied. She turned to me. "I'll stay with you if you want."

"No. I don't want to be left here." I had the feeling that Adam was looking down on me as he sighed.

"Keep your mouth shut," he said. "Say nothing until I tell you otherwise."

I didn't really plan on it, but I nodded anyway. Adam inserted the key in what was left of the charred doorknob and opened the door to reveal the apartment. We stepped silently inside. I looked around at the room; nothing seemed different upon first glance.

While I stood in the living room with Dani, Adam dropped the book on the sofa and went to the kitchen, returning moments later with a stick of blue chalk in his hand. Drawing directly on the white carpet, he drew an isosceles triangle, pointing toward him. Around it, he drew a circle, about a yard in diameter. Then, the thickness of the carpet not messing him up, he wrote in a straight line down the center of the triangle, finishing with a symbol similar to a star in each corner. I couldn't read what the writing said; not only because I was looking at it upside-down, but because it wasn't in the Roman alphabet: the symbols weren't Chinese or Japanese or Arabic, but something else that I couldn't place.

I looked over at Danielle. She was watching her brother work, her mouth closed. When I returned my eyes to Adam's drawing, my jaw dropped. A tangle of wires and small grey devices sat in the middle of the triangle. Adam looked rather pleased with himself, on his knees before the point of the triangle.

"Simon, close your mouth," he said, looking up at me; "There's a draft."

"Is that all of them?" Danielle asked, sitting opposite her brother on the carpet and picking through the mess. I moved beside her and knelt.

"What was that?" My voice sounded strangled for some reason.

"Welcome to the remnants of Ricktenbāk," Adam said. He picked up a camera from the pile and pointed it at me. "Smile."

Making a disgruntled noise, I stood and began moving around the room. "Is it safe in here now?" I asked.

"Dani'll modify the spell on our key. We should be safe then." He dropped the camera on the pile. "They should be by the chair."

"What?"

"The letters. They're what you want to see, right?" He didn't look as unhappy with his gift as Danielle did. "They're by the chair I was sitting in."

"No, they're not," I said, moving to look there. As I pulled my scarf from the front of my coat, I knelt and looked around the general area of the chair. Then I stood and spun around slowly, looking around the whole room. "They aren't here at all. Why aren't they here? Where are they?" I was looking around frantically.

"Calm down, Simon," Adam said, standing with his sister and moving around the sofa to help me look for the letters. "They're around here somewhere."

"You had them by the chair, right?" Danielle confirmed, moving pillows when the letters obviously weren't there.

My eyes fell on their book while I searched around the sofa. "You got you book but not my letters?" I said flatly. Then I yelled: "You got your fucking book but left my letters here?" They both stopped and looked at me. "You knew someone was coming in here and you just left them in here? Jesus fucking Christ, I thought you needed them, if you don't care at all about their sentimental value to me."

Danielle stepped toward me. "Simon—"

"Don't 'Simon' me." The pain in my head escaladed with every word I yelled. "I want to go home. Take me home."

"You're angry, Simon," Adam said over me. "You're just saying that. We'll find the letters."

"And how do you suppose we do that?" My head felt like it was on fire. "You don't know who was in here."

"If you want to go, then go." He gave his twin a look that silence her objection, then looked back at me as I turned and headed for the door. Gripping the doorknob tightly, I opened the door and felt a rush of warm air enter as a bright sun cast its rays inside. It wasn't Maine; there wasn’t a single flake of snow to be seen anywhere. Instead, there were dust-colored walls and an all-around Western feel to the place.

I slammed the door, turning on Adam. "Give me the key," I demanded.

He pulled it from his pocket and dangled it in front of his face. "Come get it if you want it that bad." He tucked it into his pocket again.

Back when Elijah was alive, I had never been one to get into fights, but with my current mood and the disorientation from my pounding head, I lunged at Adam. It was probably my lack of experience that led to him dodging me. Danielle yelled something as I tripped over the coffee table, sending me clumsily to the floor. Adam's movements showed he wasn't trying to start a real fight, but his eyes belayed the amusement with which he kept away from me.

"Give me the damn key," I said as I pushed myself to my feet again. He circled around the table opposite me, teasing me. I wasn't in my own body any longer. I knew I didn't want to be angry at Adam, but my body wouldn't react to my mental commands to stop.

I hopped across the table and almost knocked Adam backward, my hand simultaneously going for the key in his pocket—but he caught me by the shoulder, spun me around, and gathered my wrists behind my back, twisting them up at a rather painful angle. As I let out a cry of pain, I dropped to my knees to try to better the angle.

Adam kneeled behind me, his right shoulder on the back of my neck. "Think this through, Simon," he hissed into my ear. "You're tired, you're in pain. You're not thinking clearly. I can guarantee that if you go out that door now, you will regret it when you come around. And we'll be gone. If you don't want our help, that's fine. But you have to live with the knowledge that you passed on an opportunity to get Elijah back."

My shoulders burned, leveling with the pain in my head. I couldn't even feel the point on my knee where it had impacted the corner of the coffee table. "Let go," I gasped, chancing a struggle that sent jolts through my arms. "It hurts—let go."

"Will you calm down and think this through?" His grip on me didn't falter.

"Yes," I said, leaning forward. "Yes, just let go." He released me and stood, and I let my arms fall limply to my sides, staring down at the floor like an ashamed child. That's all I was, really—an ashamed child. The past week had left me a pathetic pile of skin, bones, and muscle, limited to feeling only pain and anger, lost with no place to run to. The silence in the room was overpowering, the pain in my head thundering; I swayed on my knees.

"Why don't you go lay down, Simon?" Danielle said, kneeling beside me and placing a hand on my shoulder. I avoided looking at Adam as I stood and went with Dani, but I could feel his anger and frustration filling the room.

Danielle led me down the hallway to a bedroom. There were two double beds in there, a cherry nightstand to match the bed frame on the outer side of each. I moved to the bed further from the door; the one two feet or so from a curtained window to make room for the nightstand.

"We'll be in the living room if you need us, okay?" She must've taken my silence as a yes, because she went on, "Let me take your things." I pulled off my jacket and scarf, handing them to her; then she left, silently closing the door behind herself.

I slid of my shoes and slid beneath the quilt on top of the bed. I laid on my back as I waited for the pain in my shoulders to simmer down to almost a nothingness, then I rolled toward the window and stared at the objects on the nightstand: A digital clock, a small lamp, and a candle. My eyes drifted closed soon afterwards, and I let myself be taken by sleep.

When I opened my eyes again, I realized as I looked at the clock that I hadn't been asleep at all—simply detached from my own self for a few minutes. I was exhausted—I could feel that. But I couldn't sleep. I don't know why; I just couldn't. Sighing, I stared down at myself.

My eyes caught sight of my hand, which I had unwrapped that morning before Adam and Dani had arrived. I brought to eyelevel and opened my fingers to gaze at my palm. The wound there was healing nicely, but I could see the beginnings of a scar along the outer edges of it. Again, I remembered how good the pain there had felt, and I recalled the color of my own blood.

As with the sight of the blood the day I had fallen on the street, I recalled Elijah's blood. Then my mother's body entered the picture, lying beside Elijah's five stories below me, and I turned to run down the stairs, to deny the inevitable. As I ran down the stairs, they morphed into a spiral staircase, circling around a giant white candle, lit and filling the stairwell with its stereotypical burning scent. I slowed to peer between the bars, which were suddenly over my head as the staircase began to spiral on its own, taking me further down without me moving a single stair one way or the other.

And then, as I screamed in my dream, the bars faded away, replaced by my fingers, the candle on the nightstand framed between my index and middle digits. I had no idea what had just happened to me—was it a dream, a fantasy, what?—but the only thing I was able to focus on was that candle, barely burned, white; pure, clean, good.

I reached out for it, using my other hand to open the drawer in the nightstand. I didn't know what I was looking for until I withdrew a blue butane lighter from the drawer, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I wasn't going to be able to stop what my mind was telling me to do.

Pushing myself up, I propped myself against the headboard, raising my knees for comfort's sake—although I had no idea what comfort was at that moment. Resting my right hand on my lap, I held the candle and the lighter beside it in my left.

I tried the lighter first, pressing the tab to open the valve, igniting the spark and sending a flame out the top of the metal cap. Holding my breath, I moved my palm over the flame, feeling the way it tickled as the shift in the air blew it out. I lit the lighter again and carefully held my hand over the flame. This time I felt the heat; I wasn't anxious or nervous: Just desperate. Why, I have no idea. I knew there were better ways to get through my emotional pain, but I chose to ignore them all.

Letting my breath out in a shuddering breath, I leaned my head back, eyes closed, my mouth open slightly as if I were high—and in a way, I was. I was becoming addicted to harming myself, to feeling the pain that took my mind of everything else. Deep down, I knew I should be frightened, but the fear never registered.

The flame flickered out again without doing much damage to me, and I examined my palm. The skin was red, but the slight sting was fading fast. I picked up the candle, knowing the flame would burn longer on it than on the lighter. Quickly lighting the wick, I put the lighter beside me on the bed, staring wide-eyed at the lit candle. Holding it in my left hand, I moved my right hand around the flame in an orb shape, my palm just out of reach of the flame's heat. Then I closed the gap and gasped, throwing my head back and clenching my teeth as I continued moving my hand around the flame.

My toes curled as my grip tightened on the candle. My palm stung—"burned" would be the better word in a situation where it wouldn't be confused with the flame. My mind raced with memories of my mother and brother, of their lives, of their deaths—watching Elijah fall and looking on in horror as my mother held a knife in her gut until she was too weak to open her eyes.

"What the fuck, Simon?"

I jerked to attention, bringing my palm down to put out the candle as Adam rushed to my side and pried the stick from my hand.

"Do we need to baby-proof the whole fucking apartment?" He grabbed my wrist tightly, twisting my arm so he could see the wound. "Dani!" he called out the door. "Get the first-aid kit."

Scrunching back down on the mattress, I yanked my arm from his grasp and drew it to my chest. Adam grabbed my elbow, struggling to pull my hand back into his view.

"Let go of me," I whined, my voice cutting off. I felt my throat tighten, my eyes closing tightly as I fought for control; I didn't need Adam saying anything else to me.

Luckily, Danielle showed up just then. My momentary weakness as I felt her sit on the bed gave Adam the chance to yank my arm free. His sister took over then, taking my hand gently in hers and flattening my fingers.

"What happened?" she asked as she carefully trailed her finger across the heel of my hand. I couldn't reply; by that time I was crying. I felt Adam reach over me for the candle and lighter, and seeing them must have sated Danielle's curiosity.

"Simon," I heard him say. "Simon, look at me."

I ignored him.

He pushed my shoulder down, causing my torso to twist as he held me flat on the bed. I still refused to look at him. "Look at me," he said, then slapped me. I was too busy crying to feel the sting, but as I calmed down, the searing pain in my hand edged into my senses as Dani treated the wound.

"Let me go!" I whined, struggling beneath his grip.

"Open your damn eyes and look at me," Adam said, and I gave him a sidelong look. "What is your problem, Simon? Why are you doing this to yourself? What does the pain do for you?"

"I like it," I whispered hoarsely, my voice barely audible. I think I knew it would anger Adam even more. I was right—he jammed the heel of his hand into my groin, replacing his hand on my shoulder before I could pull my other shoulder free as I curled into a ball.

"Adam!" Dani objected, her fingers slipping and causing a spasm to run up my arm. "Let him go."

"Hold on, Dani," he said, then turned back to me. "Did you like that?" he asked. "Does that type of pain satisfy you?" He waited for an answer I wasn't going to give. "Why is it so different? Because you can't control it?"

"They hurt," I said, my left arm protecting my groin area. "They hurt, so why shouldn't I?"

"Because you're alive," Adam told me, stern but concerned at the same time. "It was a quick splat for Elijah and your mom was a selfish bitch to leave you and your dad behind."

"At least I know they're dead," I yelled, sitting up, knocking him back into a sitting position. The motion pulled my hand from Danielle's grip, probably undoing all the work she had done on the wound. "At least I know they aren't coming to look for me. You can't even accept that."

"Simon!" Danielle pushed me back down on the bed.

Adam stood form the bed and stepped back a few feet, his face livid. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, voice controlled.

"Ask your dear old sister here," I shouted at him. Danielle was holding me down; my cheeks were wet again, my tears furious. "Ask her about where your parents really are."

Danielle slapped me, causing me to shut up. "Be quiet, Simon. Adam—" She moved as if to go to his side, but stopped when he walked out of the room. Silently, she finished with my hand, seeming not to care about the pain she was putting me through as she cleaned the burn and bandaged it.

"Get some sleep," Adam said when he came into the room. Dani and I both jumped. He fell onto the other bed, a thick book in his hands. "Dani, go write the Order. Tell them Simon's with us." Absently, he flipped through the pages, turning the book upside-down as I rolled away from them. "I'll be out once he's asleep; make sure he doesn't do anything else stupid."

I don't even remember Danielle closing the door as she left; a wave of fatigue washed over me, despite the constant stinging in my hand. For the first time in almost a week, I slept deeply. A forgotten dream, however, caused me to jerk awake, disturbing my peaceful slumber. I promptly fell asleep again, but my snooze wasn't as deep this time. Instead, I dreamt.

The dream was lit by torches, and I realized I was in a dungeon of sorts, the walls made of dark gray stone. As I spun around, I realized two of the walls were lines with cells, and I was standing outside them, near a heavy oak table with a thick book on it. I moved closer immediately after realizing it was exactly the same as the Vaeden twins' book.

A shout of "Hey!" drew my attention back to the cells just as I was about to open the book. Whirling around, I realized that the cells were occupied by people. All of them were staring at me, some glaring. They were two-to-a-cell, and four of the nine cells were empty.

"Come here," said a girl from the cell directly in front of me; it was about halfway along the longer wall in the rectangular room. Her voice was harsh, angry. Luva'loe came to my mind, but I didn't know what it meant.

I approached the cell apprehensively, wary of all the eyes on me. I realized that the cell between that of the girl who had spoken to me had only one person in it. He had olive skin and dark hair, and he looked nearly dead as he slept on a precariously rotted old seat along the back of his cell. When I looked back to the girl, I jumped back, thinking I was seeing double—two girls looking exactly alike were staring back at me, their eyes a dark red color.

"Why are you standing there?" the one on the right asked, her voice as harsh as that of the first girl who had spoken. I couldn't tell if she was the same one or not. "Get us out of here."

"He's probably the one causing all this, Hatty," the one on the right snapped. I noticed for the first time that they both had strong English accents.

"Could you be quiet?" The boy in the next cell groaned and rolled to face the wall. I sensed that he was ill, weak, not getting adequate treatment or attention. His accent as he spoke was thick and choppy, probably from a native Slovak language.

"Stay out of it, Apollo," Hatty shouted.

"Fermez votre bouches, you two," said a fourth voice, male, gentle. I turned my head toward it, seeing a handsome young man my age standing with his arms through the bars on the cells. Come to think of it, they were all around my age. Every one of them.

"Cut it with the French, Tristan," the one not-Hatty sniped.

"Simon," Tristan said, his French accent not quite as thick as the other's accents were. I wondered absently why there were so many different nationalities represented here, but I found I couldn't speak a word of my thoughts. "Go back, Simon. Wake up." He reached out and grabbed my wrist pulling my close before pushing me backwards with all his strength. I hollered in fear, but felt no pain as I hit the ground, my eyes flying open as soon as impact was made.

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"Fermez votre bouches" means "shut your mouths" in French.