Never

“ILLIANA RUN!”

I looked up and saw Alex running at me. I glanced up behind him and saw what he was talking about. I took off, my feet pounding against the loose dirt of the old woods. The creature was getting closer. I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head and I cried out. Tumbling to the ground.

“ALEX!”

He stopped and came back to me, dragging me to my feet.

“Are you hurt?!”

I shook my head and winced, my hand flew to the back of my head. It was wet and sticky.

“It hit me…. Oh my gosh Alex it hit me!”

His eyes widened. I scrambled away from him.

“Go, GO GET AWAY FROM ME!”

“No I’m not leaving you!”

I bit my lip, already feeling my blood start to boil.

“Alex you need to go, NOW! Find Braxen and get out of here!”

He scooped me up and started running,

“I’m not leaving you.”

I clung to him tightly, wincing in pain, every step jostled a bolt of agony through me. My vision was getting blurry, I whispered,

“Alex.”

My eye got heavy and everything went black.

I groaned loudly, sitting up and rubbing my head. I looked around, I was in a bed, the walls around me made me realize I was in a cabin. I looked down at my hands. Gasping, my veins were turning black. Braxen was at my side in a second,

“Hey, shh, you’re okay. Alex is working on the antidote right now.”

He had changed since I last saw him, it had been years since Braxen and I had been able to be in the same room for longer than five minutes. His buzz cut had grown out, now blonde and flopping over her eyes. His glasses were gone, and his eyes looked older now. More mature. The used to be bright blue was now a light grey. He was taller too, but that was a given.

“Brax you have to leave me, you both need to get as far away from me as possible. The Arienex, it struck me, it won’t be long before I become just like it.”

The Arienex. The result of a freak science experiment. Twenty feet tall, black, no face, just a lanky figure with tentacles coming out of its arms. If one of the spines on said tentacles penetrate your skin, it infected you with a venom that would turn you into one of them.

“Like I said, Alex is working on the antidote, our team figured it out a while back. You’ll be fine in a day once you take it.”

I blinked,

“Wait, what? Why didn’t Alex ever tell me?”

He shrugged,

“We hardly ever saw you, after Mya... you know.”

I shut my eyes. Mya had been turned last year. When the first Arienex broke out, it infected hundreds of thousands of people, only a few thousand survived. Brexan, Alex, Mya and I had managed to survive all together for the first two years. But then one day, Mya got caught.

Sweat poured down my face, I heard the screams behind me, knowing that the people who were too slow would be caught. I panted, glancing back to make sure everyone was still with me. Alex had dirt all over his face, his brown eyes were wide and full of fear.

His hair had been blue then, electric blue, it had washed out since, now it was just brown.

Suddenly I head Mya scream and I turned back, desperate to help her. I was too late.

“MYA!”

I ran helplessly away, as she was dragged backwards, and stung. There was nothing I could do, but watch, as my best friend, started writhing in pain; screaming for me, as I fled.

I forced my eyes to open. Alex was here now, him and Braxen were hovering over me,

“Hey, snap out of it.”

I looked at him, Alex, my best friend. The one I’d abandoned. The one I had always felt like I had seen as a bit more than a friend. Feelings made no sense. I knew that my heart belonged to one of them, but I didn’t know which one. Shaking them off of me, I stood quickly, crying out as my stiff joints failed me. Immediately they were both helping me up, I waved them off.

“I’m fine I’m fine.”

Sitting back on the bed, Alex handed me a vial full of pink liquid, it both looked AND smelled questionable. Reculantly, I grabbed it, swirling it around.

“I’m guessing this is the antidote?”

Brax nodded,

“It tastes terrible, but it works.”

Oh well, here goes nothing.

I put the lip of it to my mouth, and let it slide down my throat. He was right, it was revolting. My body’s natural response was to spit it out, but I forced myself to swallow it.

“Blugh, ewwww what is in this?”

Alex chuckled,

“You probably don’t want to know.”

I smiled at him, his eyes sparkled with excitement. I forgot how much I missed him. After Mya was taken, I wasn’t the same person I had been. I shut down, pushed people away from me. Figured, if I wasn’t friends with them, it wouldn’t hurt me when they died. Well, the victims of the creatures didn’t die, but they may as well have.

Isolating yourself is not a smart idea, especially in a survival situation. I learned that the hard way. I hid away in the mountains, refusing to talk to either Alex or Braxen for years. We had bumped into each other on accident, attracting the senses of the Arienex. Ending up where we were now.

I shivered, then slapped my hand over my mouth, trying not to scream. My skin felt like it was on fire, like the particles of flesh that lined my arm were being ripped apart. Agonizingly slowly. Brax rested his hand on my knee.

“It passes after a minute, you’re okay.”

Thankfully, it did. I nearly passed back out from the pain of it. But it slowly subsided, and I saw the black in my arms start to fade away.

“Have you, had to drink it before?”

He nodded,

“Three times. You get scars from it sometimes.”

Pulling up his sleeve, my mouth fell open, dark lines ran up his arm, around five of them. I guess I would have the same fate. I heard a loud tapping coming from outside the room we were in, I stood quickly, my hand automatically going to my shoulder. I found that my 50 cal was missing. I turned,

“Alex where is my gun?”

“In the living room, we couldn’t lay you down with it strapped onto you.”

I went to leave but he stopped me.

“Relax, it’s just Carrie.”

My eyebrows shot up,

“And who is Carrie?”

Braxen rolled his eyes,

“His girlfriend.”

My heart stopped. What? I stuttered a bit, stumbling over my words and trying to regain my vocal balance.

“H-his, his what?”

Alex punched his arm playfully, getting up,

“My girlfriend.”

No, no. How could he have a girlfriend? Alex and I had always kind of had a silent agreement that we were each others person. I mean yeah I left but, girlfriend? What did that make me then? His… Friend? He exited quickly, answering the door. I heard a squeaky voice coming from the open doorway. I sat back, Braxen sighed.

“You love him, don’t you?”

I stared at my feet.

“Honestly, I don’t even know anymore, I don’t even know if I know what love is.”

He ran his hand through his hair.

“In my experience, it’s wishing everyday that they would come back, constantly worrying about them. How it breaks my heart to see them look at someone else the way I look at them.”

I sat up straighter.

“You know, I never stopped thinking about you guys. As much as I tried. I could never. I thought that I loved Alex. But…. I don’t think that that was love, I mean i thought it was but, now I’m not so sure.”

His eyes looked, sad almost.

“Love never leaves. Even if a person does.”

That's when I realized. It was never Alex, it had been him, Braxen, all along. All those times that I thought i got butterflies from Alex’s voice, it was Braxen who was talking. All the times I thought I was going crazy over Alex, Braxen was always there. My feelings had always been for him, I just couldn't see it.

“Well then, I guess I can tell you to leave whenever, and it won’t change a thing.”

His eyes shot up to me.

“What?”

I shrugged,

“I love you Braxen, I always have, I just was too blind to see it. Alex always gave me attention and you were more guarded, so I thought it was him. But it wasn’t, it’s you, it’s always been you.”

He was across the room in seconds, his arms wrapping around me. I could hear the pain in his voice, he was crying.

“I love you Illiana. Please, don’t ever leave me again.”

A tear fell down my cheek, I held him close to me.

“Never.”