Cheat

Kaia sat in her room, bundled up in her blanket as she stared at the darkness in her room. The same darkness that she loved so much now threatened to swallow her whole.

The voices continued to speak as the dead stared at her with their hollow eyes. Never a moment of silence or peace with them around.

Kaia stared at her phone, it's been weeks since she saw her friends or even gone to school.

They must have already messaged her father about it but what is that going to do? It's not like he can make her go anymore.

Still more missed calls from Max. He's the only that's been constantly trying to contact her every single day. Well, he and Caitlyn.

Their faces that day still came in her nightmares. They looked at her with so much pity she felt suffocated under their stare. She ran from them, straight into her room, not allowing them to enter.

The police came and questioned her, but she didn't answer a question they asked, just staring at them blankly.

Soon they left her alone. The case was concluded as a fight that went out of hand and both men killed each other.

Turns out, her father scammed some of the men of their money and they went to confront him. The police believed that someone else was with her father because he wouldn't have been able to stab the other man. This is also because they couldn't find any weapon on the site they asked if she knew anything about it. But Kaia just stared blankly at the wall.

It soon escalated too far and they began to hit each other, someone stabbed her father and someone else stabbed the man and ran away.

Where did the knife go? I remember implanting it on the man's head. Oh, well. Whatever.

She requested to be discharged that day itself, much to the protest of the doctors and nurses. When she went to the register to pay with the money the police gave her from her father's pocket, in an envelope addressed to her, they told her that her bills are already covered by her father.

Her friends were still being interrogated by the police as she sneaked out. She managed to make eye contact with Dorran as she entered a cab, pain and sadness in his eyes.

Kaia tossed her phone on the bed and looked at the plans she made on the wall of her room. She needed a more intricate plan than last time if she wants to save Shia.

Shia's parents are both very successful pharmaceutical scientists with a network of millions. Her father was in the army but he retired and became a scientist with his wife.

That's why they always tried to keep her and their private life a secret and away from the public eye. They wanted her to be able to live normally with the other kids.

That's also why their house's location is top secret. Kaia and her friends visited her house only once, fortunately, she wrote about the way there in great detail in her diary.

Every night for the past weeks, she would go out and explore the areas of the town, making marks on the map she bought from the convenience store.

From her faint memory and direction from the diary entry, she explored all the paths, until she found her house. Not a moment too soon either.

Any day now the attack will happen and I have to be ready.

From what she remembered, some people broke into Shia's house, while her parents were out, to steal a medicine they were working on for months. She didn't know much else of what happened but she knows that Shia had to be in the ICU after that break-in. She was found convulsing on the ground when the police got there.

She kept crying in pain as her skin peeled off itself and she threw up her insides. She finally died after sixty hours of agonising pain. Her eyes were sunken in, her lips dry and cracked.

Wait a minute. There was an incident that happened the day after the break-in. What was it again? It feels so important. Why can't I remember?

Hershton?

Wait, what does he have to do with this?

Ugh. I need to call the book.

"No need to do that. I'm right here." The book appeared beside her, a playful tone in its voice. "What do you need?"

"You say that as if you're going to just give it to me." Kaia squinted at it suspiciously.

"Hey. You've been through a lot lately, I feel like you deserve a little bit of slack."

Kaia continued to look at it, not trusting it.

"Ok. How about this? We'll play rock, paper, and scissors for three rounds. If you win then I'll do what you want and I'd you lose then I won't. Fair?"

"Ok. But how do we play? You don't have hands."

"Same way I can see without eyes."

"Oh, yeah. I overlooked that fact. Seems like it'll be hard to play with you though."

"Now. Now. It's easy to play with me. We'll just go rock, paper, and scissors and then say one of them. Got it?"

"Ok."

"Let's do this then."

♣

Two hours later,

Kaia is seated on the front porch of her house with her hoodie on; playing with a lighter, flicking it on and off. The cold night air blew, sometimes putting off the little flame.

The alarm in her phone rang just as a vehicle pulled over in front of her house.

"Showtime."

She stood up, shoved the lighter into her pocket, and walked to the car as a boy walked out, dressed in black from head to toe.

"I was so surprised when you called me." Ran walked up to Kaia, a smirk on his face.

"You're the only one that I can call without worrying about you getting hurt. Much."

"You have an awful lot of confidence that I'll help you. Dor is still upset with you and didn't want to come. But I was curious about what makes you think so highly of yourself?" He leaned closer to her, with a very cocky expression. "You have too much pride in yourself to use Caitlyn as an option. Or have you become desperate?"

She pressed her hand on his face and pushed him away. "Don't worry, R.o.m.e.o., I have no plans of using C.a.i.t.l.y.n against you." She spelt out those two names while she looked at him with her empty eyes.

I will never use any of my friends to get favours from people, no matter how desperate I might get.

"Oh~ that's good. She's the best human to ever exist and I wouldn't want her tangled up in your mess." He looked at her playfully. "Do you know how much she loves the colour yellow? Whatever I get her should be in yellow if the option is there. She's so cute."

"I don't plan to do that. Caitlyn associates yellow with happiness. That should tell you something about her. Now, I called you because this will interest you."

"Really? What is it?"

She took her phone out and wrote down, "Have you heard of Lipenol?"

"Lipenol? What's that?"

"It's a medicine that Shia's parents created. It can cure anything in seconds, no matter how severe or untreatable it is."

He scoffed, "If that's the case then why isn't it being spread around?"

"It's still in development. They have just made the final product but are trying to wait for the right time to send it to hospitals to replicate it and then release it to the public."

"Ok. And?"

"While they were trying to find the right components to create it, they accidentally created the worst poison known to man, there is no cure for it except Lipenol. That poison immediately takes effect on the person who comes in contact with it by peeling the skin off their body and dissolving their insides."

"Kaia. Please get to the point." He rubbed his forehead with a tired motion.

Kaia sighed and snapped her fingers. A newspaper appeared in his hands.

Ran looked around him but couldn't find anything or anyone. Then he turned his attention back to the newspaper.

"What's this?"

"Read it. Page two. The first headline you see." Kaia turned her focus from him to the stars above.

They still twinkled so beautifully at a time like this. Wait, where is that stone Caitlyn gave me?

Opening the newspaper, Ran frowned at the headline.

"Sir. Hershton Dead. Lost All His Wealth and Status in One Day."

"What is this, Kaia?" He walked closer to her and pointed to the headline.

"Read it. Tell me how he died." She didn't even look at the paper, her gaze still on the stars above her.

I really need to find that stone.

Ran began to read the article. It talked about how many estates he has, how many people he knows and all the accomplishments he's had. Nowhere did it mention about him but he didn't care about that. Finally, he got to the cause of his death.

'After an autopsy was performed, an unknown substance was found in his body that caused his skin to peel off and turn his insides to mush.'

"No way." He looked at the date of the newspaper. "Nineteenth October of this year. Kaia, explain. Today is the seventeenth of October."

"I cheated a little bit." She took her eyes off the stars and focused on him. Taking the newspaper from him, they watched as it disappeared into ash.

She took her phone again and began to write.

"When I was taking a trip down memory lane to remember what happened to Shia, you flashed across my mind. I couldn't understand why that happened or why the name Hershton came up. So I called the book and played a little game with it. When I won, I asked it for this newspaper and it confirmed my suspicions."

"You have memories of my life then?"

"Somehow. I could understand because I never met you in my previous life but the book told me that this is happening because I met you, someone, I've never met before. So my memories are trying to recover memories of you, you're destiny now appeared in my diary. Those people that broke into Shia's house were the ones that poisoned your father and since the cure is with them too, he couldn't be saved."

"That's not possible, my father is out of this town on another 'honeymoon' with another woman. There's no way they'll be able to reach him. Your memory is wrong." He smugly smiled at Kaia.

But Kaia looked at him with an unwavering glance, like she was waiting for something. Then his phone rang.

It is his father.

"Hello? Dad?"

"What do you mean you're coming?"

"Now?"

"When are you arriving?"

"Ok."

He hung up and gave Kaia an irritated look while she stared blankly at him. Not a hint of emotion on her face.

"What do you need?"