Stunned. Vincent was stunned silent. He had no idea how to respond to what Eliot just said. I killed him. Yeah, he did kill her, but it was either him or her. While Vincent hated the very idea of killing someone, even he could see that there was probably no choice.

“I mean, yeah, but it’s not your fault, man,” Vincent said to Eliot. “She must have forced you to do it, it’s gonna be—”

“That’s not what I meant!” Eliot yelled out, in reply.

“What?”

Eliot, who was pulling at his hair in distress, clenched his teeth and said, “I mean everything and everyone. I remember it.” He then looked up at the sky. “Besides, I was never forced to do it. Not this time...not even back then.”

Vincent was all sorts of confused. As far as he knew, he had never killed someone before.

“What do you mean by ‘back then’?” he asked.

Eliot’s face, now flooded with tears, looked down from the sky and directly at Vincent. “Jeremy…” he replied, almost with a whimper.

Jeremy? Vincent thought. He really only knew one Jeremy, and that was a classmate of theirs. What is he talking about? Killing Jeremy? Hell, we saw him right before all that crap at the school went down. Even though he had no idea what Eliot was talking about, he had to ask something.

“How much do you remember?” Vincent asked.

“Too much,” Eliot responded, his words choked up by the overload of mucus in his throat. “Jeremy, he did it...I mean I did...I mean” Eliot’s whole body was shaking, almost as if it was rejecting the very truth that he suddenly had to face.

Vincent, not really knowing what else to do, said, “Whatever you did, you did ‘cause you had to. I’m sure you can justify—”

“NO!” Eliot screamed out. “I hate it all! I hate myself, I hate this world, and I hate that I did that.” His veins were swelling and his face grew even redder. “In that fire, I hated everything...even another person.”

Eliot then fell limp and borderline unconscious. Vincent barely caught him before he collapsed on the ground. In the last moments of consciousness before falling asleep, Eliot softly said, “I wish I didn’t remember.”

At that time, Fang had finally made their way to where Vincent and Eliot were, and stood right next to them. They looked at the unconscious Eliot and then back to Vincent.

“What happened? What was that thing?”

With a surprisingly relaxed expression, Vincent replied, “I’m not too sure yet, but I bet he knows,” he said, looking at Eliot. “But we should just let him sleep this off for a while.”

Vincent then picked up Eliot and began to nonchalantly walk to the exit doors of the arena pit. It wasn’t too hard for Vincent to carry him, seeing as Eliot was as skinny as a twig and Vincent was easily the strongest of the friends.

“Are you really going back to the cell?” Fang asked, raising his voice a bit. “How can you be so calm about this?”

Vincent looked back and said, “What else am I supposed to do?”

And with that, Vincent continued to walk back to their cell, guided by some wary guards.

***

Black. There was nothing to hear, see, or feel besides the blackness that surrounded. Time didn’t seem to exist, and yet, he knew that some had passed. A perplexing feeling, but one that didn’t feel completely foreign. This felt like the calm after a storm—the calm after a raging fire.

Before he knew it, however, he began to feel a sensation. It took a second to remember what feeling was like, but in time he realized that he was hearing something. It was distorted at first, barely perceptible, but he could tell that it was the sound of voices.

He wanted to join these voices, not only because they sounded familiar, but because there seemed to be joy in the voices. He continued to try and will himself towards the sound of these voices, but something inside of him stopped him partway. That something inside of him weighed him down and managed to make him feel empty. It was infuriating.

He felt the pent-up emotions that he has been burning for all of his life beginning to flare up. As that something began to drag him down, he decided to not take it anymore—he unleashed those emotions to fight against it.

With each burst, the black around him flared red and he felt that something react to it. However, instead of being let free, he felt himself being dragged down more. With even more fury than before, he fought against that something. He continued to fall faster.

The voices were almost gone at that point. He was falling farther and farther down, being dragged into whatever lay beneath him. The black that encircled him burned as red as his anger. He let go of all his emotions, screaming out in wrath. This time, the result was different...but not in a good way.

Just as his primal rage got in full swing, he felt his body grow exponentially hot. He still continued to fall or be dragged down—it was hard to tell which it was at that point. Either way, he eventually looked down and saw the cause of the heat: it was the blazing inferno that raged beneath him. And he was getting ever closer.

He fought, slashed, screamed, against the force dragging him down, but it only caused him to fall faster. He began to feel as if he was beginning to melt—as if every semblance of himself was burning away. To make matters worse, he could no longer hear the voices.

Just as all hope seemed to be lost, a single sound pierced through it all. “El?” the voice called out. Without hesitation, he looked up to where the voice was coming from and saw where there was once blazing red, there was a black hole, above. As he reached towards the black, he felt the black reach back and grab his arm. He was then pulled upwards at an extreme speed. Just as he was about to hit the black that was grabbing him, he felt his eyes...open.

***

Holding Eliot’s hand, Vincent watched Eliot’s eyes begin to open.

“Ay! You’re finally awake!” Vincent exclaimed with a smile.

Eliot’s eyes winced a bit at the minimal light around the cell. He then looked around the cell until his eyes eventually landed back on Vincent. From there, he looked down at his hand, which was currently being held by Vincent.

“What’s going on?” Eliot croaked.

“Oh sorry,” Vincent said, dropping Eliot’s hand. “You were rolling around on the ground a bit and reached your hand up. I guess I just kinda instinctively grabbed it. Must be from my years of basketball,” he laughed.

Eliot then sat up and stretched his arms in the air. He rubbed one of his hands on his head and winced. There was obvious confusion in his eyes as he scanned the room, and it didn't seem to fade with time, either.

“Where…” Eliot started to say before tensing up in pain.

“We’re back at the cell,” Fang answered.

“Yeah,” Vincent added, “after the thing happened in the Collider, you’ve been knocked out for a few hours.”

“What thing?” Eliot asked. But as if he answered his own question, his face grew pale and worried. He clasped the sides of his head and said, “Oh no. Oh no.”

His words began to repeat, and with each repetition, they grew more and more frantic. Just before he started to spiral out of control, Fang placed a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, Eliot, it’s going to be alright.”

Eliot immediately started to calm down, almost too quickly.

“Are you ok, now?” Fang asked, their eyes still unusually focused on Eliot.

“No,” Eliot responded, “but at least I can talk now.”

“I don’t know, you talked a lot while you were asleep,” Vincent jokingly added, not really reading the atmosphere of the room.

Fang shot him a dirty look and said, “Anyways, I’m glad you’re doing better. Vincent and I have been talking about what happened and we have been trying to figure it out.”

“And you can imagine how much two idiots figured out on their own,” Vincent added, chuckling.

“Yeah pretty much,” Fang agreed. “Vincent doesn’t pay attention to anything, I don’t know you both that well, and Vincent and I are about as smart as a pigeon.”

“So what we’re saying,” Vincent jumped in, “is that we kinda need you to tell us what the hell happened.”

“If you’re able to,” Fang added.

Eliot just sat and looked at the ground. The cell was completely silent for a solid two minutes or so before anything happened. He then looked up at Fang in the eyes and began to speak.

“I just...I don’t know how to explain it. I thought I knew myself, but now I don’t think I can ever be sure.” He then looked at Vincent. “I mean, I could never imagine hurting someone, nevertheless ki—” he tried to say, but it was as if the last word was physically choking him. It was as if his body rejected the very idea of what he was going to say.

He then swallowed hard and finished his thought. “I could never imagine myself killing someone. But I did.” The agony and sadness that showed on his face was heartbreaking. “I’m a murderer, a horrible person, and scum.”

Fang then sat down directly in front of Eliot, and looked him dead in the eyes. “Listen to me,” they said with a tone of seriousness that even surprised Vincent. “People change and their past actions don’t always define who they are now.” They leaned in even closer. “I’ve been all over the world, and while I’m not smart or confident in most things, I can say this with absolute confidence: a person can’t be summarized by one event in their life. The past doesn’t mean as much as the future. Trust me. You are you, not an event.”

Eliot just shook his head, tears starting to form, and desperately argued, “But it’s not just that. There’s something deeper that tells me that.” He then palmed his right hand over his face. “That thing, Berserkir, is in here, in me. I don’t know how, but I can tell that it’s a part of me, but yet, it’s so foreign. It’s both alien and so familiar.”

Eliot removed his hand from his head and just looked past both Vincent and Fang. “I’ve never met this thing, I don’t know where it came from, and yet, I know it’s name and I know that it’s always in my head. I can feel it feeding off of my anger, fueling itself for when it’s freed again.”

Vincent and Fang looked at each other—Vincent with a look of confusion, and Fang with a look of worry. Vincent spoke up and asked “So, like, it’s invisible or…?”

Eliot shook his head. “No, it’s in my head...I think. It’s hard to explain.”

“You’re head?”

“Hold on, Vince, I think that actually makes sense,” Fang chimed in.

Both Eliot and Vincent look at them, surprised.

“Hear me out,” Fang started to say, wagging their finger in the air, “I think there’s a common thread between everything we were talking about before Eliot woke up. If what you were saying about what the first obelisk said,” they said looking at Vincent, “then that would make me think that Eliot is a Resonator, more specifically, an Apparator.”

“Huh,” Vincent said. “Makes sense, especially ‘cause I got a headache that pointed towards you during that whole ordeal.”

“Really?” Eliot asked.

“I think so,” Fang commented. “I mean, after all, the obelisk said that people who resonate with other creatures, whatever that means, are Apparators. And that wolf-thing—”

“Berserkir,” Eliot corrected.

“Berserkir,” Fang repeated, “was definitely another creature, and it seemed to protect you.”

“I guess,” Eliot conceded.

“Wait, El, were you controlling Berserkir?” Vincent asked.

“I don’t know,” Eliot responded. “It’s not like I told it to go crazy and attack Luc and the stands. All I remember is being angry and just wanting the whole world to burn.”

“So that’s probably why it attacked everyone,” Vincent stated.

“So it’s my fault, huh?” Eliot soberly said.

“Wait, that’s not what I meant.”

“It’s alright, Vince, it doesn’t really matter. I’m just tired.”

Fang then put their hand on Eliot’s shoulder again and said, “Well, before we’re done, there’s one last interesting thing I just thought of.” They then looked at Eliot. “If that’s alright with you.”

“It doesn’t really matter.”

“Well,” they coughed, “I just realized that Berserkir looked an awful lot like that wolf-creature that you told me attacked your school.”

Both Vincent and Eliot were silent. They didn’t immediately respond to the statement, but both for different reasons. Fang didn’t continue their line of questioning, they just seemed to wait for one of the other two to comment. Eventually, one did.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that,” Vincent spoke up. “I guess that makes more sense than it being controlled by someone else. If Zander was here, he’d call me an idiot for not realizing it.”

“Based on what you’ve told me of him, I have no doubt he would.”

“But El, you said something about Jeremy. Do ya remember anything about that time?”

Eliot, who had been growing more and more silent throughout the whole exchange, barely looked up to answer them.

“As vividly as anything else,” he plainly said. “That’s when I first awakened it. I used it to attack the person who attacked the school—not the fire dude, but Jeremy Wesson.”

Taken a bit back from that revelation, Vincent responded, “Oh shit.” After a few more seconds of letting that sink in, he followed up. “Then who the hell was the fire dude?”

“I don’t know.” Eliot then turned away and faced a wall. “But I know that Jeremy was the one who caused the fire.”

Vincent and Fang then began to talk about the identity of the fire guy, although they never arrived at a clear answer. After all, one of them isn’t the most perceptive, while the other doesn’t know much beyond what was told.

While they were talking, they didn’t realize that Eliot had already crawled into the corner of the cell and laid down in a ball. Vincent and Fang continued on their conversation for a few more minutes before Vincent eventually turned and saw Eliot.

“El? You good?” he asked.

Without even rolling around or moving a muscle, Eliot coldly replied, “No, but I also don’t want your help right now. I just need time to think.”

“Are ya sure? I mean I can—”

“Please just shut up for a little bit.”

Vincent, shocked by the tone of Eliot’s voice, ceased any further comments he was going to make.

“I want you two to leave me alone for a while, I need some time by myself.”

Both Vincent and Fang looked at each other and visibly agreed to not bother Eliot anymore with questions or information that could harm him. As a matter of fact, shortly after that conversation, Eliot ended up moving into his own cell, bribing a guard with the money he won from his fight.

While Fang raised some objections to Eliot’s decision to move, Vincent shut them down, claiming that it was Eliot’s decision to make, not theirs. He hated the idea of controlling someone else’s choices, even if that someone was his best friend, acting like someone that they were not.