Loyalties
My father's only loyalty was to himself.
It took me so long to realize that. When they came for me, Sydney and Jack and my father, when they rescued me, I thought that it was going to be alright. That I finally had the things I had always wanted- a family who loved me, who wanted me. I had a father and a sister, who had come to help me. It was like all of my childhood dreams coming true at once- the dreams I had tried so hard to pretend I did not still hold in my heart.
And then my father took me. He covered his actions in lies, told me that I would not be safe anywhere else. That he would take care of me.
I didn't know him, and so I believed.
I remember my childhood mostly as the orphanage, Sophia taking care of all of us girls. But sometimes, in my dreams, my memory goes back farther, to dark rooms and to burning pain. Voices telling me to relax, to let go. Pain, burning through the needle in my arm, until the pen someone had placed in my hand began to move of its own volition, drawing and writing, things I did not understand. Things which I never wanted to understand.
As soon as I saw my father laying these things out, I knew. Pen and paper, needles and those vials of green fluid. He told me of Rambaldi and his work, the power we might discover together. I tried to resist, but I could not, and I felt it pulling me under. Again.
I know that I should never have trusted him again after this. I know that. But he was my father, my family, and he swore to me that he would never have hurt me if it had not been necessary.
He told me that I was special. I was, he said, the only one who could help him. The serum would not unlock its secrets for anyone but me. I was the key.
I am sure he thought long and hard about these words. The words to say to an orphan, to a young woman who has always longed for the love of a family, and, until now, never had it. I am sure he thought of it until he found these words, and knew that they would be the ones to convince me- to manipulate me- to help him.
That summer, he begged for another chance. He told me that we would search, together, for the truth, and that we would find it.
I didn't go for Rambaldi. I went along for my father, to give him that second chance. Hoping that I would come to know him better. Hoping that I could help him.
I should have known better, but I still believed. I still felt special- his special girl. I was the only one he had asked to help him. Not Sydney, whom Rambaldi's prophecies seemed to name the Chosen One. Not Jack, his oldest friend. Me.
I didn't know, then, that they never would have helped him. I didn't know that I shouldn't have, either.
My faith in my father lasted until we found what we had been searching for. Until I understood that only I could reach the sphere. Prophecy or physics; perhaps I was chosen, perhaps the frame of stained glass upon which it rested would only hold my lighter weight, a woman's weight. Perhaps any woman would have done. But my father did not believe so. His faith, for reasons I still cannot quite comprehend, was in Rambaldi.
I reached for the sphere so that it would be over. So that we could go home.
When I touched it, I realized that he had been wrong. That Rambaldi's vision was never the dream of light and glory in which my father believed. What I saw then was a whirl of images, almost too fast to recognize, but they were dark images, filled with blood and death.
And somehow I knew. I looked back at him, and I knew. You cannot have this. You, above all men, cannot have this.
He urged me onward, but I refused.
He changed, then, becoming the monster Sydney would have warned me of if she had thought that I would ever listen. His face became a mask of rage, a face I didn't recognize.
"I don't need you," he said, in a voice so full of hate and obsession that in that instant I regretted everything. From the moment they had found me, to this. This, especially- that I had led him this far. That I had helped, when perhaps he couldn't have gotten so far without me.
He reached- not for me, but for the sphere.
And the glass began to crack.
I looked at him, silently begging him to let this go. To step back. Knowing that he wouldn't, that he couldn't.
The glass broke, and he fell.
I shouldn't have helped him. I realize that now. I should have left him there, to live or to die. But I couldn't do it. I looked down at him and I saw my father in pain. My father, who loved me. It had only been a momentary surrender to his obsession that I'd seen before.
Later, he swore it wouldn't happen again. He swore that he wouldn't let it, and I believed him.
I still had doubts, but I trusted him.
I blamed him as much as I did Sophia, for what happened to me later. Because he had started it, long before they found me, and he'd never stopped. He had primed the water years ago, and what Sophia built only set it free.
But he also cured me. The things he did, the men he worked with, to gain that cure- They were things I would never have asked him to do. I wouldn't have asked anyone to fall that far, not even him.
After my illness and my father's cure, I felt... indebted. I felt as if he had earned another chance. That after all he'd done for me, I had to give him that chance. I know that Sydney blames herself for what happened. I know she thinks that it was she who convinced me to go.
But I never really thought it would prove that dangerous. I wondered how my father would wish to use me now- I knew he would, sooner or later. But I didn't think that he would harm me. Not yet, anyway.
When Jack and I followed him, I expected to see him betray us. What I saw made me doubt his guilt, but it didn't convince me of his innocence. I knew a deal with the devil had saved my life, and that if they hadn't already, those men would make my father pay their price for it.
But I thought, one last chance- what was the harm? I walked past the flowers Emily had planted, up to the door, and he was so pleased to see me that I thought it would be alright. I didn't see any of that darkness then, that obsession with Rambaldi that overshadowed him.
I knew, though, how well he could hide it.
He never meant for me to find what I did, of course. He never meant for me to see that document, containing Rambaldi's prophecy and the centuries old drawing of my sister. But the moment I found it, I understood that nothing had changed, that nothing would ever change.
I should have taken page 47 and left. But I had to confront him. I had to stop this- I had to try.
You might think that I should have learned by now. That I should have known, after he had turned on me so many times, that this would never work out the way that I had wanted it to. But I wanted so desperately to believe- He'd done so much to save me, didn't that count for anything?
He tried to explain, but there was no explanation for this. He tried to justify himself, but there was no justification. I knew there was only way to keep this temptation from him- to destroy it.
I threw the page into the fireplace.
My father pushed me aside, rushing to save it. I felt my body striking the glass coffee table, and I realized that he was lost.
I never felt myself die, only a sharp pain in my neck. Then it was over, and I was looking down at myself, my still body, covered in blood.
He didn't mean to kill me. I know this.
I still can't forgive him.
He looked to Page 47 before he looked to me, pulling what was left of it out of the fire, and only then turning to me. I don't think that he expected me to be dead, but as I was falling and the page was burning, he made his choice.
I wish I had seen sooner that he had made that choice a long time ago.
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Nadia Santos
Alias
1,517 words