The Guardians - The Collapsing of the Wall (Book 3)

“Do you think it worked?”

“Dean, stop stressing me! I am sure of it! I put the right quantities!” says Matt full of Dean’s questions.

“And what if you put more or less?”

“I practice magic since forever, I am born for it and I have it in my blood, so it’s not the case to get scared now! I promised you that she will look dead, not that she will die!”

Dean gulps right before Leonor passes on the hallway where they were having the conversation.

“Do you still feel regrets?” she asks him laughing.

He throws her a bitter look, without answering her question.

“Oh, he made the right decision for everyone. It was quite a show to see him killing Lily, says Ray appearing from around the corner.

“Fuck you”, thinks Dean squeezing his fists strong. He realizes that’s about time to calm down and not to start something bad for him, so he walks away from them, leaving Matt to start a discussion with their leaders.

“So, what’s the plan now?” asks Matt curiously.

“We attack. We have the Guardians here, and the others will join us shortly”, says Leonor.

“When they will arrive we will finish quicker the arrangements and the enlarging of a new Unity, we will arrange here the buttons room, the chip laboratory, so we can have control over everyone from here directly, and then we will head to Base R, where the rest of the Guardians will probably meet to fight against us”, says Ray.

“As soon as the laboratory will be ready, which means maximum three days since the day the others arrive, we will leave. I don’t want to lose any second or others to be one step ahead of us”, says Leonor.

“So in five days, maximum, we will be on our way to them”, states Matt.

“Exactly. We will surprise them. They don’t have the numbers anyway, and it will take them longer to regroup.”

“They want a new Unity there too, and they probably started to fix their stuff around. We will be faster”, says Ray.

Matt falls into a deep thinking for some time, trying to do the math, as if he had a really good plan going on inside his mind for what was next. When Leonor opens the mouth, Matt barely keeps himself from smiling in a malefic way.

“We will leave you here to take care of stuff when we will leave to Base R, for you are one of us. We trust that you know how things work and the laboratory will be safe with you.”

“We will leave Jake with you as well because two trustworthy Magicians are good than one”, adds Ray, making his enthusiasm to lower.”

He approves them with his head, then he excuses and leaves with rushed steps in the hallway, searching for Dean. As he was expecting, he finds him in front of the usual window, where he was spending the time for a while, thinking of the aftermath of his actions.

“I have a plan”, he whispers. “Come on, walk with me slowly from here so we can avoid the cameras.”

The two of them walk away with quiet steps, and when they arrive the area where the cameras can’t reach, Matt tries to explain to Dean what he has on his mind.

“They will leave me here to survey the area, but they want Jake with me.”

“And this is not good.”

“On one hand, it’s not. But on the other, it is.”

“Explain this to me.”

“Jake is the one who put the protection on the laboratory, and he is the one who will do that in the new laboratory which controls the chips. If we stay here, I have two options: I convince him to join me and take off the protection, so I can free from the chips the Guardians from the battlefield, or I can make him.”

“This sounds interesting, but you won’t be just the two of you in here. They will probably leave Guardians in case of an attack.”

“Yes, but when I will enter that room nothing else will matter. I will make him one way or another to destroy the protection. Then I will destroy the panel, and the chips will be deactivated. They will remember everything they made them forget, and you have to be prepared to guide them on the right side. They will fight with you, at least some of them. They will revolt against them and, with some luck, you will win the battle.”

“Sound good, but it’s difficult.”

“Nothing is hard if you really want it.”

“What about what you told me before you helped me with Lily?’

“What else did I tell you?”

“That she’s a part of your plan.”

“I was hoping that she will attack us first and save us. To surprise us. But now it’s not that case anymore because they don’t have enough time to regroup. So we came up with this plan, and we really need to make it work, do you understand me?”

“I do…”

They slowly stepped around the corner, showing in front of the cameras. Leonor and Ray are watching them curiously from the office.

“Do you see the approach between them?” asks Leonor concerned.

“I’ve noticed it for some time. Why do you think I planned to leave Jake with him?”

“You don’t think that Matt is a traitor.”

“I don’t, but it’s better to be sure.”

“What do you want to do?”

“If Jake sees something suspicious, I told him to kill Matt right away.”

“You thought of all…”

The two see on the cameras the Guardians coming to their Base, so they rush to welcome them. It had become a habit for them to laugh at their transition mood, making sound and faces when they were passing in front of them.

“Ray, how old are you?”

“They will forget anyway!” he laughs.

“But their leaders won’t!” says Leonor looking at the ones who had brought their soldiers to their area.

“Oh, they don’t have a choice now. They chose to follow us, so they will have to obey now. The control will be ours the moment the laboratory will be ready.”

“Until then abstain yourself, for we don’t want them to change their minds and cross to the other side!”

Ray rolls his eyes and walks behind Leonor and the leaders, to guide them to their new rooms. After the tour of the enlarged Base, the Magicians and the Guardians who will work at the new laboratory are chosen, but also the ones who will be sent outside to continue working at the enlargement of the Base. Leonor takes care so her guests are well treated, a thing that makes Ray not so happy because he is not the type who shares his food and drinks with others.

Lily is in the same room where she has been spending her days, and she feels she is going crazy between these thick walls, away from reality and communication. For keeping herself sane, she imagines things, she remembers moments, and soon she falls too often into deep thinking to keep the track of time.

She doesn’t even hear the door, which slams when Alice comes inside. She just sits there, without moving, for a couple of seconds, and she sees Lily staring at the blank wall. She steps to the corner where she sits when she winces and makes a weird sound.

“When did you get in?”

“Now…” grumbles Alice insecure about what she is about to do.

“I didn’t hear you. I think I’m going crazy.”

Lily seems to be talking to her as she used to, back in the time when they were friends and roommates. Alice feels guilty for a lot, and she has no idea how to start the conversation with the girl who had never hated her, even if she had so many reasons to.

“Lily, I came to talk.”

“Sure. Why else would you be in here?”

“Yeah.”

“There is the possibility for you to come in here and ask me for a fight or to blame me for some things, maybe to kill me, who knows, but I refuse to believe those scenarios.”

“I am not here to hurt you. I wouldn’t dare this after how many things I did to you, and you didn’t even say a word to me.”

“It’s about Isaac, isn’t it?” asks Lily smiling.

Alice tries to hide the shock from her face, but she just can’t.

“How did you know?”

“Even if I couldn’t read your thoughts which, by the way, are too damn noisy that I heard them on the other side of this door so many times, I would know by the way you are. I know you, Alice. We were friends, remember?”

“I want to think that we still are if you consider that I deserve another chance. I know that Addison messed up my mind at the beginning, but she was right in her way.”

“She was. Trust me, the thing I regret most is that Isaac had to suffer from all the things I have done and the bad decisions I made. If only I can turn back the time…”

“You can’t. Forget it. What happened is gone. I understood your confusion, I understood in the end why you made those choices. You didn’t mean to hurt anyone, and you ended up hurting everyone, especially yourself.”

Lily looks into the ground. Her voice searches for a refuge so it won’t be lost forever because it’s painful for her too to say these things out loud.

“You love him for a long time, don’t you?” she asks Alice.

“Yes…”

“Then tell him. Isaac is the type of guy who doesn’t understand things until you show them to him. You saved his life and you were ready to give yours instead. My brother needs someone like you and, if he feels the same for you, I have nothing against it. It’s not like you need an approval.”

“No, but I needed an opinion.”

“You got it.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

Lily grabs Alice’s hands, as she used to do in the old times, and her eyes get wet.

“Forgive me”, says Alice with her eyes on the ground.

“We forgive each other and move on. Start fresh. How does this sound?”

Alice answers her with a hug, and the tension that has been between them for so long disappears, leaving some space for feelings and new beginnings.

“Go and do what you feel because you have nothing to lose. And if you will lose him, he is the fool. No one in here is capable of doing for him what you did.”

“You…”

“Leave me aside. Now it’s about you. About you two.”

Lily’s words encourage Alice to leave the room with her heart filled with joy and with a lot of courage this time. Her feet take her to the training room, where she expects to find Isaac. She is determined to tell him what is on her mind because, in a world where feelings have been forbidden until recently, it is a pity to leave things unsaid when there are no borders.

Matt is thinking of diabolic plans, making schemes and plans, getting ready for the moment when he was going to be near that laboratory. He has no idea when he had turned around like this, but now he wants more than ever to stop Leonor and Ray from their destructive plans.

Maybe that Dean had been the one who had changed him, maybe that his story had moved something inside him, even though he wasn’t a sensitive guy, but something moved deep down inside his heart and it was enough to make him think and look differently at the world he was living in.

He was hoping that his plan won’t fail, and he was walking from time to time in front of the place where the laboratory was going to be, watching the movements and the magic of the Guardians, and trying to make everything to turn out perfect. They are moving fast, pleasing the leaders, but also making Dean worry again, who would have wanted to stall as long as possible because he didn’t want to face his friends on the battlefield.

His plan had been to save Lily, and the last words he had whispered to her were to keep her away from the death. It wasn’t an elaborate plan back in the time, as they all thought, even Lily. But now, Matt’s plan was the perfect fit in the picture, and all it had to do was to work perfectly.