Michael is angry. He is as angry as I get when I try to feel. But I can't let him give up.

"Do you know what? Forget this. This is pointless!"

"Michael, calm down. Just remember the feel of it!" I feel the anger rising. I show him again.

I pick up the five dollar bill and run my hand down the length of it. I pick up a plain piece of paper. Slowly, I turn it into an identical bill. I can feel Isabel watching me.

"You know that's ILLEGAL, don't you?"

"Does it matter? It's useful." I turn to Michael. "Try again."

He's frustrated. I take his hand and place the money in it. He grumbles, but closes his eyes. I watch as his hand glows. He opens his eyes. I give him the paper. Slowly, it starts to color. Abraham Lincoln's face slowly forms. Finally, the paper becomes the perfect replica of the original bill.

I watch as a slow smirk spreads on Michael's lips. Why does he smirk like that? Michael never smiles. I wonder if he knows how to. But he's beautiful. I can feel his pride. I feel something inside. I don't know what it is. I think it must be love. I look at Isabel.

"You're turn."

"I can do that already."

"With other bills or plain paper?"

Isabel opens her mouth to speak, but decides against it. She sits down beside me.

"First, you have to memorize every detail as you touch it. . . " __________________________________________________

"You don't belong with us."

Tess. Why is her voice always so nagging? She makes me angry.

"Maybe you don't either." I minus well make her angry too.

"You're a killer, you know that?"

"Kill or be killed." Maybe I shouldn't have told them so much about what I've done.

She glares at me. "Show me."

I glare back. "Show you what?"

"Everyone you've killed."

I am surprised. Why would she want to see that? I don't know what else to do. I show her. I show her all that I can remember. All the men. All the women. All the children. Tess falls to her knees.

"Children?!? You've killed chi. . . " She chokes down a sob. I don't understand.

"It doesn't matter, Tess. They probably have already been made again."

"What do you mean MADE again? You KILLED them!"

Tess runs out. I don't understand. They were remade. Weren't they? That's what happens. We die, we're remade, we live again.

Everybody comes into the room. I think Tess must have showed them. They all look scared. Scared of me. Liz steps forward. She looks like she is sick.

"How could you?" Max puts his hand on her arm. She pulls away.

"You're a MONSTER, you know that? We should kill you ourselves!" I hate her. I hate the things that she is saying.

"Get out of here. Leave." I look at Kyle. He wants to hurt me. I can see it. I look at Isabel. She shakes her head at me.

"How could you? Don't you feel anything at all?" She knows the answer. I don't understand. Why does she ask questions that she knows the answer to? Why is she so mad at me? They must have been remade. Right? I touch Isabel's hand. Then I know.

"They don't come back, do they?" No one answers me. I look at them. Their faces blur. I don't know what to say. I can't think. I stopped people from living. I took it all away. I can't breath. They don't come back. Suddenly I remember them all. Everybody I've ever killed. I see their faces. They swim inside my head. An old man with a cane. A young mother and her toddler. A little boy with a new bike. And so many others. . .

But I came back. Because of Big, I realize now. Because of the pods. Because once Big has you, he doesn't want to let you go. Ever. I feel so sick.

Michael touches my hand. He feels what I feel. My confusion. My pain. I feel pain. It hurts. I must be dying. They all touch me now. To feel what I feel. They all look at me, but I can hardly see them.

"I didn't know." My voice crackles. It's hard to speak.

I have to leave. I hate this. I don't want to move past them, so I walk out the window behind me. I start to walk down the street. I can't figure out what happened. Something is wrong inside me. I don't like it. I feel him behind me. I hate him too. So I run. I run from Michael.

It's cold. It's raining. I don't care. I feel something. Something bad. I don't know what it is. He's hunting me. I can tell. I shouldn't have showed him how to feel people. I stop running and hide under the steps of an old apartment block. He finds me anyway.

"It's not true, is it?" I can't look at him as I ask. I don't really want to hear the answer.

"Yes." He sits down beside me.

I can't breath right. Something in my throat is blocking the air. My chest hurts. Burns. My lungs heave as they try to bring in oxygen. My eyes are stinging. Something is on my cheeks. Something wet. I touch them. The wetness is coming from my eyes. I'm crying. Because I feel something.

"Michael. . . what is this?" I touch his hand and send him what I am feeling. He gives me a sad half smile.

"Guilt. And shame. You're upset."

I look up at him. His eyes are soft as they look at me. He doesn't hate me. It almost makes me feel better. Almost. "How do you make it stop?"

He laughs. Why is he laughing at me? Doesn't he know what I did? "It stops on it's own. Although this might not go away. . . "

"Why not?" It scares me to think that I will feel like this forever. "If this is upset, I don't want to feel it anymore."

He touches me. He tries to send me comfort, but it doesn't work. "You don't have a choice. You wanted to feel, and now you do. It will get easier. . . "

I can feel him. He's watching us. I stand up. He's there. He knows I feel him. I look at Michael. He doesn't feel how close my other is. "Run."

"What?"

"Run, Michael."

Michael stands up. "Alice, wha. . . "

Michael pushes me down on the ground. A blast flies overhead. I stand up. The other is there. He comes closer to us, out of the shadows of the alley. I brace myself for the attack.

He punches me in the stomach. I fall to the ground. I pull his legs out from under him and flip him face first into a trash bin. "MICHAEL, GO!!!" I yell at him. I want to protect Michael. But he doesn't move. He flips the trash bin over the other and grabs my arm, pulling me away with him.

We run down the street, but it's useless. The other is close. We duck into an alley and climb up the fire escape of an abandoned building. We climb in through a window. The other follows us. He makes a large beam fall from the ceiling in front of us. I touch the floor underneath us. The floor gives way and the other falls to the next floor. I jump down on top of him and raise my hand. I can't kill him. He will be remade, but I can't kill him anyway. Because now I can feel guilt. I punch him in the temple and knock him out.

I look up. Michael looks down at me. He thinks I did the right thing. _____________________________________________________

I sit in the bathtub. I can't stop crying. Everyone else is sleeping. But not me. I don't think I will sleep ever again. Because of the faces. All the faces of all the people I have ever killed haunt me. Even the faces of my others haunt me, because I have killed most of them to have them come back and kill me.

But that's the way we were trained. Fight each other for practice. Kill each other to make killing easier. He made us like this. Big. I hate him. I want to kill him for what he's done to us. For what he's taken away from us. Because now I realize for the first time that we are evil. We kill.

Kill for fun? Kill for life. It keeps us alive. Keeps Big from killing us. But in the end, it doesn't matter. Because we get to come back. They didn't. None of them. I have killed eighty-three times. And I remember them all. Some begged for their lives. Others didn't. Some knew they were going to die. Others didn't even know I was there. But it all turned out the same in the end. They died.

I deserve their hatred. Do they hate me? They should. I want them to. I want them to hate me. I want to feel their hate. For penance. I want to be punished. It's time for vengeance.

I wish that I could die. For real die. Not what I thought death was. I suppose I hated dying because I had to come back. I try to remember what death is like. But I don't. Big took that away from me too. I think of turning on the water and drowning myself. But I'm scared. I'm scared that Big will know when I die and bring me back again. I don't want that. I don't want to come back and kill again. So I will live.