My name is Alexis Capshaw and you can read my entire story by clicking here. (It's probably easiest this way.)
 
Or, you can read my story here on LiveJournal, starting here: http://lonelyjournal15.livejournal.com/1259.html. Click Next at the top of each entry to read the next one.

And you can E-mail your thoughts to me at lonelyjournal15@gmail.com.

Hey, Alexis here. Sorry it's been awhile. Things have been kind of busy and quiet at the same time, and I needed a break from blogging. I'm still on that break, but I thought I'd let you know how things are going.

Gina and I have been working on some drawing software of our own design. We think we might be able to offer mess-free finger painting at an affordable price. Jonas and Daniel went on a bit of a roadtrip. They had a bunch of friends in hiding; Emma, Maggie, Taylor, Beaumont and others. They needed to find them and tell them that it was safe to come out of hiding. Sarah got a job in a bookstore and is applying to colleges.

Jonas and Daniel finally returned with Sarah's sister, Taylor, the last of those in hiding. Tonight's a celebratory dinner party. I've not met everyone here, but let me rattle off the guest-list; Jonas, Daniel, Sarah, Gina, Emma, Taylor, Spencer, Jennie, Maggie, Beaumont, Mr. and Mrs. Wharton and someone named Alex. (That'll be confusing.)

Gina and Jonas are looking over my shoulder now, and they want to borrow the keyboard for a bit. Well, I refuse. This is my blog, and letting Jonas borrow it the one time was quite enough! Oh, wait, Gina's offering me cheesecake. Well, I suppose I can step away for a minute...

GINA
A few months ago, I had the chance to imagine a life that goes on forever and ever. I was in a gallery that was a tribute to an existence of that kind. And it was offered to me as something to be desired. But all I saw was a life of loneliness, without friends, without connection to anyone, and without love.

It's exactly the sort of life the Order wanted trait positive children to have, and it's because of my sister that it's exactly the sort of life that I don't have.

JONAS
There was a time when I thought losing Bree meant losing everything she'd brought into my life. But I look around the room, and I see Beast, I see my sister, my parents, my friends, and Taylor -- and I know that everything Bree gave is still here.

ALEXIS
I'm very proud to be part of it. I didn't actually do anything, of course, but I was in the room when some important things happened and I'm sure that counts for something.

It wasn't a long drive, but I fell asleep twenty minutes in and woke up by the time we'd arrived. We were in the Angeles National Forest. Jonas parked the van. Daniel led us on a stony trail through some bare patches of trees. I got the sense Jonas knew where we were going; he didn't look around at the scenery in the morning light the way Sarah, Gina and I were peering left and right. He'd seen it before.

Eventually, the rocky path gave way to a wide stretch of water; it was part of a river that widened had into a deep pool against the side of a mountain. I recognized where we were. This was the swimming hole where Daniel and Bree had come to play in the water. This was where Jonas had come to mourn Bree when she had died. And now they'd come back once more.

Gina reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out the urn that Lucy had handed her. She gave it to Daniel, who accepted it quietly. He pulled the top of the urn off. Then he moved to the edge of the water, at first keeping his feet away, but then stepping into the swimming hole after all. Daniel waded in calf-deep. He turned the urn upside-down at an angle and allowed the ashes to scatter into the wind and water.

When the urn was empty, he placed it in the water and allowed the waves to take it away.

He turned back to face us, and his expression was calm and serene. He had brought Bree home. Jonas seemed to shake for a moment, and Gina touched his shoulder as Daniel returned to dry land.

We remained for a little while longer. Jonas and Gina sat by the shore and whispered words to the loved and longed for friend and the sister never known. Sarah hugged Daniel and Daniel accepted it without grief or tears. And I watched them all and thought of how their friend was gone and yet so much of her remained.

BACKDATED-ENTRY9895e
The guards surrounded me, guns raised. I dared look up only for a moment and saw one guard with his pistol leveled at me, while behind him, Lucy looked on hungrily through bloodied eyes. I shut my eyes, bracing myself for unimaginable agony.

"Drink it, Gina!" I screamed.

I waited for the gunshots, thinking that of all the ways to die, I really hadn't anticipated being gunned down in a serial killer's gallery owned by a preposterously old woman who harvested the blood of teenaged girls to use in some deadly pseudo-religious ritual. I always assumed it would be something stupid like tripping over my own feet. I hoped I'd remembered to turn the lights off at my apartment and I tried to take solace in the knowledge that I'd finished my coding for the week.

I heard a thump. I opened my eyes.

Lucy was dropping away from Gina. The guard in front of me had thrust his pistol into the side of Lucy's head. He pulled off his ski-mask. It was Jonas.

The other two guards unmasked as well. They were Sarah and Daniel.

Gina grinned at Sarah. "I thought you were a little short for a stormtrooper," she said to her, while grabbing my arm and pulling me towards the door.

"Six minute countdown to massive explosion, right?" said Daniel. "Front door, now!"

And none of us needed telling twice. We raced for the door. Gina stopped briefly to pick up Lucy's remote as Lucy crawled for it, and I saw her tap a key on it before moving for the exit.

I heard a firm, hard slamming sound behind me as I left the museum, into the hallway, hot on the heels of Jonas, Daniel and Sarah, with Gina right behind me.

As the front door of the mansion came into sight, I felt my lungs were ready to explode, but Gina passed me and shouted for me to move and I forced my feet to keep going.

The five of us were at the gates bordering the estate when a fiery roar sounded from behind us. I turned to watch an internal storm of fire erupt from inside the mansion, bringing the exterior crumbling inward and collapsing on itself.

We watched the flames, a pyre to the Hymn of One, the Order, and anyone who stood with them.

"We have to go back," said Jonas. "I have seen that woman swallow cyanide and walk away; she could still be alive."

"We don't need to go back," Gina said, watching the flames with an unreadable expression. Jonas waited for her to explain, and when Gina didn't, he turned to me.

I held up my PDA, showing him the floor plans we'd found. "We didn't know what was inside the museum, but we did find out that it's surrounded in steel plates between every wall. Impenetrable by fire, except for the front entrance. The steel plate needs to be triggered to drop down, close off the museum and turn it into a bomb shelter."

Gina was still holding Lucy's little remote control in her hand. "I set it off," she whispered.

"Okay," said Jonas, "but there've got to be other ways out, escape hatches -- "

"Six," said Gina. Jonas stopped.

"Before we went in there," I explained, "we found all the hatches. We brought along a welding torch and we sealed them up."

Jonas, Daniel and Sarah watched the blazing wreckage of Lucy's mansion with new understanding. It was now Lucy's tomb. She was trapped inside her gallery of death.

"How long," I said to Gina, "do you think she can stay alive without more blood?"

Gina didn't answer, as though thinking of a number of days or years, and finding each number too small.

Then she turned her back to the flames and moved towards the gates and the van her friends had parked nearby.

"There's somewhere we need to go," Gina explained.

BACKDATED-ENTRY658x54

"I think of death as an old friend," Lucy rasped through the blood that dripped from her mouth. She moved towards us. Every step made a crunching, popping sound. This was couldn't be happening. I willed my feet to move but I couldn't make it happen.

"Perhaps you require an introduction," Lucy said, her voice beginning as a deathly croak but growing stronger with each word.

She stooped to pick up her remote from the floor. I could hear bone grinding as she rose and pressed two separate buttons with bloody fingers.

First, a hatch on the floor slid back, and a metallic stand holding a small vial of thick red liquid. Then, a loud, clear beep, once per second, began to sound from every corner of the museum.

"The first thing I did after laying the foundations of this room," Lucy informed Gina, "was line them with explosives. I've updated the detonators over the years but the consequences are the same. This entire estate will burn in a firestorm -- " she checked her watch. " -- in six minutes and twenty-two seconds. Twenty-one -- "

Gina grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the exit, only to stop when three black-clad guards carrying pistols stormed through the doors. Ski-masks obscured their faces, and they stood, implacably barring us from leaving.

Lucy pulled the vial of red liquid from the stand. With agonizing progress, she made her way to Gina. "The purest distillation of trait positive blood. Not a transfusion," she said, "but enough for one like us. Drink the vial and your body will heal from anything in the explosion. We'll rise again. Refuse and die."

"You are out of your mind!" I shouted. I looked at the guards. "Did you hear her? You'll all be killed!"

"My soldiers have faith in their blood," Lucy answered, and I realized that her security staff were all probably assuming they'd be around after the explosion to file a complaint about employee safety.

Lucy's attention was only for Gina as she held out the vial of blood to Gina.

"You don't belong with your 'friends,'" Lucy told Gina. "They're children. They play games I set. They fight for prizes I arranged. You don't need their love or care, just the certainty that it's yours to take. We can give them their pathetic victory, and while they're congratulating each other, we'll begin again. You're my daughter. Taste your eternity now."

"An eternity of what?" I demanded. "There's nothing in this gallery that shows creativity or passion, only some pointless desire to perpetuate yourself at the expense of everyone else. The only reason you go on living is because you're afraid to die."

Lucy ignored me -- and the fear I described, I suddenly saw in Gina's face -- as Lucy held survival, life and safety in her fingers and held it out to my friend.

And Gina's face was stricken as she turned to me, and Lucy looked on with a twisted understanding. "Afraid to leave your friend to die?" Lucy realized. "I have a solution."

Gina reached into her jacket and brought the gun to bear on Lucy's face, but Lucy shifted her feet, and with centuries of experience, easily side-stepped Gina's line of fire. A hand swept out to knock the weapon from Gina's grasp. A fist slammed into Gina's stomach. Gina doubled over.

Lucy grabbed Gina around the waist with one arm while forcing the other against Gina's throat, immobilizing her.

And then Lucy issued her orders to the guards: "Shoot my daughter's friend in the knees, then the stomach. And you," she said, addressing Gina. "Observe every every dying breath. Every rattle as the body expels itself dry and goes cold and still. You'll learn to savor the sight, I promise you will."

The guards moved into the room, each taking position, forming a perfect triangle around me, guns raised and ready to fire.

34BACKDATED-ENTRY3e

On the second level, the space was significantly narrower between the railing and the wall. We overlooked the display cases, and then Gina and I turned our attention to the walls. There was a seemingly endless line of portraits on the wall, and next to each portrait was a stand. On each stand rested a metal urn.

The first portrait we saw was of a middle-aged man; it was again, a framed flatscreen monitor with a photograph. A caption read, "Gerald Hawthorne Cavendish." I touched it and the caption vanished, replaced by text describing a nerve degeneration condition, which scrolled away to reveal a date for a transfusion. The date upon which Cavendish received a renewed life in exchange for the death of a trait positive girl. His death, 47 years after the transfusion, was listed as well.

Gina and I examined the stand next to the portrait. The urn was one used to carry the ashes of a cremated body. A small nameplate rested on the stand, reading, "Megan Galbraith." There wasn't even a photograph.

( Gallery of Death, continued )

Gina's asleep. I've left one of our computers running an automatic search through county court records and real estate files. There's no way of knowing if Lucy is still using the same name she did in 1996, she's had so many.

I've been watching some of the older video blogs and Lucy's been there throughout, always as the Order's representative. She's a queen who works amongst her people as a common foot-soldier. And she's turned my friend, gentle, sweet, artistic, kind Gina, into someone who intends to murder her.

I've never wanted to kill anyone, not ever. Except Sarah after I got drunk. And Jonas when he kicked in my door. But there's a significant difference in wanting someone out of your existence and planning on putting them out of theirs.

When I was younger, I read a horror story about a countess who bathed in the blood of young girls to retain eternal youth. I always felt grim satisfaction when the countess had her head chopped off at the end of the story. In terms of pure historical fact, the woman was only put under house arrest. The beheaded countess was a fiction. Could I ever feel that way about a real person of flesh and blood?

But this person left Gina on my doorstep in a bloody mess, killed Gina's sister. I think of how Daniel and Jonas spoke of Bree. Daniel's powerlessness and grief has only been suppressed, not dulled and Jonas -- Jonas didn't even need to say it for me to realize that Jonas had been in love with her. Jonas was just like me, probably; living alone in a box with no way out until Bree came into his life, and when she died, Jonas probably felt trapped inside again. Lucy has taken so much from these people -- and it's because of these people that I didn't run screaming home on day two.

I'm letting my search run even as I wonder if I can bring myself to help Gina do what she plans to do. By letting the search run, I'm helping her. By not locking Gina up, I'm helping her. But can I watch the light fade from another human being's eyes and know I made it happen?

Gina doesn't have to do this. She's never been to high school, but her friends and their connections and stolen software have created a fake diploma. Gina's never been to a library but grasped the filing system inside of three minutes and found everything she wanted within hours. Gina's life never exposed her to computers, cameras, film editing or art, yet within months, she was adept with all this unfamiliar technology. Gina's upbringing should have left her the social incompetent I am, yet she is pleasant and endearing. She doesn't have to be a killer. She could be anything she wants. She could go to school, she could make a life for herself and leave it all behind.

But I watch her sleeping now, and I see her arms wrapped around herself protectively, the way she shifts awkwardly, and I know Gina lives in fear of the day Lucy or Lucy's agents catch up to her again.

I understand.

My computer's telling me it's found something.

Gina and I sat quietly at a table in a nearby library. With our laptops, we started accessing every scanned and archived newspaper we could find relating to the Caldwell Chapel -- the church where Gina had been tutored. There was a coldness to Gina I had never seen before, as she accessed microfilm and turned page after page of preserved newspaper clippings. The only thing on the church website was its address.

After several hours, Gina and I arranged everything we'd found in chronological order and worked our way to the present. The church had first been opened in 1771, as the personal project of the Mortlain family. The family had made its wreath in mining and named the church after a son who had died in infancy. During the American Revolution, the Caldwell Chapel was raided and destroyed by British troops, but reconstructed through the efforts of a group of arms merchants. A spokesman, Gerald Brighton, had described it as his effort to rebuild what his weapons had destroyed. In 1874, the chapel expanded from an expensive but modestly-sized building into extensive multiple wings, through generous donations and supervision from a mining family named the Wendalls. However, the property had fallen into disrepair during the Depression and had been shut down from use in 1937. In 1971, however, the property was repurchased and the church restored by a real estate firm, the initiative headed by one Christina Malis. And in 1996, the surrounding park and wooded areas were also bought up by the present owner, a Lucinda Laurentis.

In every incarnation, the church had been a place of gathering and worship for the religion called the Hymn of One. It had been the first of its order on American shores.

Gina and I set side by side portraits and photographs of every group that had been involved in the church over the centuries; the Mortlains, the Brighton group, the Wendalls, the real estate firm, and the present owner.

The Mortlains, the Brighton group and the Wendall family showed at least five or six people in each family portrait, and every single of these portraits had the same face in each of them. The same face was found in a photograph of Christina Malis and a photograph of Lucinda Laurentis. It was a blonde woman with a cold expression and eyes that never seemed to meet the light. It was the woman in Gina's sketches.

"Who is she?" I asked Gina.

"She's had many names," Gina answered, "but my friends call her Lucy."

"Are you sure it's her?" I wondered. "It could be a coincidence; this portrait of the Mortlains was taken in 1795, this photograph of Laurentis is from 1992, it -- "

"You know what trait positive blood does," Gina told me, not even letting me finish working through my doubts. "She's been there since the beginning of it all -- she was there with my sister when Bree was being prepared for the Ceremony, she's the one who ordered every test on me, every procedure, every... "

"You've met her before," I realized.

"I've run from her before," Gina responded. "Every time we were pursued, she'd turn up. We knew from the sight of her that the Order was near, we assumed she their agent -- "

"But if she's been there since the beginning -- "

"Then she's the one in charge," said Gina. "Every time my friends and I tried to track down the Order, we'd be told the ones giving the orders were Lord Carruthers or William Porter or some interchangeable face or name. The Order's kept going even as they've fallen out of the picture."

Gina's fingers traced over Christina Malis' face and then picked up Lucinda Laurentis' headshot. "She's been masquerading as a lieutenant when she's been the leader all along."

Gina was gripping the photograph with fingers that were as pale as death, and for a moment, Gina's eyes were as dark as Lucy's.