Jamie. I shuddered at his name. My Jamie. He was a monster, too. He was just like the rest of them. My Jamie. It was a physical pain to think of him.
“Where is she?”
“Over here, Jared. She’s not… responding.”
“We didn’t touch her.”
“Here, give me the light,” Jared said. “Now, the rest of you, get out of here. Emergency over. Give her some air, okay?”
There was a shuffling noise that didn’t travel far.
“Seriously, people. You’re not helping. Leave. All the way out.”
The shuffling was slow at first, but then became more productive. I could hear many footsteps fading away in the room and then disappearing out of it.
Jared waited until it was silent again.
“Okay, Wanda, it’s just you and me.”
He waited for some kind of answer.
“Look, I guess that must have been pretty… bad. We never wanted you to see that. I’m sorry.”
Sorry? Geoffrey’d said it was Jared’s idea. He wanted to cut me out, slice me into little pieces, fling my blood on the wall. He’d slowly mangle a million of me if he could find a way to keep his favorite monster alive with him. Slash us all to slivers.
He was quiet for a long time, still waiting for me to react.
“You look like you want to be alone. That’s okay. I can keep them away, if that’s what you want.”
I didn’t move.
Something touched my shoulder. I cringed away from it, into the sharp stones.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
I heard him stand, and the light—red behind my closed eyes—began to fade as he walked away.
He met someone in the mouth of the cave.
“Where is she?”
“She wants to be alone. Let her be.”
“Don’t get in my way again, Howe.”
“Do you think she wants comfort from you? From a human?”
“I wasn’t party to this —”
Jared answered in a lower voice, but I could still hear the echoes. “Not this time. You’re one of us, Ian. Her enemy. Did you hear what she said in there? She was screaming monsters. That’s how she sees us now. She doesn’t want your comfort.”
“Give me the light.”
They didn’t speak again. A minute passed, and I heard one set of slow footsteps moving around the edge of the room. Eventually, the light swept across me, turning my lids red again.
I huddled myself more tightly together, expecting him to touch me.
There was a quiet sigh, and then the sound of him sitting on the stone, not as close beside me as I would have expected.
With a click, the light disappeared.
I waited in the silence for a long time for him to speak, but he was just as silent as I was.
Finally, I stopped waiting and returned to my mourning. Ian did not interrupt. I sat in the blackness of the big hole in the ground and grieved for lost souls with a human at my side.
CHAPTER 41
Vanished
Ian sat with me for three days in the darkness.
He left for only a few short minutes at a time, to get us food and water. At first, Ian ate, though I did not. Then, as he realized that it wasn’t a loss of appetite that left my tray full, he stopped eating, too.
I used his brief absences to deal with the physical needs that I could not ignore, thankful for the proximity of the odorous stream. As my fast lengthened, those needs vanished.
I couldn’t keep from sleeping, but I did not make myself comfortable. The first day, I woke to find my head and shoulders cradled on his lap. I recoiled from him, shuddering so violently that he did not repeat the gesture. After that, I slumped against the stones where I was, and when I woke, I would curl back up into my silent ball at once.
“Please,” Ian whispered on the third day—at least I thought it was the third day; there was no way to be sure of the passing time in this dark, silent place. It was the first time he’d spoken.
I knew a tray of food was in front of me. He pushed it closer, till it touched my leg. I cringed away.
“Please, Wanda. Please eat something.”
He put his hand on my arm but moved away quickly when I flinched out from under it.
“Please don’t hate me. I’m so sorry. If I’d known… I would have stopped them. I won’t let it happen again.”
He would never stop them. He was just one among many. And, as Jared had said, he’d had no objections before. I was the enemy. Even in the most compassionate, humankind’s limited scope of mercy was reserved for their own.
I knew Doc could never intentionally inflict pain on another person. I doubted he would even be capable of watching such a thing, tender as his feelings were. But a worm, a centipede? Why would he care about the agony of a strange alien creature? Why would it bother him to murder a baby—slowly, slicing it apart piece by piece—if it had no human mouth to scream with?
“I should have told you,” Ian whispered.
Would it have mattered if I’d simply been told rather than having seen the tortured remains for myself? Would the pain be less strong?
“Please eat.”
The silence returned. We sat in it for a while, maybe another hour.
Ian got up and walked quietly away.
I could make no sense of my emotions. In that moment, I hated the body I was bound to. How did it make sense that his going depressed me? Why should it pain me to have the solitude I craved? I wanted the monster back, and that was plainly wrong.
I wasn’t alone for long. I didn’t know if Ian had gone to get him or if he’d been waiting for Ian to leave, but I recognized Jeb’s contemplative whistle as it approached in the darkness.