“Horse?” Eve asked.
“Vessel?” Gavrikov threw in.
“Prison,” Bjorn said.
“Our home,” Zack said, “for lack of a better word. And you guys are talking about leaving her to die at the hands of this crazy—”
“She could already be dead,” Gavrikov said, but there was a slight catch in the way he said it. He swallowed, visibly, uneasily, “for all we know. We can’t see outside this place. She may well be a corpse, cold, and gone. Our loyalty should be to—”
“To her,” Zack said, feeling the fire of the feeling.
“I don’t think we’re going to come to a consensus on this,” Harmon said stiffly. “But if it makes you feel better, remember this moment. And when we jump ship, and I have access to my powers again, we can send this memory of Rose’s to Sienna, if she’s still alive.” He spoke smoothly up until he said her name, and there…he seemed to catch a little as well. “Maybe the knowledge of what Rose is, how she came to be…maybe it’ll help her. But beyond that…”
“This is not our fight anymore,” Eve said, eyes cool. “We’re not sharing a body with Sienna. We never really shared a mind with her. She has goals to save the world from all these dubious criminals, most of whom don’t actually want to destroy it. They just want to cut their little slice out of it, and I’m content to let them have that piece—so that I can have peace.” She shrugged. “Is that so bad?”
“It’s depraved indifference to human life,” Zack said. “Yes, that’s generally considered bad.”
“I’m not human,” Eve said. “Hell, I’m not even alive anymore.”
“I’m indifferent,” Bjorn said with a split grin, crooked at the corner of his mouth. “And depraved.”
Bastian broke his silence. “I’m not indifferent. But this mano a mano thing that Rose has got going with Sienna…” He looked right at Zack. “You think our place is in the middle of this fight? We’re on the bench at best, out of the arena at worst. Rose doesn’t want us, and Sienna…” He shrugged. “She’s not in our Area of Operations, okay? Much as you might want to help her…what do you really think we can do from here?” He looked around, as if taking the emotional temperature of the others, who were nodding in quiet. “It’s our obligation to bust out. After that, if you want to help Sienna…” He shrugged again. “Maybe we can get you your own body, and off you go.” He looked to Harmon for approval. “Right? Let the man pursue his interests.”
“We are going to need many fresh bodies,” Gavrikov said.
“I’m certainly not opposed to trying,” Harmon said smoothly. “I don’t wish Sienna any ill will…at this point.” He seemed to stiffen again. “If you want to go help her once we’re out…I won’t stop you. Just don’t expect me to get involved. Rose is a small threat to everyone else—”
“She’s killed five thousand people, man,” Zack said, disgust welling within him. “That’s not a small threat and that’s not a small number—”
“It is in the long history of mankind,” Harmon cut him off. “You want to get involved? You may. Leave me out, all right?” He looked around, caught a few nods. “Leave us out of it, I should say. Because it looks to me like a grudge match. Like Rose powered up to kill Sienna. What’s she going to do once she’s done? Hm?” He paused, waiting for an answer Zack didn’t have to give. “Probably nothing.”
She will not stop, a quiet voice seemed to whisper in the wind.
“Oh, good,” Eve said dryly, “the disembodied voice again. Look me in the eye when you speak to me, voice.” She looked around, as if expecting something to jump out of the shadowy bushes. “Hm? Or are you a coward?”
“Yes,” came a voice as a silhouette slipped out of the dark, appearing before them as if shimmering like falling water. His face was clear, handsome even, and the earnestness that had been there before was replaced by eyes that were dark and shadowed.
Graham.
“So you are in here with us,” Zack said, looking him right in the eye. There was a sadness there, one that hadn’t been present when last he’d seen Graham, in this very memory, grabbing hold of Rose and letting her rip his soul out of his body to save himself.
Graham just looked at each of them in turn, and then stared at Rose, still huddled in the bushes. As they watched she stood, turning, and started down the lane toward Miriam Shell’s house, as if spurred to life by their discussion of her. She wobbled, unsteady on her legs, but gained strength with each step. She avoided the bodies, picked her way around them, and disappeared into the night behind a house that was freshly painted and shone blue in the moonlight.
“This…” Graham’’s voice was quiet, full of sadness, and some strange, foreboding menace. “This is not all.” He looked at each of them in turn, and Zack could see in his eyes a pain, a callousing to his soul, a wounding that years in Rose’s mind had left him with—something that Zack himself did not feel, could not feel, even after years of his own imprisonment in Sienna, a longer sentence than Graham’s.
And it worried him.
“This…” Graham said, and it seeped into Zack like the rising chill of Scottish winter as the wind ran through, rustling the bushes around them, “was just the beginning…”
24.
Sienna
I woke up in the middle of the night, under the car, cold seeping in on either side. It was probably in the seventies or sixties, Fahrenheit, based on the chill that had sunk into my bones. I was shivering slightly, metal underbody of the old farm truck above me, the concrete parking pad beneath me, and the sides open so I could breathe in the cool night air.
Obviously I’d been at the point of deathly exhaustion when I’d crawled beneath the truck seeking shelter, but now that I’d awoken, other than the open sides and fresh air coming in, it kind of reminded me—what with the shallow confines above and below—of the time I’d spent in the steel box my mom used to imprison me in.
No wonder I’d fallen asleep so easily. It was like a little slice of home away from home.
My muscles ached, but not impossibly badly as they had when they’d seized up before I’d conked out. That oily smell beneath the vehicle was now oddly comforting, like something I’d gotten used to. I tested my arms, and they worked again, which was fortunate. My legs did the same, bending on command. My abs felt a little sore, and my inner ear seemed to be still experiencing the feeling of rapid swimming, even though I’d concluded my flight across the Firth many hours ago, a sense that I was bobbing in the waves still thrummed through me.
“Oh, gahhh…” I mumbled, my face pressed into the concrete parking pad. I hadn’t felt it when I’d collapsed, probably a little too focused on being completely spent rather than worrying about the fact I was using concrete as a pillow. For my cheekbone.
I lifted my head, but carefully, very aware that there were tons of metal lingering just above me. I’d drooled in my sleep, one of those qualities that made me so super attractive, I supposed. No wonder I was beating the men away with the stick these days. A headache lingered, lightly, behind my eyes, and I figured it was my body’s revenge, along with the other aches, for pushing myself so desperately hard with so desperately little over these last few days. I was living on nothing and adrenaline before Rose had stolen my powers, and since then it had basically been junk food, adrenaline, and Irn Bru, which was not much better.
Hardly conditioned to live the high life, I had nonetheless become accustomed to a certain lifestyle these last few years, and it mostly included decent food and a bed to sleep in. Waking up on concrete and marathoning and swimming for miles and miles? Not something my body was super jazzed about, I could tell from the pain.
Sorting through the aches, I came back to the memory of my dreamwalk during my sleep.
Reed.