Marin took Rose’s hands and guided them up toward her neck. “I want to try, too,” the girl reminded Rose.
Rose nodded again. Rose’s fingers skimmed Marin’s neck in a touch both feather-light and thorough. When she was sure she’d found all of the broken skin, her fingers stilled. Her breathing didn’t shift.
Somehow Lena knew when Rose sank down, just as she felt the Neo-barb woman struggle.
“Rose,” Lena reassured her, “she’s just a machine. A living machine. And so is the Dust.”
The other woman hesitated. She began again. Marin’s skin knit together, healthy skin rippling across the wounds.
“Leave some for me!” Marin demanded.
Rose withdrew, both mentally and physically. Her hands dropped to her lap, and she took a shaky breath.
“Did she do it?” Alex’s gaze was sharp on the Neo-barb woman.
Rose’s chin lifted. “She did,” she told him with pride. She stood in one smooth, fluid motion and moved back to her seat. Even blind, she found it without stumbling.
“And so is Marin,” Lena reported, focused on the girl in front of her. Patience was not Marin’s strong suit, but healing was.
Marin healed the wounds on her own neck and moved on to her face and arms. Her sun-reddened, cracking, blistered skin smoothed. It became pink and shiny and then faded to her natural creamy paleness.
Phoebe made a low note of amazement deep in her throat. “Help me, Marin.” She tugged on Marin’s arm. “I can’t figure it out.”
Marin turned to her, and the two girls started working together. After a moment, she made it clear she not only understood how to do it, but she excelled at sharing how to do it, as well.
Lena settled back onto her heels and looked around. The twins had already turned to face each other, whispering and nodding in excitement. All four of the men watched with bemused expressions.
Their base camp agent, whose name Lena had never learned, looked a little shell-shocked. He asked Alex, “Is it supposed to be that easy for us, too?”
Jackson shook his head in small back and forth movements, chin tucked in his palm, elbow on his armrest as the girls easily practiced the skill he’d sweated and lost sleep over to master.
Alex chuckled. “No, I’m pretty sure they’re special.”
I’m not alone. Not ever again.
The dark place inside Lena felt warm and honeyed with pride for the damaged, amazing, fast-learning girls, and she felt a little generous. “Not necessarily special,” she told them with a light shrug of one shoulder. “Just different.”
“No,” Alex replied, his voice soft as his gaze moved over her face. “You’re definitely special.”
Wh—?
Lena ducked her head, heat flaring across her cheeks and through her chest. She could feel her wide grin as she turned again to her girls.
Marissa had pulled her legs up to her chest and rocked, one dirty thumb tucked into her mouth.
Lena reclaimed her focus and scanned the girls. She’d forgotten the quiet, dark girl with hollow eyes who couldn’t be more than nine. She was overly thin with the coltish legs of a girl making the slow segue into womanhood but the still-round cheeks of childhood. She sat alone. The sense of loneliness radiating off of her miserable little person, though, had more to it than simply sitting alone. Lena searched her memory for the girl’s name. Hania.
She crossed the four steps to her. “Your turn,” she told the girl. She dipped down to squat before Hania and touched the girl’s arm with her fingertips.
Hania shook her head solemnly. Her irises were as black as her pupils, making her eyes seem both bottomless and full of grief.
“She can’t get better,” she said. “I shouldn’t get better, either.”
Lena glanced around. “Everyone’s getting better, Hania.”
Hania shook her head again.
“Lydie was her match.” The twin who spoke, either Constance or Charity, held tight to her sister’s hand.
A knot twisted in Lena’s stomach. “Her match?”
Rose turned her head toward them, her blindfolded face eerie with the streak of tunnel lights behind her. “They paired off girls they found,” she explained, her voice flat. “I don’t know why, or why we matched. The girls say we weren’t alone. They got rid of any who didn’t fit well, with each other, or with these girls. Supposed to be the same age, same power. Lydie was Hania’s match. They did everything together. The exercises. The….” She stopped and swallowed. “Everything. For however long they were there before you came.”
Her heart wanted to beat its way out of Lena’s chest. “You don’t have a match,” she pointed out.