She rolled her eyes. Cole was sitting between Meg and Evan, quietly listening to the exchange.
“What are you afraid to tell me?”
“I’m not afraid of anything!” Meg snapped. Memories of the bloody nightmare still crisp and metallic on her tongue had her edgy.
His brows rose. “You are afraid of something. What happened when you went into Williams’ psyche?”
She couldn’t stop her body from shuddering.
“Meg, you’re going to have to let us help you.”
“You can’t.” She mumbled under her breath.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you may be a brilliant scientist, Evan, but you can’t protect me from myself!” she blurted.
He frowned. “What does that even mean?”
Meg just shook her head, feeling fresh, hot tears slip down her cheeks. She smacked them away furiously.
“You’re my sister, Meggie. I want to help you,” Evan said gently.
“Meg, please talk to us,” Cole urged.
She stayed quiet for a long time. The boys gave her time to think.
“When I went into Creed’s emotions, I felt the blackness and could remove it from him. He said it felt like a warm, white blanket. I guess that’s a good visual to describe a completely emotional event. I wrap the blanket around the pain and blackness, gather the corners of the blanket to make a bundle, then I toss it into the sky with a prayer.
“It worked fine with Creed. I mean, I didn’t know what I was doing, but it seemed to help him and…” Meg shifted in her seat—uncomfortable discussing such a private moment she shared with Creed, in front of Cole, “other than feeling dizzy, a little headache, and tired, I recovered from that without too much difficulty.”
Evan sat quietly watching her as she spoke. Meg knew he didn’t want to interrupt, worried that if he did, she would stop talking entirely.
“It was similar with Cole,” she nodded at him as he watched her talk. “Except with you being unconscious, I was working in more of a dreamscape. I threw my blanket out to try to find the pain I could collect away from your heart, but found more emotional memories.” She darted her eyes toward Cole feeling guilty, but knowing he had a right to be aware of what she was privy to when she was working inside his emotions.
“Sorry, Cole. Please don’t think I was prying.” Meg looked up into his eyes hopefully.
“Meg, you did what you had to do to bring me back. You weren’t prying. You were saving me.” He nodded encouraging her to go on with her story.
She smiled weakly then continued. “Well, I found childhood memories connected to your mom. I used those to help me channel into the flicker of life I found in the darkness. I gathered some blackness and removed it, but it was different than my experience with Creed. This time, I woke exhausted, head pounding and had some blurry vision for a while. It was like my brain was having a hard time deciding through whose eyes to see the world, Cole’s or my own. Almost like vertigo, I guess. Pretty disorienting, really. I figured the more intense reaction was because I was deeper in Cole’s emotions for a longer period of time.”
Meg stopped talking, choosing instead to chew on her bottom lip until she tasted blood.
Evan was having none of it.
“Okay, what about when you tried it with Williams?”
She looked away entirely and stared out the oval window into a starry black sky, and imagined the brown patchwork quilt of Texas below.
Meg had this overwhelming urge to hide. She wanted to curl up on the bottom of her closet and hide in the darkness; willing herself not to breathe so she wouldn’t make a sound. She just wanted to disappear.
Without realizing she was doing it, Meg drew her knees up to her chin, curling up as she did when she was a little girl locked in that horrible room where Williams kept her trapped. Meg remembered staring at the drain in the floor. She was still afraid of it.
What had slipped down those holes? Whose room was this before me?
Her memory wasn’t nearly as acute as Alik’s, but she had lots of traumas branded as clearly in her memory as the infinite symbol was into her back.
“Meg?” Evan was waiting patiently for her answer.
Cole reached out and laid a warm hand on Meg’s arm.
She looked over at her brother and thought, not for the first time how fortunate he was to have been rescued as a newborn. He had only been in the institute for a couple of weeks and had no memories of his time there. Meg quietly scolded herself for resenting his fortune.
None of us had any choice in the matter. We were children, babies!
As Meg looked into her brother’s honey eyes, she had to force herself not to lash out at him.
Williams traumatized her. Meg wanted him dead. She wanted vengeance.