“Well, that was a shock,” he said drily.
I patted the top of my own head, and my palm bumped against hair several inches above where it should be in relation to my scalp. I blinked and glanced around. The high voltage must have reacted with the damp floor, traveling to the spot where we stood and slamming Owen and me with an electrical punch to the figurative gut. Speaking of which, my stomach was killing me. The dirt and concrete must have saved us from the worst effects or else we’d be human French fries right about now. My heart flip-flopped unevenly in my chest. “What the…?”
Wires cascaded from the edge of the tub. Empty. The transistor radio lay broken into clunky pieces on the floor nearby. I pushed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. The veins in my head pounded.
Water puddled at the base of the bathtub. Smaller splashes formed a trail at even intervals, and that was when it hit me, coming back in a great, crashing tidal wave of realization. There had been a corpse there earlier. Corpses did not generally move on their own. Unless, of course, they weren’t corpses any longer.
I jumped to my feet. Einstein skittered back. “Owen,” I hissed, tapping his shoulder. As I did so, I turned and froze, my heart now missing a full beat. Buh-boom. Skip. Einstein grumbled then let out a hoarse bark.
“You know that feeling of when a semitruck is driving through your brain?” Owen asked, dragging himself to his feet. “Yeah, that.” He rubbed at his temples, eyes squeezed shut.
From across the room, a boy stared directly at us. I tugged at Owen’s sleeve. He registered the added presence in the room, and his mouth fell open.
My skin tingled. “Eureka,” I said in a slow exhale.
It was not any boy. It was the boy, and now that he was standing in front of me, I could picture him again with his startled expression the second before my headlights crashed into him. He was wearing only his pair of dripping boxers and was slick-chested and wet like he’d just been born.
He cocked his head, examining us. Now upright, he was even taller than I’d thought. More substantial, too.
Owen put his hand up, palm facing outward. “We come in peace,” he overenunciated.
I pushed his hand back to his side. “This isn’t Roswell, you idiot.”
I took a cautious step forward, heart pounding ferociously. The deep laceration that sliced down his rib cage looked dried out now, with cracked, shriveling edges. Wiry thread crisscrossed over the dark red gash where the edges of his flesh were sutured together. The other cuts and scrapes had also scabbed and turned colors. The whole of his torso was coated in angry red branches, like veins, spoking out from where the diathermy device had sat on his chest. I recognized these as the signs of high-level, direct electrocution, and my scalp tingled.
I wrung my hands together. “Okay, I’m just going to say it: You’re not going to, like, kill us, are you? We don’t have a zombie situation on our hands?”
He pursed his lips and sucked in his cheeks; his eyes were wide.
Einstein resumed her deep, throaty growl. “Right. Sorry,” I said when he didn’t respond. “That was … insensitive.”
I looked over my shoulder at Owen, who shrugged and waved me forward.
There was a stillness about the boy in the way he stood that made me worried he’d endured some degree of rigor mortis.
“Let’s start over,” I said. “Hi.” I waved.
His face was no more expressive than a marble slab. “Who are you?” His voice was low and flat.
“I—I—” I stammered, taking one step back without meaning to. “I … I’m Victoria.” I tried to steady the trembling in my fingers. “But, uh, people call me Tor.” Einstein waddled closer to me and took up residence behind my legs. Not much of a guard dog. “And that’s Owen.” I gestured over my shoulder.
“Hey.” Owen’s voice was hoarse.
Dark hair was matted down over the boy’s forehead, and there was an almost imperceptible gray tint to his otherwise olive skin. “Victoria.” He enunciated my name slowly, like he was trying it out for the first time and couldn’t quite decide if it sounded right. “Owen.” He dipped his head, nodding toward Owen. “And who am I?” Slowly, he raised his hand and placed it flat on his chest.
This, I hadn’t expected. “Who are you?” I asked. “You mean you don’t know?”
He shook his head, deliberately, gradually, revealing the two razor-thin incisions at each temple.
This time I took several steps forward, walking over to the busted radio and tub of brine. I had to tilt my chin up to make eye contact. “What do you remember exactly?”
“Nothing.”
I circled him, examining the crusts of dried blood. “A blank slate?” I stopped in front of him. “Where’re you from?”