Adam, my Adam, rocked back and forth. His breathing sounded tortured and husky against shower walls. I stepped closer. He was hunched into a ball and hidden from view. There was a metal taste in my mouth. Reality shattered over me like broken glass, the pieces of what was happening.
Water hummed through the walls. The building creaked. My hairs stood on end. I switched on the light, then kneeled and placed a hand on his shoulder.
Quieting, he turned his chin to face me.
“Victoria,” he croaked.
“Adam.”
His eyes were colorless. Yellow seeped out into a piss-colored shadow between his cheekbones and lower lashes. The thin layer of skin stretched across his forehead was a vampiric shade of white coated in pearly slime. His cracked lips parted.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. My voice quaked. I tucked my feet underneath me and scooped his head into my lap. I ran my fingers through dark, sweat-matted hair. My eyes searched his. “What happened?”
His pupils—the only shade in the runny egg whites of his eyeballs—followed my movements. His teeth chattered. The rest of his body fell still, as if he’d been paralyzed.
“Adam.” I patted his cheek. “Adam, stay with me.” The charge. He’d needed the charge after running home and he’d been too stubborn and I’d been too consumed to give it to him. I cradled his head. I was stupid. So stupid. What if a full resurrection could only work once? What if I couldn’t replicate the past results? His jugular swelled with the effort of gulping down his saliva.
“4-0-8.” The numbers were feather-soft when they crossed his lips. I bent my ear down to him. “4-0-8,” he repeated, and this time I was sure I’d heard correctly.
“408?” I shook my head. “I don’t know what that means.” It felt important that I grasped the significance, but every time I tried to reach into my mind and close a fist around them, the numbers slipped through and I came up empty.
“The house.” His head lulled toward me. I put my palm to his forehead, cool from being against the shower tiles. “I saw the house.”
I nodded in that whatever-you-say way I used to have with my grandma right before she died, too. I felt him slipping. It was as if his body actually became lighter in my arms, and I knew that he’d be gone from me and that I’d have nothing to show for that night except for skin and bones and a rotting pile of organs.
I traced the outline of his jaw and the ridge of his brow.
He coughed and it sounded like his lungs were tearing out drywall. “We have…” He sucked air as though a hole had been torn in his rib cage, making the entire effort useless. “… to find…” His tongue pushed against his teeth, leaving behind tiny spit bubbles. “… the house.”
And with that, the darks of his eyes rolled into the sockets, and he was gone.
TWENTY-FIVE
Physical deterioration between recharges seems to compound. Adam’s motor functions visibly slow once the electric half-life in his body has reduced to critical levels.
Purpose of later experiments will be to develop a way to maintain functionality for longer periods of time.
*
Wax dripped in fat rivulets down the sides of melting candles. The wicks had sunk into caverns. Each stick was half the size it was when I lit it. I kneeled beside him, listening to every whisper of breath, straining to hear his heartbeat.
“You should get some sleep.” I jumped when Owen’s fingers brushed my arm. “I can keep watch.”
I shook my head. When I called, he’d arrived faster than an ambulance. I now watched as wisps of color returned to Adam’s face and the yellow stains dissipated from underneath his eyes. Dark pools of blood spread out and vanished as his circulation returned. The wires used for the shock lay about like dead snakes.
Eventually an eyelid quivered, and first one, then the other, peeled open. Adam stared up at the ceiling. The deep, chocolate brown had returned to his eyes.
“Oh, thank God,” I said. Without thinking, I threw myself over his chest.
Gentle fingers petted my hair. I wiped my nose on the back of my hand before prying myself away. I hadn’t even realized that tears had slipped from the corners of my eyes. That’s how I was when I was focused on something.
He sat up and cracked his neck, looking somehow more human than before.
“I should have come sooner,” I said.
He frowned. “Thank you.”
“I think it’s safe to say that I have carried your body far more than any other man’s body in my life,” Owen said.
I wanted to tell Adam right then and there that this was all my fault. The second I thought I might lose him, I’d remembered Meg. I didn’t know who she was and I hadn’t tried to find out, but I knew I must have been taking something away from her and, worse, from him. A screw tightened in my chest. Except, I couldn’t help but believe that Adam belonged to me, not her, and that as long as no one knew Adam, there was no one to ask questions. My kneecaps dug into the floor.
“I’ve been seeing something.” His voice was deeper and more sure. He stared straight ahead like Owen and I weren’t even in the room. “When the shocks come, I can make out images.”