Peter frowned. “Fangs?”
She nodded. “Just these two.”
“Was he always that way?”
“Actually, no. At the start, he was exactly like the rest of them. But something happened, an accident. He fell into a flooded quarry. This was early on, just a few days after he broke out of the NOAH lab. None of us can swim; Fanning went straight to the bottom. When he woke up, he was lying on the shore, looking like he does now.” She paused, eyes narrowing on his face, as if struck by a sudden thought. “Is that what happened to Amy?”
“Something like that.”
“But you’re not going to tell me.”
Peter left it there. “Could water change back his Many?”
“Fanning says no, just him.”
Peter rose from the cot. A wave of lightheadedness passed through him: he really needed to lie down, even for just a few minutes. But it seemed important not to show her how exhausted he was—an old habit, from the days when the two of them had stood the Watch together, each always trying to best the other. I can do this, can you?
“Sorry about those chains.”
Alicia lifted her wrists, examining them with a neutral expression—as if they were not her hands but someone else’s. She shrugged and let them fall to her lap again. “Forget it. It’s not like I’m making this easy for you.”
“Do you need anything? Food, water?”
“My diet is a little peculiar these days.”
Peter understood. “I’ll see what I can do.”
A silent moment, each of them acknowledging the awkwardness of the situation.
“I know you don’t want to believe me,” Alicia said. “Hell, I wouldn’t. But I’m telling you the truth.”
Peter said nothing.
“We were friends, Peter. All those years, you were the one person I could always rely on. We stood for each other.”
“Yes, we did.”
“Just tell me that still counts for something.”
As he looked at her, his mind went back to the night when they had said goodbye to each other at the Colorado garrison, so many years ago—the night before he had ridden up the mountain with Amy. How young they’d been. Standing outside the soldiers’ barracks, the cold wind lancing through them, he had loved Alicia fiercely, as he had never loved anyone in his life—not his parents or Auntie or even his brother Theo: no one. It was not the love of a man for a woman, or a brother for a sister, but something leaner, pared to its essence: a binding, subatomic energy that had no words to name it. Peter could no longer recall what they’d said to one another; only the impression remained, like footprints in snow. It was one of those moments when it had still seemed possible to understand life and what was meant by living one—he had been young enough to still believe that such a thing was possible—and the recollection carried a striking vividness of emotion, as if three decades had not passed since that cold and distant hour in which he had stood in the sheltering light of Alicia’s courage. But then he blinked the memory away, his mind returned to the present, and what remained was only a great weight of sadness at the center of his chest. Two hundred thousand souls gone, and Alicia at the center of it all.
“Yes,” he said. “It counts. But I’m afraid it doesn’t change a thing.”
He gave three hard bags on the door. Tumblers turned and the guard appeared.
“Don’t be dumb, Peter. Fanning’s everything I say he is. I don’t know what you’re planning, but don’t.”
“Thank you,” he said to the guard. “I’m finished here.”
The chain attaching Alicia to the wall rattled as she yanked on it. “Listen to me, goddamnit! It’s no good, fighting him!”
But these words barely reached his ears; Peter was already striding down the hall.
61
And now, my Alicia, you reside among them.