“Right,” I agreed in a firmer voice, hugging the tank tighter to my chest.
Brandt and Aaron exchanged sour glances.
I was going to need more allies. Jared and Jeb and Doc were only three, though certainly the most influential three here. Still, they would need support.
I knew what this meant.
It meant talking to Ian.
Others, too, of course, but Ian would have to be one of them. My heart seemed to slump lower in my chest, to curl limply in on itself. I’d done many things I had not wanted to do since joining the humans, but I couldn’t remember any this sharply and pointedly painful. Even deciding to trade my life for the Seeker’s—that was a huge, vast hurt, a wide field of ache, but it was almost manageable because it was so tied up in the bigger picture. Telling Ian goodbye was a razor-sharp piercing; it made the greater vision hard to see. I wished there was some way, any way, to save him from the same pain. There wasn’t.
The only thing worse would be telling Jared goodbye. That one would burn and fester. Because he wouldn’t feel pain. His joy would far outweigh any small regret he might feel over me.
As for Jamie, well, I wasn’t planning on facing that goodbye at all.
“Wanda!” Doc’s voice was sharp.
I hurried to the bed Doc was hovering over. Before I got there, I could see the tiny olive hand fisting and unfisting where it hung over the edge of the cot.
“Ah,” the Seeker’s familiar voice moaned from the human body. “Ah.”
The room went utterly silent. Everyone looked at me, as if I were the expert on humans.
I elbowed Doc, my hands still wrapped around the tank. “Talk to her,” I whispered.
“Um… Hello? Can you hear me… miss? You’re safe now. Do you understand me?”
“Ah,” she groaned. Her eyes fluttered open, focused quickly on Doc’s face. There was no discomfort in her expression—the No Pain would be making her feel wonderful, of course. Her eyes were onyx black. They darted around the room until she found me, and recognition was quickly followed by a scowl. She looked away, back to Doc.
“Well, it feels good to have my head back,” she said in a loud, clear voice. “Thanks.”
CHAPTER 53
Condemned
The Seeker’s host body was named Lacey; a dainty, soft, feminine name. Lacey. As inappropriate as the size, in my opinion. Like naming a pit bull Fluffy.
Lacey was just as loud as the Seeker—and still a complainer.
“You’ll have to forgive me for going on and on,” she insisted, allowing us no other options. “I’ve been shouting away in there for years and never getting to speak for myself. I’ve got a lot to say all stored up.”
How lucky for us. I could almost make myself glad that I was leaving.
In answer to my earlier question to myself, no, the face was not less repugnant with a different awareness behind it. Because the awareness was not so very different, in the end.
“That’s why we don’t like you,” she told me that first night, making no change from the present tense or the plural pronoun. “When she realized that you were hearing Melanie just the way she was hearing me, it made her frightened. She thought you might guess. I was her deep, dark secret.” A grating laugh. “She couldn’t make me shut up. That’s why she became a Seeker, because she was hoping to figure out some way to better deal with resistant hosts. And then she requested being assigned to you, so she could watch how you did it. She was jealous of you; isn’t that pathetic? She wanted to be strong like you. It gave us a real kick when we thought Melanie had won. I guess that didn’t happen, though. I guess you did. So why did you come here? Why are you helping the rebels?”
I explained, unwillingly, that Melanie and I were friends. She didn’t like that.
“Why?” she demanded.
“She’s a good person.”
“But why does she like you?”
Same reason.
“She says, for the same reason.”
Lacey snorted. “Got her brainwashed, huh?”
Wow, she’s worse than the first one.
Yes, I agreed. I can see why the Seeker was so obnoxious. Can you imagine having that in your head all the time?
I wasn’t the only thing Lacey objected to.
“Do you have anywhere better to live than these caves? It’s so dirty here. Isn’t there a house somewhere, maybe? What do you mean we have to share rooms? Chore schedule? I don’t understand. I have to work? I don’t think you understand…”
Jeb had given her the usual tour the next day, trying to explain, through clenched teeth, the way we all lived here. When they’d passed me—eating in the kitchen with Ian and Jamie—he threw me a look that clearly asked why I hadn’t let Aaron shoot her while that was still an option.
The tour was more crowded than mine. Everyone wanted to see the miracle for themselves. It didn’t even seem to matter to most of them that she was… difficult. She was welcome. More than welcome. Again, I felt a little of that bitter jealousy. But that was silly. She was human. She represented hope. She belonged here. She would be here long after I was gone.
Lucky you, Mel whispered sarcastically.
Talking to Ian and Jamie about what had happened was not as difficult and painful as I’d imagined.
This was because they were, for different reasons, entirely clueless. Neither grasped that this new knowledge meant I would be leaving.
With Jamie, I understood why. More than anyone else, he had accepted me and Mel as the package deal we were. He was able, with his young, open mind, to grasp the reality of our dual personalities. He treated us like two people rather than one. Mel was so real, so present to him. The same way she was to me. He didn’t miss her, because he had her. He didn’t see the necessity of our separation.