Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
It’s never exactly quiet—especially when it comes to the Banshee, who leaves my ears ringing for hours even with protection—but little by little, these incidents start feeling less like encounters with the strange and unknowable, and more like another day at work.
I fight the urge to get defensive. He’s not accusing me of anything, and I’m doing nothing wrong. “It’s fine. I don’t feel whatever side effects the rest of you seem to,” I say, taking a sip of my coffee and leaning against the counter.
“So it’s true? You’re immune to him?”
I shrug. “I guess so. I don’t really understand it, but I’m happy to help.”
“Seriously, though, what’s your secret?” His tone is light, but there’s an odd look in his eyes as he studies my face.
Like he knows I’m hiding something. I remember, all at once, that I heard him praying during Sixteen’s last episode.
Is he religious? Can he see it in me, somehow, the stain of my past?
I clear my throat, try to shrug it off. Just my paranoia. “No secret,” I say.
He immediately breaks into a grin that makes me forget the moment of discomfort. It must’ve been in my head. “You’re so fucking cool, Willow.” He bumps me with a hip, and I scowl as coffee sloshes over the edge of my mug. “Always so calm and collected.”
I flip him off as he heads for the door, and he leaves, laughing.
Normally, my childhood experiences stay deep down, buried in the back of my mind where I prefer them to remain.
I don’t talk about the way I grew up—I have no need for the shocked, pitying looks—and I like to think that I’m over it.
It was so many years ago that I hardly even think about it… usually.
But the goddamn memories won’t stop popping up.
Work keeps me too busy to think most of the time, but back at my apartment, the past plagues me.
As I move my laundry into the drying machine, I flash back to standing on my tiptoes as a child, helping my mother hang our all-white dresses on the clothing line.
As I sip my nightly drink before bed, I remember a cup of juice pushed insistently against my lips, the memory of that sickly sweet smell so thick in my nose that I choke on my whiskey and pour the rest down the drain.
Worst of all are the lines of scripture that won’t stop rattling around in my head like a mantra. Ever since I made the mistake of trying to pray, the words won’t leave me alone.
Or maybe it was triggered earlier than that. By the prayers I thought I heard during X-16’s episode, or the lines of scripture that homeless man carries.
Now, scripture whispers in my head whenever it gets too quiet, words chasing themselves round and round in circles every night as I try to sleep. Intrusive thoughts that leave me feeling rattled, adrift, half insane.
The next morning, I drive to work exhausted and numb.
I pass by the same street corner I always do.
The bearded man is nowhere to be seen, but he’s left his sign propped up on the sidewalk.
The letters are so smeared and sun-faded that they’re not even legible, but my memory is eager to fill them in.
I curse, averting my eyes in the hope of not setting my mind off again, but it’s too late.
Blood, and fire, and—
“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come.”
The words are scary, but the preacher’s smile is wide, his hands held open like he’s welcoming the day he speaks of.
“And that,” he says, looking down to shoot me a wink where I’m huddled on the floor with the other children. I smile at the special attention, forgetting my moment of fear. “That will be the day our Harbinger arrives. The day we are finally set free from the suffering on Earth.”
I gasp back into the present, jerking the steering wheel to the side. The car behind me blares its horn as I pull to an abrupt stop on the side of the road, throw my door open, and vomit onto the asphalt.
I had almost forgotten that face. The too-wide, too-white smile, those deep-set blue eyes with a manic gleam. A face once as familiar to me as my own. I had to describe him over and over again to police sketch artists.
I had almost forgotten, and now he’s back in the forefront of my memory. My— The preacher. Why am I thinking about him now?
Unease clings to me as I arrive at the MRF and go through the motions of my shift. It hangs over me like smog, clouding my thoughts, making everything seem far away.
The subjects seem as restless today as I am.
All afternoon, I dart from one cell to another, helping to sedate an angry lake monster that’s harming itself in an attempt to escape its cell, then helping one of the resident psychs with an undead creature that became suddenly violent during an evaluation.
“He’s never like that,” the young woman—Mara—says, looking shaken.
“Something in the air today, I guess.”
I’m guiltily grateful that it keeps me too busy to think much. I have no time to visit X-16, either, which is likely for the best; I don’t want him to sense that something is off with me.
Once the subject is subdued, Mara and I both head to the break room for lunch.
The mood here feels off, too. Conversations are quiet, the room mostly filled with the sounds of chewing, sipping, and the clink of utensils.
Even those quiet noises feel grating today, so I only eat half my sandwich, toss the rest, and head to the sink.
A young man grimaces as I pass by his table, pressing a hand to his head. “Do you guys hear that?” he asks, massaging his temple.
“Hear what?” Mara asks beside him.
“There’s a…” He winces. “Buzzing. Like a television’s been left on.”
I turn on the sink—and exclaim in horror, jumping back. “What the f—”
At the same time, there’s a thud and a yelp of shock from the table. I glance over to see the man who was speaking face-down on the table, Mara shaking his shoulder.
She looks around frantically, looking for someone to call for help, and her eyes meet mine. I look from her companion to the sink, where the water is running thick and red. The smell hits me—awful, coppery, unmistakable. Blood.
I’ve seen a lot of shit in this building, but this still strains my understanding of the way the world works. For a moment, I can only stare.
“Ezra, please, say something,” Mara begs from nearby.
The name pings something in my memory. Talking to Barnes about the varying levels of sensitivity among employees.
Ezra, he’ll get a migraine from watching the camera feed for even thirty seconds. He fainted once when he was in a hallway nearby during an episode.
“Sixteen,” I mumble, taking a step back from the still-running sink. Blood is slowly filling it, thick and viscous and horrible. It feels cold to leave Ezra like this, but I have the strongest sense that his reaction is just a symptom rather than the problem. “I need to…to check on X-16.”
I flee the break room at a brisk walk. But as I start walking down the hallway, my sense of urgency only grows. Soon I break into a run, heading across the Facility toward his cell. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I’m not— If I’m not, then—
I’m halfway there when the lights turn red. The alarm begins to wail in an emergency lockdown alert.
“Fuck,” I whisper, and push myself to keep running as fast as I can, rounding the corner at a full sprint. I nearly collide with Ellis.
“Willow,” he says, shocked. “It’s—”
“X-16,” I say. “I know.” At his questioning look, I just shake my head. “Later. Where’s Barnes?”
“It’s his day off,” he says, shaking his head. “I called it in already, he said to wait for—”
“Fuck that.” I take off in the direction of X-16’s cell.
“Willow, you can’t!”
I’m around the corner before he can finish, barely conscious of the fact that the lights are flickering on and off, turning the empty Facility into something nightmarish.
When I reach X-16’s door, a bulb overhead shatters, raining glass on me.
I brush it off my shoulders, scan my key card with shaking hands, and push into the room.
“Sixteen!”
I find him on the floor, crying out in pain as his body shudders and contorts.
There’s blood on his shirt, blood on the sheets of his bed.
He lies on his back, spine arching in a way that makes me fear it’ll snap.
His eyes roll back in his head, leaving pure, glowing red.
Blood streams from the corners of his eyes.
I drop to a knee on the tile beside him. He’s shaking, face slack, unresponsive. A string of drool rolls down one side of his lips. I roll him onto his side, unsure if he’s choking on something. But when I do, I see something moving beneath his shirt, an alien ripple.
I pause, sheer horror making it hard to move for a second.
Then I force a breath into my lungs and tug his shirt up.
His pale skin is stretched taut, something moving beneath it, a growing lump.
Not just one but two, just between his shoulder blades, on either side of his spine.
One is bleeding, an open, bubbling wound where it looks like something is trying to push through from the other side.
What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck.
Somehow, in my numb horror, I manage to swallow down bile and pull X-16’s shirt over his head.
I roll him onto his stomach on my lap and press the discarded shirt against the wound to staunch the bleeding.
I don’t know what else to do, how to help, if it’s possible to help, but at least I can hold him.
At least he doesn’t have to suffer alone.
“I’m here, Sixteen.” I shove down my horror and disgust deep down as he trembles and drools and bleeds in my arms. The shirt is soon soaked through with blood, and as I press harder, I feel something move beneath it. Pressing outward.
I recoil, the shirt falling to the floor with a wet slap. Something protrudes from the wound on Sixteen’s back, so wet and coated in viscera, it takes me a moment to recognize it.
A feather?
It extends again, growing, expanding in odd twitches that send blood splattering over my face. I am too horrified to do anything but stare as I watch it grow, and grow, until I realize what I’m looking at: a feathered wing extending from his shoulder blade, slick with blood.
The other lump bursts as well, and a twin to the original black wing pushes out, one painful inch at a time.
I’m not sure how much time I spend there on the floor, clutching his limp body.
But when the door finally opens to reveal Barnes flanked by a number of other security officers, that’s how they find me: on my knees, soaked in red, with an unconscious X-16 sprawled across my lap.
Two black-feathered wings droop on either side of his limp and bloodied back.