7. Chapter Seven #3
I stare at the back of Ace's head, almost mind-blown at how nice it is for someone to just not look at me. Anyone else would be staring right now, waiting for me to give them something in return. An explanation, most likely. Or at least an acknowledgment of what they said. Even those who know I don’t talk always seem to still want something from me.
Anything. Any sort of response. And I always let them down.
Sometimes it feels like I can’t even breathe beneath the weight of those stares. Beneath all the pressure. The expectation of more, none of them having any idea I've already given everything I can.
And here this man is, letting me hide in his office without me being able to even ask, his back to me, no questions, no expectations. He's just existing here, letting me exist beside him. Letting me hide out.
There's something soft about his presence. Something steady. Quiet. Calming.
It’s the exact opposite of any other energy in my life.
With the men in the compound, there was always this violent, erratic vibration through the air.
With Travis now, there’s a nervousness, a fog of guilt and anxiety that threatens to choke me.
With Jake, there’s a prickling wrongness, sharp and devious, waiting for the perfect time to strike.
With Maison, there’s this seemingly never-ending sadness and regret that tastes bitter on my tongue.
The doctors make me itch with their concern and impending questions.
Nolan fills the air with dread. Carter with anger.
Casey with grief. Bryce with an almost weapon-like protectiveness.
And in the air, around all of them, there’s this frantic fragile hope that’s hard to look at for too long.
Sometimes I can feel them trying to find the same thing in the air around me.
If I could speak, I still don’t know if I’d be able to tell them that it doesn’t exist.
This is different. So different. From all of them.
Here, with Ace, there’s nothing but air. Weightless with its lack of expectations. Warm. Welcoming. Safe.
It’s such a relief.
I breathe it in greedily, almost high off it. It won’t last, I know it won’t, nothing this good ever does, but until something shatters it, I want to fill my lungs with as much of it as I can. I want to pretend, just for a little while, that I’m not suffocating.
Except, when Ace speaks, that thing in the air doesn’t shatter.
It just shifts. It makes room, wrapping around his words, inviting them in.
His voice is an addition, instead of an interruption.
His words float toward me instead of sprinting, easy for me to catch, to listen, to truly hear.
They aren’t weighted down with an expectation of being returned.
They aren’t wrapped in barbs of emotion.
“This is a pretty good place to hide, as hiding places go,” he says, his voice low, soft, almost like he’s here avoiding detection too.
His eyes stay focused on the computer screen.
“I’ve got a little mini-fridge. Snacks. Candy.
Too much candy, really, but I trust you won’t tattle on me.
I even have magazines to read. Really, I’m like an elevated waiting room, except there’s no shitty doctor appointment or whatever at the end of your time here. ”
The nervous rambling is familiar, his voice a steady high and low as he says whatever pops into his mind.
It doesn’t matter if words slip between the cracks of my mind.
Most of them aren’t valuable ones anyway.
Anything he thinks is important, he’ll circle back to, the touchstones that keep the conversation grounded even as he wanders down random tracks.
There’s a steadiness to his rambles, a calm in the chaos.
It’s nice - the sound of him.
Listening to it is so much easier than breathing, his voice an entirely different kind of oxygen.
“Wanna see something?” he asks, gaze still locked on the screen right in front of him. He doesn’t wait for a response. “That box there shows the hallway outside my door.”
I have to step forward to see better, my eyes focusing on the little square he’s pointing to. It's a camera feed. It shows the hallway, just like he said.
It suddenly feels like I'm sinking. Like I’m going to slip right through the floor, never to be found again.
He has cameras? In the hall?
Where else?
I quickly scan the rest of the screens, that sinking feeling only getting worse.
Not every monitor shows camera feeds, but the ones that do are broken up into more of those squares.
Dozens of them. Every hall. The kitchen.
The dining room. The living room. The laundry room.
The underground level. The gym. The pool.
Areas I don't even recognize. A few outside the house, even.
“It comes off creepy, I know,” Ace admits with a self-deprecating sort of laugh. “But it's our way of making sure everyone is safe. Well, as sure as we can be. No cameras in the rooms or bathrooms, obviously. Just public spaces.”
Is that really necessary?
Is he… watching us? Like paying attention to us? Analyzing us? Telling the doctors about us?
Does he know I’m not eating?
Does he know Bryce stole that knife?
Is this really for our protection?
Protection from what? From who? Does he think those men outside will come in and hurt us? Does he think we’ll hurt each other? Or hurt ourselves?
Does… does he want to hurt us?
Is this whole place some sick test after all?
My tongue feels heavy in my mouth. Foreign. A dead weight keeping me from the world.
Or… protecting me from it?
Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
“Anyway, Jake's room is right there. We can see the light under the crack of his door, see?” He points to a spot on the screen where the night vision is a lot brighter. “When he turns it off but doesn’t come back out, he's likely going to sleep. Then you're safe to leave.”
I frown.
Jake isn't the only one who I don’t want to -
“And the others,” he says like he can read my mind.
His finger moves to another box. “Adam - sorry, Dr. Singh -is still in his office, working late again.” And another.
“Dr. Deacon’s office is empty. He’s gone for the night.
He sleeps in the support staff cabin up the road. ” And another. “Maison is here.”
Ace doesn’t say it, but I can see for myself that Nolan is there too.
He’s sitting beside Carter’s brother, Maison, the two of them in the living room by the fire.
Worry gnaws at my gut, but he seems okay.
Maison is probably safe to be around. He’s Carter’s brother and Carter is one of us.
Sort of. Enough like us, at least. He’s safer than Travis. He’s definitely safer than Jake.
Ace taps three separate boxes, drawing my attention toward them.
They’re all showing a different angle of the house’s exterior.
“Support is stationed here, here, and here.
They stay in the cabin too. They can't even get in this house without the use of their emergency code, which alerts everyone, plus sets off alarms, so we would know if they ever tried.
Not that they're bad guys or anything, but we wanted to keep things as tight as we could, and we - me, Travis, Maison, and Jake, I mean - trust each other a lot more than anyone else. We've been together too long not to.”
I eye the rest of the screens again, letting that all sink in. He’s watching everything from here. He’s watching for threats, both inside and outside of the house. He’s watching us explore and grow. He’s watching Nolan cook and Casey swim and Bryce glare at anyone who isn’t a survivor.
He’s probably been watching me.
But even if he does, he hasn’t done anything about what he’s seen. He hasn’t tattled on me to the doctors. He hasn’t confronted me himself. He gave me that apple, but I don’t think that was a pointed way to get me to eat, I think it was just a coincidence.
Even if it wasn’t a coincidence, it was a nice apple. A really nice apple.
So, maybe he watches me, watches us. Maybe he knows our secrets. Those maybes should feel scary. They did, just a minute ago.
But he’s talking now, his tone light and laced with laughter as he says things like, “-is such a pouter. He hates working shifts up in the tree post. Especially at nights. He’s allowed to have coffee, but then he has to piss in a bottle, and he’s a bit snobby about-”
And, “-should hear him talk, it’s the most ridiculous accent you could ever imagine. I swear, you need subtitles to-”
And, “-fucking badass. If I had to pick anyone to have my six, it’d be her. She did a few years in the-”
And, “-oh, wait, here, look - see that? Fucking owl. Isn’t that cool? I grew up in the city, so I’m still kind of new to this whole nature thing, but-”
And through all of it, I’m not scared. I’m not overwhelmed. Because he knows so many things, up here where he can see all of us, but all he does with that knowledge is protect it. Protect us.
My eyes start to burn, my throat tight.
It’s not that I’m upset or creeped out or anything like that. I just… I want to engage with him. He isn’t asking me to, isn’t expecting me to, there’s no pressure, no fragile hope, no big doe eyes filled with worry - and it makes me want it even more.
I want to ask him about the man in the tree and how Ace knows that he’s pouting. About the accent of the guy around the corner. About the woman’s time in the middle east.
I want to ask him about the city where he grew up. About his family. His friends. I want to tell him about the cool little lizards that were always around my house growing up. About the pet cat I had wanted but could never have because papá was allergic.
I have so many words. So many questions. So many things to tell.
But I can’t.
That fact hasn’t felt this devastating in a very long time.