Months, really.
Years.
Some days, no matter how far back I go, I can’t seem to find the good times. Some days, the occasional happiness I’ve known feels like a bizarre dream. An error. Hyperreal and unfocused, the colors too bright and the sounds too strong.
Figments of my imagination.
It was just days ago that clarity came to me, bearing gifts. Just days ago that the worst seemed behind me, that the world seemed full of potential, that my body was stronger than ever, my mind fuller, sharper, more capable than I’d ever known it.
But now
But now
But now I feel like I’m clinging to the blurring edges of sanity, that elusive, fair-weather friend always breaking my heart.
Aaron pulls me close and I melt into him, grateful for his warmth, for the steadiness of his arms around me. I take a deep, shuddering breath and let it all go, exhaling against him. I inhale the rich, heady scent of his skin, the faint aroma of gardenias he somehow carries with him always. Seconds pass in perfect silence and we listen to each other breathe.
Slowly, my heart rate steadies.
The tears dry up. The fears take five. Terror is distracted by a passing butterfly and sadness takes a nap.
For a little while it’s just me and him and us and everything is untarnished, untouched by darkness.
I knew I loved Warner Aaron before all this—before we were captured by The Reestablishment, before we were ripped apart, before we learned of our shared history—but that love was new, green, its depths uncharted, untested. In that brief, glimmering window during which the gaping holes in my memory felt fully accounted for, things between us changed. Everything between us changed. Even now, even with the noise in my head, I feel it.
Here.
This.
My bones against his bones. This is my home.
I feel him suddenly stiffen and I pull back, concerned. I can’t see much of him in this perfect darkness, but I feel the delicate rise of goose bumps along his arms when he says, “What are you thinking about?”
My eyes widen, comprehension dethroning concern. “I was thinking about you.”
“Me?”
I close the gap between us again. Nod against his chest.
He says nothing, but I can hear his heart, racing in the quiet, and eventually I hear him exhale. It’s a heavy, uneven sound, like he might’ve been holding his breath for too long. I wish I could see his face. No matter how much time we spend together, I still forget how much he can feel my emotions, especially at times like this, when our bodies are pressed together.
Gently, I run my hand down his back. “I was thinking about how much I love you,” I say.
He goes uncommonly still, but only for a moment. And then he touches my hair, his fingers slowly combing the strands.
“Did you feel it?” I ask.
When he doesn’t answer, I pull back again. I blink against the black until I’m able to make out the glint of his eyes, the shadow of his mouth.
“Aaron?”
“Yes,” he says, but he sounds a little breathless.
“Yes, you felt it?”
“Yes,” he says again.
“What does it feel like?”
He sighs. Rolls onto his back. He’s quiet for so long that, for a while, I’m not sure he’s going to answer. Then, softly, he says:
“It’s hard to describe. It’s a pleasure so close to pain I sometimes can’t tell the two apart.”
“That sounds awful.”
“No,” he says. “It’s exquisite.”
“I love you.”
A sharp intake of breath. Even in this darkness I see the strain in his jaw—the tension there—as he stares at the ceiling.
I sit straight up, surprised.
Aaron’s reaction is so unstudied I don’t know how I never noticed it before. But then, maybe this is new. Maybe something really has changed between us. Maybe I never loved him this much before. That would make sense, I suppose. Because when I think about it, when I really think about how much I love him now, after everything we’ve—
Another sudden, sharp breath. And then he laughs, nervously.
“Wow,” I say.
He claps a hand over his eyes. “This is vaguely mortifying.”
I’m smiling now, very nearly laughing. “Hey. It’s—”
My body seizes.
A violent shudder rushes up my skin and my spine goes rigid, my bones held in place by invisible pins, my mouth frozen open and trying to draw breath.
Heat fills my vision.
I hear nothing but static, grand rapids, white water, ferocious wind. Feel nothing. Think nothing. Am nothing.
I am, for the most infinitesimal moment—
Free.
My eyelids flutter open closed open closed open closed I am a wing, two wings, a swinging door, five birds
Fire climbs inside of me, explodes.
Ella?
The voice appears in my mind with swift strength, sharp, like darts to the brain. Dully, I realize that I’m in pain— my jaw aches, my body still suspended in an unnatural position—but I ignore it. The voice tries again:
Juliette?
Realization strikes, a knife to the knees. Images of my sister fill my mind: bones and melted skin, webbed fingers, sodden mouth, no eyes. Her body suspended underwater, long brown hair like a swarm of eels. Her strange, disembodied voice pierces through me. And so I say, without speaking:
Emmaline?
Emotion drives into me, fingers digging in my flesh, sensation scraping across my skin. Her relief is tangible. I can taste it. She’s relieved, relieved I recognized her, relieved she found me, relieved relieved relieved—
What happened? I ask.
A deluge of images floods my brain until it sinks, I sink. Her memories drown my senses, clog lungs. I choke as the feelings crash into me. I see Max, my father, inconsolable in the wake of his wife’s murder; I see Supreme Commander Ibrahim, frantic and furious, demanding Anderson gather the other children before it’s too late; I see Emmaline, briefly abandoned, seizing an opportunity—
I gasp.
Evie made it so that only she or Max could control Emmaline’s powers, and with Evie dead, the fail-safes implemented were suddenly weakened. Emmaline realized that in the wake of our mother’s death there would be a brief window of opportunity—a brief window during which she might be able to wrest back control of her own mind before Max remade the algorithms.
But Evie’s work was too good, and Max’s reaction too prompt. Emmaline was only partly successful.
Dying, she says to me.
Dying.
Every flash of her emotion is accompanied by torturous assault. My flesh feels bruised. My spine seems liquid, my eyes blind, searing. I feel Emmaline—her voice, her feelings, her visions—more strongly than before, because she’s stronger than before. That she managed to regain enough power to find me is proof alone that she is at least partly untethered, unrestrained.