“HERE AGAIN TO SEE YOU, Sev.” Dr. Yang’s light tenor voice. “Your color is good. Vitals are hard to read, but that’s normal for Suspended Sleep. You’re not going to be gaining any weight on liquid meals, but you haven’t lost too much yet.”
His fingers press into my wrist, then fiddle with the tube biting my arm. I will everything inside me to jerk my arm away, to stop him touching my skin, but, as always, my body can’t hear me.
“Things Outside are getting quite… interesting.” His voice sounds amused. “Refugees flooding in this direction are getting picked off by scavengers. SS is spreading nicely. It’ll only be a matter of time before the whole world just shrivels up. Except for me. The soldiers who follow me. The farms we’ve managed to keep control of. I think we could survive without the cure if we needed to.”
Monster. The word tastes like gore teeth in my mind. Watching people die all around you.
“That isn’t the ideal, though. I know there are people you care about out there. Tai-ge and his family. Howl, wherever he’s gotten to. The little Wood Rat girl the Menghu found prowling around Dazhai right before that map key disappeared. Your friend, I believe? I don’t know why I was surprised. Blind trust runs in your family.”
And now the monster is in me, a growl boiling deep inside with no way to get out. Eight years. Eight years he left Mother paralyzed like this, rotting away in her little glass cage, hoping the right moment would come to bring her back so she’d tell him where to find the key to his new kingdom.
“There are already hundreds, maybe even a thousand who have died now.” He pauses. “I don’t want anyone else to die if they don’t have to. Is hoarding the cure for yourself really worth their lives, Sev? Just think of how many more will go if you have to Sleep another month. All you have to do is tell me where the cure is and they’ll be saved.”
I wish I could breathe enough to scream. Wish I could ball his collar in my fist and tell him exactly how many people out there have SS because of me: none. He’s the one who made it contagious. He’s the one who spread it.
He’s the one who can still move, the one who’s still a living creature, not like me.
The last bit of me left curls up tight inside my head, trying to count through all the people who were relying on me to bring them the cure. June. Peishan. Mei. Luokai. Sole.
Everyone. Hoping the dead girl will come.