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“I shouldn’t have risked my life for you,” Inez says after a long, drained silence. I look at her with surprise. She’s glowering, not at me, but at herself.
“I didn’t ask you to help me,” I retort.
“I know,” she says. “I felt responsible for you, but I’m on a mission and I should have prioritised and thrown you to the hell jackal, like you said. The lives of many people are at stake. It was wrong to risk everything for one person.” She grimaces, then squeezes my hand comfortingly. “Let’s dance,” she giggles. “Where did that come from?”
I grin. “It just popped out.” The grin fades and I tremble at the memory of how close we came to dying. “Did the hell jackal kill the people who were living in the village?”
Inez sniffs. “I was wrong. It wasn’t a village. It was a prison. The wardens must have left the hell jackal behind when they abandoned the place.”
“They left it locked up to starve and die?” I ask, feeling sorry for the monstrosity in spite of everything.
“To starve, yes,” Inez says, “but not to die. In the Merge, lack of food won’t kill you. Starvation just drives you mad and physically changes you. That’s how the hell jackals form. They start as normal people, but without food, their flesh withers and their brains shut down, and they become agonised, murderous beasts, haunting the zones and butchering anyone they cross paths with.”
“Did it become a monster by accident? Did it wind up in a place where there wasn’t any food?”
Inez shakes her head. “Mushrooms are everywhere. Nobody starves by chance. Some hell jackals are people who’ve been chained up and left to turn, but others choose to starve themselves.”
“Why?” I moan.
“I don’t know,” Inez says. “It’s never made sense to me.”
“Why would the prison wardens abandon the hell jackal?” I ask.
“It might have been an oversight,” she says, “or the warden who could control it died or left.”
I frown. “It can be controlled?”
Inez nods. “Some handlers are cruel, and use them as soldiers, but others try to protect the rest of us from them.”
“Hell jackal soldiers,” I croak, horrified. “What sort of a place is this Merge?”
“A place of beauty,” Inez says, “of peace and hope. But it’s also a place of evil, danger and conflict, as all places are. The Merge is as wonderful and terrifying as your world, Archie. It can’t be anything else, since everyone here started as a Born.”
I blink with confusion. “What do you mean?”
She breathes out heavily. “I’ll explain tomorrow, when we’ve had some sleep.”
I almost press her for answers – I want to know about the Lost Zone as well – but Inez yawns, and I yawn too as a wave of exhaustion sweeps through me.
Setting the questions aside for now, I follow her example and lie down. Laying my head back on the grass, I stare at the alien sky, waiting for sleep to claim me, hoping I won’t be disturbed by the wretched caterwauling of another member of the starved, psychotic damned.