The knife had been left embedded into the dresser earlier that day.
Now it was in Ethan’s hand.
She had left him peacefully sleeping less than an hour ago but now, as she skidded into the bedroom, he was neither peaceful, nor asleep.
The crash had come from the dresser, which was on its side, its drawers spilling out, and Ethan stood next to it, awake, motionless, holding the knife.
Thea didn’t move. Maybe if she stayed still, he’d stay still too. He looked awake, but Thea knew he wasn’t. Not really. This wasn’t one of his normal nightmares. She knew exactly what was happening because she’d just seen it happen to Ted in the video diary. Poor Ted in his pyjamas, trying to throw imaginary spiders out of a window.
But Ted hadn’t had a knife.
Thea realized that this wasn’t Moses’s tech anymore. Delores had taken it from him and who knew what they’d done to it, or how quickly it worked.
Or how quickly you got to the dead-eyed, dribbling stage …
Did the bedroom door lock? Maybe Thea could just lock him in. But then he’d be locked in with a knife and Thea didn’t want to imagine what he might do to himself. She couldn’t leave him to that, after what they’d been through.
She had to try and get the knife from him.
‘Ethan?’ she said softly.
Almost as if he had become voice-activated, he sprang to life, marching over to her. She willed herself not to cower against the wall.
‘Ma’am. I’m going to have to ask you to stay here. We have a situation.’
Thea couldn’t take her eyes away from the knife, how sharp it looked with its evil, serrated edge.
‘Ethan—’
‘I’m sorry, but this is no place for—’ His eyes flicked upwards and he suddenly gripped her with one hand. ‘MA’AM! DOWN! INCOMING!’
He threw her to the ground with such force, a searing pain shot through her shoulder. His weight pinned her down, protecting her from an imaginary blast and she gasped, the air crushed out of her lungs, spots forming in front of her eyes.
Don’t faint, don’t faint, don’t faint, she chanted to herself.
She screwed up her eyes and blinked furiously as, above her, he shouted out instructions to the wallpaper. Mercifully, after a few minutes, he moved and she rolled into a half-seated position, gingerly prodding her shoulder as he crouched in front of her, the knife gripped firmly in his hand.
‘Ma’am.’ He spoke to her over his shoulder, warily watching the door. ‘Stay here. Stay down.’
At least he didn’t think she was the enemy.
Yet.
Quietly, he ran to the bedroom door and then he was gone, off down the stairs, his body pressed to the wall, waving the knife in front of him. Thea shakily got to her knees. As much as she would have liked to have stayed where she was, to curl up into a ball and try to block out everything she’d just seen, she had to follow him. There was no one else to do it. Her shoulder was beginning to throb, a dull drum beat punctuated by the occasional top note of needling pain and she felt tears forming, hot and stinging.
She would not cry. She would get up, she told herself, like a nanny to a recalcitrant child. She would stand. See? There she was – she was standing. Now she would walk to the door. It was not so far away, not so much of an effort. There was nothing wrong with her apart from the shoulder; her legs and feet were fine. See? She was at the door. How easily that had happened. Now she would walk down the stairs even though her knees were a bit wobbly and her shoulder a bubble of pain. Hopefully, by the time she got to the bottom, Ethan would not have killed himself and she could get the damn knife away from him.
And throw it far out into the snow.
She staggered into the kitchen, bracing herself for she didn’t know what, with nothing to defend herself, shaking and alone, to find …
… Ethan asleep on the floor, curled up around the knife as if it was a cuddly toy. Peaceful again.
She bent down and quickly slipped it out of his grasp before she allowed herself to crumple to the floor next to him.