“Eat?” I asked my mind attaching to the one familiar word. I asked the question without thinking. My frayed nerves were still trying to make sense of everything she had just said.
“Yeah, well at least that’s what we think they do. It’s hard to tell, they move so fast. They are in the darkness all the time, most of the time you can’t see them. They suck life out of everything, infect you with their poison, and if you get too close, they eat you, leaving behind only the ashes of your bones.”
My hand flew to my mouth, the memories of all those ash circles clogging my vision. The hundreds that lined the streets, Cohen’s grandfather, that adorable family, my family.
Everything tightened at the thought, the reality hitting harder than I would have expected.
“What are they?” I stammered out, the question getting lost in the stress that rippled through me.
“We don’t know,” she said quietly and everything inside of me stuttered. “There are lore of monsters; vampires, zombies, demons, but these are none of those. Inside, they are human, stained by tar that was manually placed inside of them. As far as we know, they were science experiments. Science experiments who have done the same to you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my nerves cringing at the possible answers.
“The food,” she said simply. “That’s how they control you—change you—through the food.” Her voice was heavy, dangerous. The tone on its own scared me, but her words cut through me like a blunted blade.
“What do you mean, control me?” I asked, my nerves prickling in a panic.
“It’s how they make you sleep, make you stop aging. There is something in the food that makes you slow down. Everyone who eats the food falls asleep at the same time, they sleep for months before they wake up, like clockwork. Everyone at the same time.”
“Everyone?” I gasped, still not really understanding.
“Yeah,” she said, the sympathy in her voice making my skin crawl. “We found a family once who woke up at nine p.m. on a Monday, like a silent alarm had woken them. After months of sleeping, they just woke up, ready to go about their day.”
I tried to keep my face blank as I listened, even though my body was tense, my nerves flared as the familiarity of what she was saying ran over me.
“We found a hotter a few years ago who slept for eight months before he woke up, thinking it had only been a day.”
My head turned toward her. Whether I wanted to or not, my eyes widened in a panic. The shadow of Bridget’s eyes met mine, the apology behind them clearer than I had ever seen. I wanted to yell and tell her how wrong she was, but I couldn’t find the words. Nothing came because deep down I knew she was right. I had brushed off the clock winding down and the dust on the floor as being coincidences.
Eight years had passed.
Everything felt numb as I accepted it, my own fear growing as I nodded my head in understanding. I could still feel my logical side fight the knowledge, although it was half-hearted. You can’t fight something when everything that you know points toward it being right.
“What’s in the food?” My voice was soft, the fear of knowing weighing down my ability to ask the question.
Bridget hesitated, her hands kneading into her thighs as her eyes darted around before they came back to rest on me, the lids hooded and sad.
“We think it’s their blood. It’s hard to tell. As far as we have been able to see, they slowly poison those that are left behind with their own blood.”
I had thought the eight years thing was bad enough. My stomach tightened uncomfortably as I thought of the droplets of black that rained over me as I attacked it, the slick oil like substance, the moldy, greasy texture of the food. The tension in my body grew at the thought, my stomach tightening in warning.
“Their blood?” I shrieked, the strain in my abdomen making my voice sound more out of control than normal.
“Yeah, we don’t know why they put it in the food or how it makes you sleep more, but it’s the only theory we have.”
I nodded once, letting her words flow over me. I wanted them to sink in and then wash right off me like the grit that had covered my skin. I wanted them to go away, but it was just like the eight years thing. I had lived out there, I had seen everything, or so I had thought, and even with all of that, I couldn’t think of any logical reason why what she said would not be true.
I clamped my eyes shut tightly as I attempted to control the turbulence that was raging through my veins, however it didn’t seem to be working, and my panic was quite content to continue its hostile takeover.
“Why their blood…” I asked, not able to bring myself to finish the question.
“There is a reason we call them the Tar,” she began, the tension in her voice sending me on high alert. I clamped my eyes shut more, already regretting asking the question, everything swam inside of me in fear of what was coming.
“Someone placed something inside of them and they mutated, making them into what they are.”
“What was it?” I asked, my voice airy as I fought my confusion, my need to know.
“I’m not sure you would understand if I told you, but the easiest explanation would be a combination of Tar and standard motor oil. They call themselves the Ulama, but it is Tar that flows through their veins like blood, it’s how they make others like them. It’s what makes them Tar.”
My eyes snapped back open to look at her. The fear was thankfully gone from her face, having been replaced by what… pity? Pity for me? I clenched my jaw at her, willing her to say what I knew she was thinking. Make it real. However she didn’t. She only looked at me with those brown eyes and my anger boiled. The truth hurt like razor blades.
“Is that why you took my blood?” I asked, my eyes opening just enough to bring the red dot on the back of my hand into focus. “To see if I am one of them?” I tried to keep my voice level, but I could tell it wasn’t working. The panic that raged through me had already seeped in.
“Yes. We have to make sure you haven’t changed too much. If you are too hot than…”
“Too hot?” I asked. She had used the phrase before, each time with a touch of disgust on her tongue. It had made me uncomfortable the first time, but using the word about me made me absolutely jittery.
“Hot. A hotter… it’s what we call people who have been living in the darkness. The longer you live in darkness, the longer you eat the food, the more you change. The one’s that are close to changing seem to run a bit hotter than everyone else, both in body temperature and in temper.”
I just stared at her, letting her admission seep in slowly. I repeated the words over in my head, my mind slowing down as the real meaning cemented itself against my stress. Those who are close to changing. Is that what they thought? That I was changing, that I could become a Tar? Part of me fought that, but I knew better. I had seen the truth. I sat still waiting for the anger to come and surge through me, waiting for the sadness to wash through me. Nothing came; nothing except a deep panic that seeped through my lips in a displaced laugh.
“So, if I have too much of their blood in me, I can turn into one of them…” I said, letting the maniacal, desperate laugh slip from my lips.
She flinched a bit at the sound, but I didn’t care. The panic had taken over, wound its way around my spine and seeped in. I was writhing my hands together in my lap, fighting the need to cry, to yell, to destroy something, knowing it wouldn’t do me any good. She had just told me she thought I had their blood in me, that I wasn’t myself anymore.
“We don’t know how they change. We don’t know where the line is,” she said, the image of her body flashing a bit like we had a bad connection. “We’ve been trying to figure it out for years. Even the hotter we found before you, he woke up and he never changed… he just killed everyone he came in contact with.”
I flinched a bit at her words and then my eyes trailed back down to Cohen’s mark on my wrist. I had been in the darkness from the beginning and if he merely ki
lled everyone, what would I do? I swallowed, my throat feeling sore and coarse.
“Is that what I am going to do?” I asked, my voice coming out heavy. No wonder she was afraid of me.
“I’m not sure.” Her voice was soft and said exactly what I am sure she couldn’t say, what she didn’t want to say. Yes, that is exactly what I am going to do. I had already felt it in me, growing… growing. I could feel it now. The thought of the ease it would take to kill Bridget, the way I planned my attack on her, the willingness to kill Sarah.
Sarah.
“You know,” I said, trying to fight how dangerous I suddenly felt, “before you found me, my best friend Sarah found me. I hadn’t seen her since before.” I stopped, the memory still so fresh it almost hurt. My head throbbed just thinking about it. “I was so happy and then I saw her wrists, split all the way around and seeping black blood. She changed right before me, spines ripping her skin apart…” I stopped, swallowing hard. The thought that they believed that was what was going to happen to me weighted my chest down, making it difficult to breathe.
“That is the only way we know when a change is complete,” Bridget interrupted me, her body leaning toward me again. “When the wrists are cut. Sometimes the hotters do it to themselves, sometimes the Tar do.”
Her voice faded out as my eyes snapped up to meet hers. They thought I would cut myself. People—infected people—cut themselves. It was the end game. You eat the food, you breathe the air and in the end they take you anyway. I swallowed at the heavy numbing feeling that was threatening to take over me. It felt weird, thinking of this as my fate, as the only future that they thought I was given. I wasn’t ready to accept that.
“What do you mean… the Tar do it?” I asked, fear rippling over me.
“If they try to eat you and they can’t, if you live through the touch of their talons, they take you and then they cut you.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, my heart rate suddenly beating so hard against my chest it felt like it would burst through any second. Suddenly the possibility that I might turn, that I might kill everyone—including myself—didn’t seem quite so important anymore.
I looked down at the drawing on my wrist, my other hand moving to cover them like they were sacred.
“You mean, you aren’t dead when they take you? You mean, he was alive?”
“He?” I barely heard her.
“He’s alive,” I gasped the words to myself, the heaviness that I had felt for the past few days evaporating in the air around us. I could feel my heart beat. I could feel joy. Cohen was alive. I pressed my fingers to my lips; his last kiss still such a vivid memory I could feel him against me… Cohen was alive.
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Lex, but if you saw someone get taken, chances are they are one of them by now.”
I couldn’t deny her, there was no reason for me to question her. She was right, the chances of him still being alive were so minimal that it was disturbing that he was all I could focus on. That getting him back was the most important thing to me. Even then, I couldn’t see past that. I couldn’t accept that. I needed to get out of here. I needed to find him, to rescue him.
“I have to…” I began, my heart pulsing as I prepared to plead my case, but the words were cut off as Bridget stood. Her back turned toward me as she looked toward something I couldn’t see.
“It was what was in her pack, Tee,” she said, her voice changing to a sickly sweet tone I was sure didn’t belong to her normally.
“No… I don’t…” The sweetness in her voice left as soon as it had come, her body moving side to side as her hands raised toward something I couldn’t see. I watched her with wide eyes. Panic rippled through me at the change of pace. Everything bristled through me, my eyes scanning the empty space for a weapon, knowing it wouldn’t do any good even if someone was going to attack me.
“Tee! You can’t come in here!” Bridget yelled, her voice panicked and edgy.
My breathing picked up as I watched the odd movements of her body the way the image of her flickered in and out. I stood up slowly with my back dragging against the wall as I prepared to run or attack, although how I would accomplish either, I wasn’t very sure. Something was going on and by the tone of her voice, I could tell it wasn’t anything good.
“Get him out of here!” she yelled just as her body flickered out of focus, a new body taking her place.
“Alexis!” the new comer yelled, his voice deep and familiar. I froze as I watched him flicker into focus, the tall frame of a man one I wasn’t sure I would ever see again.
He looked like my dad, but taller than him, younger. He was covered in muscles that my father had never had, that I am sure he had built out of necessity. His dark hair curled around his face, brown eyes I knew all too well twinkling at me.
“Travis?” I gasped, his face breaking into a wide grin before the image of him flickered and died.
“Travis!” I screamed, my body running toward him in desperation. I had barely made it halfway across the room before thick white smoke filled the cement chamber. The heavy plume of smoke sprayed in with a deep hiss. The dense smoke covered every inch of space around me in a matter of minutes.
“Travis!” I screamed again, my voice lost in the fog as the smoke began to tickle my mouth and nose. The fog smelled like over scented vanilla, the scent thick in my mouth, heavy in my head.
“Travis,” I said again, my voice weak as I fell to my knees, the heavy mist putting me to sleep.
I woke up on the same floor, the same cold cement against my skin, and the same goose bumps on my arms. I groaned as I pushed myself up, my arms shaking at the added pressure.
Everything spun as I moved. The residual effects from whatever drug they had used to knock me out still lingered in my blood stream.
Air rushed out of my lungs in an over loud exhale that rattled around me, the sound mirroring the pain I felt as my back leaned up against the wall.
They had knocked me out again. I wasn’t sure which was worse, getting shot or being drugged. They both felt the same, but I had a feeling this one was done in an emergency. Not only for me, but for my brother.
My brother.
Travis.
Everything tightened at the thought, at the memory of my much older brother in front of me. As if I needed proof that eight years had passed. I could see the gangly fourteen-year-old in the man I had seen before they knocked me out. Eight years, he would be twenty-two now, a grown man.
What I didn’t understand was why they had kept him away from me, why they wouldn’t let him talk to me. More importantly, how had he survived? Had anyone else survived?
The thought was a white-hot branding iron to my skin, the surge painful and oh-so-welcome. Travis was alive; the others could be, too.
They could be somewhere close.
I smiled at the thought, my eyes falling to the ground as rippling waves of excitement whipped through me.
Another red lunch tray had been placed against the wall, this one laden with a massive burrito as well as rice and beans. It was cafeteria food again, but I didn’t care. I didn’t wait as I dragged the tray toward me and started shoveling the rice and beans into my mouth with yet another plastic spork.
The heavy flavor of the food rushed through me; the taste strong and pleasant as it hit my tongue, the sugars rushing right into my bloodstream.
I bit into the burrito and was absolutely floored by the sour cream that hit my tongue. The bitter taste strong and pleasant. I had forgotten this flavor, but now I wanted it on everything. It was better than yesterday’s gravy. My adrenaline increased as the blood sugars pulsed through me; my veins loosening in appreciation.
At least I hoped that was what it was.
I hadn’t had the opportunity to even think about what Bridget had said before they had knocked me out again. About the blood in the food, the way the Tar changed people. About how they expected me to change, how I would change.
About Cohen.
<
br /> The thought scared me. It scared me not only because of what they were doing to Cohen, but what might also happen to me. That I would change, that I would become one of them. The way Bridget had reacted to me. The way she had talked about it made it sound like a sure thing.
Like I was already a monster.
I couldn’t let that happen. I had fought so long. I wouldn’t simply give up and grow claws. They were all fools if they thought it was that simple. I would fight it, like everything else.
The worry disappeared as a grinding noise that sounded like the sliding of a stone rippled through the air around me and I jumped. My head spun toward the sound just as a dark, middle-aged man walked through the wall; his body emerging through the cement like it was made of water.
My eyes widened at seeing him, at the way he had moved through a solid block of concrete. The man looked at me, the coldness of his dark brown eyes matching his skin tone almost perfectly. The remoteness of his eyes never changing in the dim light of my prison. He wasn’t translucent like Bridget had been, this man was real. He walked in confidently, his well-tailored suit and greased hair looking out of place in the grey room I was trapped in.
“Hello, Alexis,” he said, his voice heavy with a Spanish accent. I raised an eye brow at him, an action that he only smiled at. He didn’t think I was that stupid, did he?
“You must be Azul,” I said as I narrowed my eyes at him, the look he continued to give me made me uncomfortable.
“No. Azul is a group, not a person,” he said harshly, his tone condescending and slow, causing my insides to jump. “My name is Abran, I created Azul after the sky was taken away from us.”
“You’re the leader, then?” I kept my voice level, low, in an attempt to hide the fear that was coursing through me.
I don’t know what it was about this man that was unsettling. He looked at me with raw hatred in his eyes, the anger coursed through me and prickled across my skin. Part of me wanted to trust him, the leader of the first truly human people I had found, but another part was terrified of him.
Through Glass Page 20
