His eyes widened at that slightly, probably because I was implying that I might protect all of them, before he cleared his throat and continued leading the way without another word.
We followed after him, finding ourselves taking a doorway on the left side of the lobby that led to a series of interconnected offices. I realized everyone must have taken the cautious route and disappeared again, because we didn’t come across a single soul on the way to an office where Savannah was being kept.
When Randy opened the door, we found Savannah lying on the floor on what appeared to be a yoga mat, looking both alert and in pain. Her younger brother Ethan, as well as John’s wife, Emma, were both by her side.
Ethan jumped up when he saw us. “Sis!” he exclaimed cheerfully, focusing on Harper, before his expression shifted to one of confusion. “You got bigger again?” he almost whispered.
She dropped down from my back and slipped past me. “Looks like it,” she agreed, comparing their heights, though she already knew from my thoughts that she was physically several years larger than her older brother now. But, she wanted to humor him, since she liked him enough to stay on good terms, even though she felt like she related to her older sister a lot better.
Honestly, ever since Harper had woken up as a Night Stalker, she hadn’t really viewed Ethan as her older brother. Her mind was too mature in comparison to his, and that separation between them had only grown as her physical body had become larger. That wasn’t to say that she was truly ‘mature,’ but her thinking was a lot more logical and strategic than her eleven-year-old counterpart.
I ducked my head as I entered the room, to avoid scraping my short black horns against the doorframe, and then carefully stepped past Emma in order to sit down next to Savannah’s head.
She looked up at me with a grimace on her face. “Hi,” she whispered.
I inclined my chin, glancing down at her hands on her stomach.
“It’s not that bad,” she said quietly without prompt. “I think it’s the stitches that hurt the most.”
I inclined my chin again, glancing up when Randy turned to leave the room. Emma got up too and followed after him, closing the door most of the way behind her.
“Are you mad at me?” Savannah asked quietly.
I looked down at her again, holding her emerald gaze. I then scoffed. “Mad at what?” I said seriously, knowing what she was asking about. But the truth was, even if Garrett had truly sexually assaulted her, I wouldn’t have been angry at her for it.
What idiot would be angry at the victim?
She grimaced again, glancing at Ethan and Harper debating about who was older now…like a couple of little kids.
Harper unexpectedly looked over and glared at me when I thought it, prompting a small grin to tug at my mouth. I focused down at Savannah again.
“Nothing to be mad about,” I replied simply.
“Oh,” she said hesitantly. “O-Okay.”
I sighed and didn’t say anything else, staring at the wall.
It wasn’t until she spoke again that I realized she had begun silently crying.
“Can you make me like you?” she whispered unexpectedly.
I looked down at her in shock.
Harper stopped midsentence and looked over at her too, not having heard what her older sister said, but having seen my reaction via our telepathy. I immediately pushed Harper away inside my head, again trying to prevent her from experiencing what I had seen at this very location.
“Why would you want that?” I retorted, more focused on controlling my thoughts than the conversation.
“I want to forget,” she said almost inaudibly.
I scoffed. “He’s dead.”
Her teary eyes widened, and then she winced. “It’s not that,” she clarified, sniffling once. “I want to forget about our parents – I want to forget our mom’s screams. I want to forget how much it hurts to have them gone. I want to stop having nightmares. I want to stop being afraid.”
“S-Savannah?” Ethan said hesitantly.
“I’m sorry,” she replied to him, before focusing on Harper and speaking to me. “But my sister just seems so happy now. And a little different, but not in a bad way. It’s still her, just not so…”
“Young?” Harper tried finishing for her.
Savannah sniffled again. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I just want to forget.”
I sighed. “No.”
She looked at me in shock. “W-Why not?” she said, almost sounding desperate.
“Because I can’t,” I replied simply. “It’s not like this happens because of a bite or something. I can’t make you like me. Neither can Harper.”
She just stared at me in disbelief for a long minute, before wiping her eyes. “Then how?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know,” I lied. “But what I do know is that it’s not caused by a bite. And besides, you wouldn’t just forget your parents. You would forget your brother, grandfather, and Harper too. You wouldn’t remember any of them.”
“But she seems okay,” Savannah retorted. “And I could get to know everyone again.”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter either way, because you aren’t going to become like us.”
She didn’t respond, causing us all to fall silent for several minutes.
Finally, Ethan spoke up. “It was a black squid,” he whispered, focusing on Harper.
We all looked at him in shock – for me, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“It tried to get me, but you pushed me out of the way,” he added. “It was really, really scary. And you screamed a lot because its legs were digging into–”
“Enough!” I snapped, unable to comprehend that he had known all this time, but now recalling him asking Harper stupid questions when they reunited, like ‘Does it hurt?’
Granted, I hadn’t seen a lot of him, but had he really kept it to himself? And why wasn’t he more traumatized by the incident? Was it because he was suffering from some kind of depersonalization disorder or something? Or maybe exposure to violent videogames and movies had made him less sensitive and empathetic to the pain of others?
Or was it dissociation? A detachment from the gravity of a situation due to trauma?
It was like seeing someone drowning and thinking they would be okay because it’s no big deal to revive a drowned victim in movies, even though in real life someone who has drowned may not come back to life magically with a little bit of CPR.
If someone gets water in their lungs, there’s a decent chance they’re dead for good.
Likewise, I could imagine that having experienced hearing their mother horribly murdered and mutilated might have desensitized him to others dying in such horrific ways, especially because of his age – kids just didn’t get the seriousness of stuff like that.
It was also bothersome to hear that Harper had screamed a lot because the isopod was digging into her body, especially so when I considered that her status had said she was traumatized when I first met her, likely from being assaulted in such a terrible manner. No doubt it was like that for all humans who got attacked by the parasite, which meant the memory loss might be a blessing in disguise, considering it prevented us from recalling the horrifying and torturous experience.
I mean, the ability to regenerate obviously came only afterwards, which meant initially the creatures were digging throughout their new host’s body with their tentacles, probably almost killing them in the process while it took control of the human’s nervous system.
No matter how one looked at it, the process was actually a horrible death, assuming that the human inside never woke up like I had.
Unfortunately, that description was also enough for Harper to figure it out – that what we had been eating was the thing that was responsible for creating Night Stalkers. Surprisingly, she handled that news well, although I still kept my memory of how they were born from her.
After everyone had been quiet for a few minutes, Savannah finally spoke u
p again.
“So, you do know then,” she whispered, realizing I had lied based on my reaction to her brother’s comment.
I glanced down to see her staring into space. “You’re better off the way you are,” I hedged. “And what I said is still true – I can’t make you like us.”
Besides, if I was being honest, I didn’t need another mouth to feed. We would have to start splitting everything three ways, which would probably offset the benefit of having three people fighting. It would be one thing if resources were easily obtainable, but they weren’t. I had gotten lucky with all the isopods I’d come across by chance, but it wasn’t guaranteed that my luck would continue.
And even if I did want to make her like us, I would still have to find a living isopod to essentially torture her to death. Not to mention, how was I to know whether or not the isopod was male or female? After all, while I assumed that larger ones might be female, the size might actually have nothing to do with gender, which meant Savannah could end up like…
I carefully tucked away the image of the bloated corpse with the isopods swimming around inside, before Harper had the chance to catch sight of it herself. She was being really good though, keeping her thoughts at a distance respectfully, since she knew I was trying to protect her from something.
Unexpectedly, the door flew open as Randy rushed in with a fancy looking radio.
“Mason,” he exclaimed. “We just heard the news report on Shawn’s satellite radio. Everyone in the world is talking about you right now, but I still can’t believe it. You fought a dragon?!”
So that’s what they were calling it, huh? I supposed it was either that, or else ‘dinosaur with blades on its back,’ as being the only comparisons regular people could grasp, though dragon did sound cooler.
I shrugged, glancing away.
He just seemed baffled. “T-Thank you,” he finally stammered. “For telling us to get to safety.”
I scoffed. “I didn’t need the distraction,” I retorted.
He hesitated. “Well, still. Thank you. After hearing about the destruction it caused, I know we truly would have been in some serious danger had you not killed it where it was.”
I tried not to scoff again, knowing the guy had no idea just how real that danger was, since the hospital was guaranteed to be destroyed if we didn’t complete the quest in time.
When I didn’t respond, he finally spoke again. “Err, umm…” He hesitated. “I don’t know how to ask this, but I just can’t figure it out – Mason, how did you know?”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, glancing down at Savannah who was staring up at me with wide green eyes now. They probably wouldn’t believe me either way, but I supposed it couldn’t hurt to tell them. They would either think I was lying, or I wasn’t – ultimately, I didn’t care either way.
Sighing heavily, I spoke up. “The truth is, I can–”
Unexpectedly, my voice cut off as it felt like something popped in my skull, a message appearing along with the sensation.
Alert!
Temporary Ailment Detected: Stroke
Effect: Connection -13
Aliment will be dismissed in 00:01:27:526
My eyes widened in complete and total shock, as I realized what had just happened.
The system had just shut me up the moment I was about to talk about it…
Holy shit…
And if it could do that, then what else could it do to me?
To us?
Holy shit.
Holy shit!
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks to:
Esther Eckstein
Patreon Super Supporters:
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About the Author
Kurtis Eckstein is a huge fan of books, anime, and coffee! He has always wanted to create his own stories, but never felt like he had the time to invest in a full book.
Finally, he decided to settle with writing short-stories, only to discover he loved it so much that it became his primary hobby. Within six months, he had written three novels and was over halfway done with two others. Within a year, he had published six books total.
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