Chapter 25: Frostbite
I SPEND THREE days in bed. For three days, I recall every detail of what happened. I think of all the things I could have done to stop it. All the things I might have done differently. All the choices I made that led to Oscar's being taken away from me forever. I berate myself for every wrong choice. I hate myself. I hate Jonas. When that pain is not enough, I imagine Oscar, alone and frightened, in a box. Thinking he's dying. Not knowing who he is. I imagine him waking up in a world that hates him. I imagine all the horrifying, unthinkable things that could happen to him. They're all my fault. I didn't love him enough to keep him safe. I failed him in the most terrible of ways. All this thinking and imagining eats away at me, and finally, near the end of the three days, I slip from consciousness with only the image of Oscar in my mind.
When I wake, only Neveah is with me. I could have been asleep for a few hours, or a few days. Whatever has hold of my head is squeezing with exactly enough pressure to cause immense pain without actually crushing my skull. Neveah, having sensed me stirring, is already taking warm water from the top of the stove and sprinkling a packet of herbs into it. She swishes it around with her finger, then brings it to me, presses it into my hands. I gulp the whole thing without asking, hand the pan back to her, grab my jacket, and head out the door.
The streets are filled with slush. Clearly, there's been more snow, but its purity cannot stand up to the grey footprints of our souls. I slip through the muck and mud, not knowing where I'm going. Not caring. Everything has changed. There is no beauty in this world. No point to it. So I wander, and wander, and my own grey footprints only add to the mess. Everything I see reminds me of Oscar. So I stop seeing. I just stop. And I walk without seeing anything at all.
Sometimes, I'm back at our house, and people are trying to get me to eat things, or drink things, or change out of my wet socks. Sometimes, I'm sitting in near-darkness in alleyways or on street corners. Sometimes I'm walking those winding paths, in daylight or moonlight. Here. There. My awareness skips from one place to another with no logical progression between them. I'm a mangled book, pages torn out and stuck back in the wrong order. Sometimes backward. Upside down. It doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter that sometimes the sometimes is me staring up at a Sentry. I feel no fear, standing there under its looming iron presence. Only deep, deep hatred. But Sentries do not feel emotions. My hating them cannot hurt them at all.
The days, like autumn leaves, fall away, and around me I see everything slowly dying. I shun the comfort my friends try to give me. I shun Jonas, and his apologies, and his empty words about how strong Oscar is; how capable of survival. He asks if I'm angry with him, and I say no. I don't want to argue. It's just easier to stay away. He's so busy with his little army that he doesn't have time to figure out I'm lying. It works for both of us this way. Simpler. Less heart-breaking. But being away is heart-breaking. I am angry, but I'm angrier that he doesn't try harder. I want to be alone, but I'm lonely. So I walk, and fight off the recurring nightmares on my own, and then walk some more. Everything is building inside me, seething. I feel abandoned. Forgotten. Erased.
One day, I'm walking down the main street near the Rustler, and ahead, by the door, I see Matt slip inside. It makes me laugh. Even Matt. But as I draw nearer, he comes back out. His steps are slow, hesitant, as he walks to the edge of the sidewalk, meeting my gaze. He says nothing— just glances briefly down at the object in his hands.
My eyes fall on it and linger. I swallow against the swell of emotion inside me. I want to run away. He holds it out. Before I know it, I'm reaching for it. My fingers graze the band and close around the cold metal where it forks. I turn it over in my hands. Oscar's slingshot. Matt says nothing. I'm so grateful that he says nothing. Suddenly, I'm clinging to him, and tears are spilling onto his shirt, and his arms are tight around me, squeezing out the grief.
He takes me inside, out of the cold, and sits me on a stool next to Miranda, who has ingratiated herself to him in a very short time. Arthur Adner sets a glass of whiskey in front of me. It takes no coaxing. Unlike food, this goes down quickly and smoothly. I have several before Miranda tries to slow me down. I don't really care. I just sit there and clutch Oscar's slingshot— the tiny piece of him the Sentries did not take away.
This becomes my place, my perch, my habitat, as more days slip by. I'm here often, but I'm separate from it. My world has been severed from everyone else's and there's no reattaching it. I'm entirely peripheral. Things happen around me. The story of our lives is a river that parts around a rock. I am the rock. They still try to comfort me, to coax me to eat, but I am more stubborn than they are patient. And just like Jonas, Matt is busy with war preparations.
I ignore the long discussions about strategy— aware that once I would have listened eagerly. The names that are mentioned, the details of weaponry, none of it matters now. I have nothing to protect. Even, sometimes, when people are dragged in, threatened, beaten, I only feel like I should feel sad. But I don't. I feel nothing at all.
This nothing stretches on. The span is too long. My mind comes to know this, but I can't seem to fix it. Even trying to think about Oscar just makes me tired, like I can't quite get the energy to remember. It's like being dead, but still moving. Surely someone has made a mistake and they just haven't noticed yet that I'm dead. After a while, I really start to wonder. I haven't eaten in days. I haunt the Rustler, lingering in the background, speaking to no one. It's too crazy to be true, so it must not be. But then, why am I like this?
I walk barefoot in the snow because I want to feel something. Cold. Pain. Numb. I'm experiencing frostbite of the soul. Pieces of my being are shriveling and falling off. Of course, walking inevitably leads to the Sentries. I face off against one of the monsters again. Its black face turns to me, anticipating. The aether-fumed air around us is charged with what will happen next. But is it real? I wake in the middle of the night, and it was a dream. But it wasn't, before. And it isn't the next day. Or is it? How are we really supposed to tell the difference?
When I finally do feel the return of emotion, it is sheer hatred. Not the internalized, seething kind, but hatred that is focused and motivated. I'm sitting outside the Rustler, looking down the street at the Sentry that guards the intersection. My fingers curl, nails slicing the soft flesh of my palms. The rage moves, electric, surging through my body, demanding to be conducted through brute force into the metal construction that is supposed to protect us. Miranda's hand on my shoulder stops me from acting. "Come inside," she says, wrapping her arms about herself as she looks down on me. "It's too cold out here." She shivers, for effect.
I quell my rage, but take it with me, glancing back toward the Sentry as we move inside.
As I sit, evening moves into darkness. Pieces start to come together in my mind for the first time. My dreams. The Sentries. Oscar. And Jonas. The little bits of my brain that were intact when I woke up from erasure. The white tower. Needing to run. As my mind touches the idea, I feel the need again, like thinking about it has given it control over me. I'm pummeled by a wave of desperation. I need to act. Yet I'm still trapped in this little world where I cannot. There's no way out of the Outpost without being caught. Winter is closing in on us. Outside, Grey's men are probably looming. If only I knew why all these things are in my head. If only I could somehow reach in and take them out. I'm sitting here thinking this over and over, when it hits me. I turn and glance around the Rustler, looking for Miranda. She's standing by one of the tables, talking to a group of Matt's men. I strain my ears and catch a few technical words. The men are nodding, deferring to her expertise. One of them is jotting down some notes on a scrap of yellow paper. Another one leans closer to Miranda, laughing, saying something in a low voice. She smiles slowly back at him, meeting his gaze.
I sigh, and lean back against the bar. Wh
ile I wait, I formulate plans in my mind.