Fortunately, keeping my head to the ground makes it easier to hear downstairs, and I catch my aunt saying, “You must have at least seen him.” I’ve never heard her sound so hysterical.
“Don’t worry,” the regulator says. “We’ll find him.”
This, at least, is a relief. Alex must have escaped. If the regulators had any idea who had been with me on the street—if they had even a suspicion—they would have him in custody already. I say a silent prayer of gratitude that Alex managed, miraculously, to make it to safety.
“We had no idea,” Carol says, still in that trembling, urgent voice so unlike her regular measured tone. And now I understand; she’s not just hysterical. She’s terrified. “You have to believe that we had no idea she’d been infected. There were no signs. Her appetite was the same. She went to work on time. No mood swings . . .”
“She was probably trying her hardest to conceal the signs,” the regulator cuts in. “The infected often do.” I can practically hear the disgust in his voice when he pronounces the word infected, like he’s actually saying cockroach, or terrorist.
“What do we do now?” Carol’s voice is fainter now. She and the regulator must be passing into the living room.
“We’re putting in calls as fast as we can,” he replies.
“With any luck, before the end of the week . . .”
Their voices become indecipherable, a low hum. I rest my forehead on the door for a minute, focusing on inhaling and exhaling, breathing past the pain. Then I get to my feet, carefully. The dizziness is still intense, and I have to brace myself against the wall as soon as I’m standing, trying to sort out my options. I have to find out what, exactly, happened. I need to know how long the regulators had been watching 37 Brooks, and I have to make absolutely positive that Alex is safe. I need to talk to Hana. She’ll help me. She’ll know what to do. I tug on the door handle before realizing that it has been locked from the outside.
Of course. I’m a prisoner now.
As I’m standing there with my hand on the door handle, it begins to rattle and turn. I turn as quickly as I am able and dive back into the bed—even that hurts— just as the door swings open again and Jenny re-enters.
I don’t shut my eyes fast enough. She calls back into the hallway, “She’s awake now.” She is carrying a glass of water but seems reluctant to come farther into the room. She stays near the doorway, watching me.
I don’t particularly want to talk to Jenny, but I’m absolutely desperate to drink. My throat feels like I’ve been swallowing sandpaper.
“Is that for me?” I say, gesturing to the glass. My voice is a croak.
Jenny nods, her lips stretched into a fine white line. For once, she has nothing to say. She darts forward suddenly, places the glass on the little rickety table next to the bed, then darts away just as quickly. “Aunt Carol said it would help.”
“Help what?” I take a long, grateful sip, and the burning in my throat and head seems to ease up.
Jenny shrugs. “The infection, I guess.”
This explains why she’s staying by the door and doesn’t want to get too close to me. I’m diseased, infected, dirty.
She’s worried she’s going to catch it. “You can’t get sick just by being around me, you know,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says quickly, defensively, but stays frozen where she is, watching me warily.
I feel impossibly tired. “What time is it?” I ask Jenny.
“Two thirty,” she says.
This surprises me. Relatively little time has passed since I went to meet Alex. “How long was I out?”
She shrugs again. “You were unconscious when they brought you home,” she says matter-of-factly, as though this is a natural fact of life, or something I did— and not because a bunch of regulators clubbed me on the back of the head. That’s the irony of it. She’s looking at me like I’m the crazy one, the dangerous one. Meanwhile, the guy downstairs who nearly fractured my skull and bled my brains all over the pavement is the savior.
I can’t stand to look at her, so I turn toward the wall.
“Where’s Grace?”
“Downstairs,” she says. Some of the normal whine returns to her voice. “We had to set up sleeping bags in the living room.”
Of course they’d want to keep Grace away from me:
young, impressionable Grace, safely sheltered from her crazed, sick cousin. I do feel sick too, with anxiety and disgust. I think of the fantasy I had earlier, of burning the whole house down. It’s lucky for Aunt Carol I don’t have any matches. Otherwise I just might do it.
“So who was it?” Jenny’s voice drops to a sinuous whisper, like a little snake forking its tongue in my ear.
“Who was it who infected you?”
“Jenny.”
I turn my head, surprised to hear Rachel’s voice. She’s standing in the doorway, watching us, her expression completely unreadable.
“Aunt Carol wants you downstairs,” she says to Jenny, and Jenny scurries eagerly for the door, shooting one last look over her shoulder at me, her face a mixture of fear and fascination. I wonder if that’s how I looked all those years ago when Rachel got the deliria and had to be pinned down on the floor by four regulators before she could be dragged to the labs.
Rachel comes over to the bed, still watching me with that same unreadable expression. “How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Fabulous,” I say sarcastically, but she just blinks at me.