“… necessary. There are signs…” Serymn. She had come to see me before, I remembered. Wasn’t that sweet? She cared. “… must move quickly.”
The gravelly voice rose and bobbed and dipped enough for me to hear one word, emphasized. “… die.”
A long sigh from Serymn. “We’ll pause for a day or two, then.”
More murmurs. Confusing. I was tired. I slept again.
Night again. The room felt cooler. I opened my eyes and heard a harsh, ragged panting from the cot nearby. Shiny. His breath bubbled and wheezed strangely. I listened to it for a while, but then his breathing slowed. Caught once, resumed. Ceased again. Stayed silent.
The room smelled of fresh blood again. Had they taken more from me? But I felt better, not worse.
I fell asleep again before Shiny could resurrect and tell me what the Lights had done to him.
Later. Still night, but deeper into it.
I opened my eyes as brightness flared against them. I glanced over to see Shiny. He lay on the cot, curled on his side, still shimmering from his return to life.
I tried moving and found that I had more energy. My arm was still very sore, and thickly bandaged now, but I could move it. The straps were back in place and cinched tight across my chest and hips and legs, but the other wrist’s cuff had been left loose. I easily slipped my hand free.
Shiny’s doing? Then he had agreed to my bargain.
I unbuckled myself and sat up slowly, cautiously. There was an instant of dizziness and nausea, but it passed before I could fall on my face. I sat where I was on the edge of the bed, taking deep breaths, becoming reacquainted with my body. Feet. Shaky legs. Diaper around my hips, thankfully clean. Slouched back. Sore neck. I lifted my head and it did not spin. With great care, I got to my feet.
The three steps from my cot to Shiny’s exhausted me. I sat down on the floor beside the cot, leaning my head on his legs. He didn’t stir, but his breath tickled my fingers when I examined his face. His brow was furrowed, even in sleep. There were new lines on his face, around his sunken eyes. Not dead, but something had taken its toll on him. He usually woke as soon as he came back to life. Very strange.
As I took my hand away, it brushed against the cloth of his smock. Cooled wetness startled me. I touched, explored, and realized there was a wide patch of half-dried blood all down the lower half of his torso. Pulling up his shirt, I explored his belly. No wound now, but there had been a terrible one before.
He stirred while I was touching him, his glow fading rapidly. I saw him open his eyes and frown at me. Then he sighed and sat up beside me. We sat together, quiet, for a while.
“I have an idea,” I said. “To escape. Tell me if you think it will work.” I told him, and he listened.
“No,” he said.
I smiled. “No, it won’t work? Or no, you’d rather kill me on purpose than by accident?”
He stood up abruptly and walked away from me. I could see only a hazy outline of him as he went to the windows and stood there. His hands were clenched into fists, his shoulders high and tense.
“No,” he said. “I doubt it will work. But even if it does…” A shudder passed through him, and then I understood.
My anger roiled again, though I laughed. “Oh, I see. I’d forgotten that day in the park. When you started this whole mess by attacking Previt Rimarn.” I clenched my fists on my thighs, ignoring the twinge from the injured arm. “I remember the look on your face as you did it. That whole time I was in danger, scared out of my mind for you, but you were enjoying the chance to wield a bit of your old power.”
He did not reply, but I was certain. I had seen his smile that day.
“It must be so hard for you, Shiny. Getting to be your old self again for so brief a time. Then it diminishes until there’s nothing left of you but… this.” I gestured toward his fading back, letting my disgust show. I didn’t care what he thought of me anymore. I certainly didn’t think much of him. “Bad enough you get a taste of it every morning, isn’t it? Maybe it would be easier if you didn’t have that little reminder of all you used to be.”
He held rigid for a moment, his sullenness racheting toward anger in the usual pattern. Always predictable, he was. So satisfying.
And then, all at once, his shoulders slumped. “Yes,” he said.
I blinked, thrown. That made me angrier. So I said, “You’re a coward. You’re afraid that it will work, but afterward it’ll be like the last time—you’ll be weaker than ever, unable even to defend yourself. Useless.”