We’ve moved fully into the Dark, walking shoulder to shoulder with the unnamed Fade on either side.
Are they a good thing or a bad thing? I ask Cherish.
Guard, she says, but is that a warning, or does she mean they’re a guard detail?
Why would we need guards? I ask, but she doesn’t have an answer for that.
Instead she says, Home .
That’s all she cares about—getting home.
She wants to be here. She wants to stay.
The moment I pressed my toes into the Arc, Cherish was pushing me to leave so hard, I could feel hands at my back. Other hands were reaching out for me the way they do in my dreams of belonging, promising to pull me home.
Home, Cherish says again.
Not for me, I say back.
It’s chilly here. The Dark’s always cool because of the shade, but this is more. Tobin’s hand is a block of ice inside mine. The heat flows off my body, siphoned away so I’m left shivering. The leaves and branches rattle, but there’s no wind. They’re shivering, too.
The Dark’s afraid.
“They’re scared,” I whisper back to Tobin, casting a wary glance at the male Fade beside him. Even if they don’t want to answer us, they can still understand us.
“Because the lights came on?”
“I don’t think so.” The Arc has kept the Fade away for decades. Crossing it is painful for them, if not outright lethal, but the lights don’t reach this deep.
What’s wrong? I ask Cherish.
I expect her to answer the way Rue would, by allowing me to touch the hive’s mind, so I brace for the flood of noise and emotions that comes with it, but it never happens. She might as well have plugged her ears.
“She’s locked me out,” I say.
Cherish is doing this on purpose. She’s hiding something.
“You try,” I suggest.
“Try what?” Tobin asks.
“To talk to them. Try to hear.”
If Tobin is turning, he’ll be able to.
“I don’t know—I mean, how?” Tobin asks uncertainly, but he never suggests that he might not be able to hear them. Our shared nightmares, and Trey’s drawings, are coming from somewhere, and the hive is the only source out here.
“Act like you’re trying to get someone’s attention in a crowd. Pick someone you know and then shout.”
Tobin stops, bringing us all to a clumsy halt as he closes his eyes.
“I feel like an idiot,” he says. His face draws up more like someone in pain than attempting communication.
“You look like an idiot,” I say, and he scowls. “Did you hear anything?”
“Does my spiking blood pressure count?”
Sigh. I’ll take that as a no.
“It was worth a shot,” I say.
And, if nothing else, there’s a renewed sense of peace to Tobin’s demeanor. The hive didn’t answer him. They don’t answer humans.
Maybe that’s why they aren’t answering me. I chose a human existence; this is the cost.
Continue .
As if to prove me wrong, the male Fade speaks.
I’m not an outcast, I’m a misbehaving child, only allowed to speak when spoken to. One being told to stay out of the important conversations.
Motion, says the female. Forward .
“We should go,” I tell Tobin, and we head deeper into the Dark, hand in hand.
The Dark’s always moving. Nanites swirl across their hosts’ skin, displaying emotions better than any expression. Lines of black crisscross the ground and snake up trees, altering their appearance in a neverending crawl. If they stop the cycle, the ones on top creating the canopy will die from too much sun exposure. They mourn every voice lost and try to preserve as many as possible. Here, the greater good is distilled for the good of one.
Haunting reminders of the world before the Fade appear without warning. Some are subtle, like the painted lines on the ground that peek through gaps of rolling Fade, only to be covered again a second later. Others, like buildings that stand in various stages of decay, are harsher.
Eyes watch us. Ghostly faces appear and disappear at random; shimmers follow us from high up on the trees. Here and there, fully formed Fade approach from the remnants of houses, and I can’t help but wonder if they’re the ones who were human in the beginning. Were these their homes?
“You think they’d at least tell us their names,” Tobin says after a while. “They have names, right?”
I hear a growl, so close it makes me jump, but Tobin doesn’t move until I do, so the sound has to be for my ears only.
“What now?” he asks, tightening his grip on my hand. His eyes and ears don’t adjust as fast as mine. Here, I’m the one protecting him .
“I think he heard you,” I say. “He growled.”
Negative, says the male Fade, followed by the same fearsome sound.
He lifts the sleeve of his jacket to bare his arm and then points to a shape drawn with colored lines. They’re static, and not crisp, until a rush of nanites darkens them, highlighting the image of a vicious animal lunging off his bicep, mouth open in a snarl.
“Is that your name?” I ask.
He growls again, replacing the sleeve over other pictures, including the obscure outline of a woman’s body on his inner forearm. The Fade have tried to mimic the ink he had tattooed on before they came.
“They call him Dog,” I say.
“Does that make her Cat?” Tobin snorts.
Shh . The impression of a sharp hiss of air comes from the female. Speak softly .
“Speak—Oh! Your name’s Whisper.”
The female gives me a sharp nod, the only truly human gesture I’ve seen from either of them.
“We’re Marina and Tobin,” I say.
Invisible water washes over my legs, just as it did when Rue tried to make me understand that Marina was the place where he lost Cherish. Honoria made it my name, and now Whisper and Dog have, too.
