Alex woke with a start, not sure where he was, not sure how long he’d been asleep, but seized with a formless anxiety, a sense that he’d missed something important. He reached to wipe the sleep from his eyes, and heard the rattle of the IV stand and felt the tug of the tape and tubes that were strapped to his arm.
Even in the dim confines of what he now recognized as a hospital room, Alex could barely keep his eyes open, the light spilling underneath the door seemed impossibly bright. Alex tried to sit up, and managed it after a certain amount of coaxing and waiting out his cramped muscles. His back was impossibly stiff and sore and his whole body ached, and he was alarmingly thinner than he remembered being.
How long had it been, then?
His hand brushed against his face in the darkness, and he was surprised to find that he had the better part of a beard. For a moment, Alex panicked completely, not sure what was happening, not sure whether he was awake or not. He leaned forward in the bed, and the movement inadvertently tore the tape stretched across his forearm, ripping the hair from his arm and bringing tears to his eyes. He winced and rubbed it, now thoroughly convinced that he was, in fact, awake.
And as his eyes adjusted, he realized he was not alone. He could hear gentle, rhythmic breathing from somewhere near the bed, from a jumble of shapes and objects it took him a few minutes to identify.
Eerie had pushed two chairs together next to his bed and was sleeping there, her legs curled in a ball in her heavy black tights, her sneakers tucked neatly underneath the chair, next to a basket that contained her knitting supplies. She’d looked as if she’d been there for a while.
Alex tried to speak, and managed only a croak, his throat cracked and terribly painful. He looked around him for one of those call buttons he’d seen on TV shows, but he couldn’t find anything of the kind. He’d half-resolved himself to try standing up and make his way out to the hallway, maybe finding a nurse or something, when there was a soft knock on the door.
“Alex?” He heard Rebecca’s voice from the other side of the door. “Close your eyes, okay? I’m going to come in…”
Alex obediently screwed his eyes shut. The room lit up, and it was brilliant even behind his eyelids. It took some time before he managed to open first one eye and then the other, Rebecca standing over the bed and beaming down at him, surrounded by blazing white light like the portrait of a saint, looking a bit teary eyed.
“Oh, you stupid fucking idiot,” she said sweetly, putting one hand on his forehead, “I knew you’d wake up, hon. I knew you would.”
Alex attempted to smile back at her, tried to form words. She put a finger to his lips.
“Don’t try and talk yet,” she said, heading toward the sink, “I’ll get you some water. I’m reading your thoughts, so don’t worry about trying to talk to me, just think clearly and slowly.”
She brought Alex back a glass of water, which he managed to take from her with a certain amount of difficulty, holding the plastic cup in both hands. He raised it clumsily to his lips, and managed a single noisy sip, and then spent the better part of a minute coughing it back up while Rebecca patted him on the back. After that, he managed a bit more of the water, keeping it down this time.
He tried to compose his thoughts, looking at Eerie significantly.
“Oh dear,” Rebecca laughed, “generally, you don’t have to use your eyebrows so much to communicate telepathically.”
She sat down on the chair next to the sleeping girl, running her hand through her faded blue hair, and smiling at her with an almost maternal affection.
“She’s been here almost every night, Alex. Emily has been here a lot too, but mostly during the evenings and mornings.” Rebecca patted Eerie on the head affectionately. “I think they have some kind of system worked out so they are never here at the same time, which is funny, because they aren’t speaking to each other, last I heard. Emily is going to be pretty upset when she finds out that you woke up when she wasn’t around.”
Alex finished the water, and then looked pleadingly at Rebecca and shook the empty cup in her direction.
“You really suck at telepathy, you know that, right?”
Rebecca took the cup patiently, then smacked him on the forehead, before she went to go refill it.
“Good thing you’re better at surviving, huh?”
Alex drank most of the water in the cup, and then set it down on the table beside the bed. He was already starting to feel better, and had to suppress his urge to start removing the IV gear from his arms.
“What…” Alex croaked, and then stopped and cleared his throat, before trying again. “What day is it?”
Rebecca suddenly looked worried, and sat back down next to Eerie, who continued to sleep, totally unaffected.
“Uh, well, Wednesday.” Rebecca said, looking at the floor.
“Oh,” Alex said, puzzled, trying to remember what day it had been when they fought with the Weir.
“The Wednesday before Christmas, that is.”
Alex glared at Rebecca, but when she met his stare, she seemed sad. It was very clear that she was not joking with him, and Alex found it very difficult to breathe, all of a sudden. It had to be a joke, didn’t it? But then again, if it wasn’t, if Rebecca was serious, then…
Then he had been asleep for weeks. More than a month.
Alex lurched forward in the bed, tearing the tape from one arm, the IV tube stretching and pulling against his skin. His eyes were bloodshot and wide with panic, his skin flushed and covered in cold sweat.
“No way,” he said, gritting his teeth, forcing himself up with his arms, “No, this can’t…”
Rebecca sighed softly, and then patted him gently on his knee. Alex’s expression froze, for a moment, in a rectus of fear and mania, and then he quietly folded back into the pillows behind him, his face gone placid and serene, his eyes wet but unworried. He felt a tremendous sense of calm, of assurance, like being wrapped in blankets on a cold day, like a memory he didn’t have of his mother’s hand resting on his forehead when he was very young.
“Sorry about that,” Rebecca apologized, “but if you freak out right now, you’re going to do yourself some harm. Plus, you’re going to bring down the whole of Central on our heads, and you definitely don’t want that.”
Alex put his head in his hands, feeling oddly empty, drained of the panic that he could only vaguely remember.
“Oh shit,” he said, his voice strained. “Edward. What happened to…?”
Rebecca shook her head slowly.
“He didn’t make it. The rest of them are fine, more or less. Mitsuru stayed down the hall for a week or so.”
“How could this happen?” He mumbled, from behind his hands.
Rebecca shook her head, and then reached reflexively for her cigarettes. She had the pack halfway out of her pocket before she remembered where she was, looked around her sadly, and then slid the pack back into her jeans with a sigh.
“You used a Black Protocol, Alex. You helped Mitsuru to kill that Weir, from what I hear, you basically froze the bastard somehow. I already told you this, but any time you use a Black Protocol, there is a price to pay. I hope that it seems worth it.”
Alex looked up at her sad expression incredulously.
“So I slept for a month? That seems…”
Rebecca looked downcast.
“I know,” she agreed, grimly. “That’s why Michael didn’t want you to use this ability at all. The price for a Black Protocol is always greater than what you get from using it, if you ask me. You know you aren’t the only one here in Central who uses them, right?”
“Well, Alice…” Alex said, nodding.
“Right,” Rebecca nodded. “Well, Alice forgets things every time she uses her protocol, Alex. The more she uses it, the more she does with it, the more of her memory is gone forever.” The stare Rebecca fixed him with was hard. “Do you know what she does when she’s not out being an Auditor, Alex?”
Alex shook his head. The calm that Rebecca had flooded him with earlier had started to ebb a bit, and he was having trouble following what she was saying, even with only the edges of the panic he’d felt nudging him.
“She has a room full of diaries, Alex, hundreds of them. And she spends most of her time reading them, or recording the day’s events.” Rebecca smiled unhappily. “So it’s not like she doesn’t know anything about her life, because she’s read about some of it. But she doesn’t remember much of it at all.”
“I don’t get it,” Alex said, closing his eyes and leaning his head back onto the pillow, still slightly damp with his sweat. “Why? Why did this happen?”
“We don’t know,” Rebecca said darkly. “We still don’t have any idea. But every M-class on record has the same problem. Unlimited power, a Black Protocol, and an exorbitant cost for using it.”
“Christ,” Alex said. “Who in the hell makes up all these rules?”
Rebecca smiled and patted him on the leg.
“Alice is an extreme example,” Rebecca said. “Not every M-class has problems on that scale, okay? She insists on using her protocol all the time, maybe more than any other Operator I’ve met, despite the consequences. Other people handle it better.”
Alex thought for a moment.
“Um, so, Mitsuru’s scars, then?”
“You little shit,” Rebecca said approvingly. “How did you figure that out?”
“Well, she cut herself when she saved me, that first night,” he said, smiling. “Before she used the barrier protocol. And then with what you just said… It doesn’t seem like you’d let someone that, uh, unstable work in the field, unless they had some truly exceptional abilities, right?”
“Yeah, more or less,” Rebecca admitted grudgingly, “Mitsuru’s kind of unique, though. A long time ago, there was a plan to help her avoid having to use her Black Protocol. The surgery, right? The implant. The whole idea had, you know,” Rebecca paused and looked briefly angry, “mixed results. It won’t be repeated, that’s for sure.”
“Wait, what?”
“Another time,” Rebecca said, shaking her head. “We don’t have all night, and I came here to talk to you about some important things. I can’t be the only one in Central who knows you woke up, so it will be common knowledge, soon.”
“What’s up with Eerie? Why isn’t she waking up?”
Rebecca smiled and stroked Eerie’s cheek gently with the back of her hand.
“I fixed it so she won’t wake up until we are finished. She’s fast asleep, dreaming about something that makes her happy,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “This is, actually, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Making Eerie happy is one of the things you wanted to talk about?”
Alex fought off the urge to pinch himself, just to be sure this wasn’t an extremely odd dream.
“Sort of. You see, I’ve known Eerie since she could walk without falling over, and I’ve never seen her latch on to someone the way she has with you. I think this is probably a new experience for her, and I’m not sure what to make of it — she’s not human, after all, not really.” Rebecca frowned, pulling her feet up onto the seat, clutching her knees to her chest. “I don’t know what it means, that Eerie is acting this way. I mean, she’s not totally abnormal, I know she’s gone out with boys before. But she didn’t seem to particularly care about them, one way or the other. You didn’t,” she asked, her voice tolerant and frank, “you know, do anything with her, while you were in San Francisco, did you?”
“N-no,” Alex stammered. “Nothing like that. I’m not even sure that she likes me, you know. She doesn’t always act like it.”
Rebecca nodded sympathetically.
“I bet. I’m not sure that she even knows what she likes, some of the time. But, that’s beside the point,” Rebecca said, leaning closer. “My point is this — Eerie has put a lot of effort into being the first thing you see when you wake up, right? And her reaction to this, when it happens, is likely to be, well, intense.”
“…and?”
“And I’m wondering if you want that.”
“Huh?” Alex said, puzzled.
“Alex, I can put you back to sleep for a few more hours,” Rebecca said glumly. “So that you’ll wake up when only the nurses are here. Or, if you prefer, a bit later, when Emily is around.”
“Wait, what? What does it matter?”
Rebecca shrugged.
“If you don’t care, then I don’t care,” she said. “Just wanted to give you fair warning. Girls take this sort of thing seriously.”
Alex scratched at his arm, where the tape had been torn away, leaving behind red, irritated skin.
“Consider me warned, then. I’m not going back to sleep, anyway, not for any reason,” Alex said firmly. “Besides, I thought I was supposed to be staying away from the cartel girls.”
“Eerie presents her own set of complications. But I’m not interested in keeping you away from anyone, Alex, and I’m sorry I gave you that impression,” Rebecca said, looking upset. “I’m trying to give you options, okay? Eerie seems to be kind of fascinated by you, and that’s already kind of a dangerous thing. If she decides that she likes you, well, then we are in unexplored territory.”
Alex held his hands up in surrender.
“Okay, sorry, I didn’t mean to be a jerk,” he said apologetically. “I’m still out of it and in shock, you know? Don’t take me too seriously.”
“I never do,” Rebecca cut in, cheerfully, folding her arms across her chest and sitting back in the chair.
“What’s so scary about Eerie?”
“Well,” Rebecca said, looking at him doubtfully. “She isn’t fully human, for one thing.”
“Yeah, and? I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but compared to my daily life lately, that doesn’t seem all that odd.”
“Being part of the same species is kind of a minimum standard that most people apply in dating,” Rebecca said, resting her forehead on her hand tiredly. “Beyond that, you have noticed that she has some little biological quirks, right?”
Alex nodded.
“Sure, the whole ‘my body is a drug factory’ thing, right?”
Alex paused while he recalled the room of dead Weir, and then his own somewhat fuzzy recollections of the night he’d spent with Eerie. Both seemed a touch surreal now, for different reasons.
“Yeah, that thing,” Rebecca said, smirking. “What do you think happens, Alex, when you act as a catalyst for her abilities?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said, scratching his head. “What?”
“I don’t know,” Rebecca admitted, spreading her hands. “And that’s the whole problem.”
Alex yawned and sat up in his hospital bed.
“This is all kind of a moot point, because I’m not going back to sleep.” Alex shook his head. “I still can’t believe I’ve been asleep that long.”
Alex felt just a bit of the panic he’d felt earlier, then, like he could feel the shape of the thing out there, emotionally, but it was still somehow distant, something to be objectively observed, but not necessarily something to be concerned over. He couldn’t help but wonder how long this particular perspective would last.
“Yeah, it has to be disconcerting,” Rebecca said, putting her hand against Alex’s forehead. “You seem totally healthy, though, if a bit undernourished. Are you feeling any better?”
“Thanks to you,” Alex said. “But, it isn’t a brand new experience for me. You lose a lot of time, being locked up. It’s weird, actually — every day seems to stretch on endlessly, but when you look at a calendar, you realize you’ve lost weeks or months, with no specific memory of the time passing.”
Rebecca smiled at him.
“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? What we can get used to, if we have to. It’s always more than you think you could deal with, in the abstract.”
Rebecca looked affectionately at the sleeping girl curled beside her, reaching over to tuck an errant faded blue lock back underneath the hood of her sweatshirt.
“You’ve already changed a lot, Alex, since I met you. I’m interested to watch what happens from here. But you’ll be okay, you know that, right?”
“Why in the world,” Alex asked plaintively, “is Eerie wearing a Pittsburg Penguins sweatshirt? Don’t tell me she’s a big hockey fan. Is she from Pittsburg? There are Fey in Pittsburg?”
Rebecca laughed, standing up and brushing the wrinkles from her jeans.
“She says she just likes penguins,” Rebecca said, shrugging. “I’m going to stay out of your way from here on out, okay, Alex?” She leaned close to him, and then, much to his surprise, kissed him on the forehead. “You keep coming to see me every week, but I’ll stop meddling in your affairs. You seem to have everything under control.”
“Do I?”
Alex gratitude was obvious in his shining eyes.
“No, not really,” Rebecca laughed, patting him on the head and then heading for the door. “But I think you’re doing okay, all things considered.”
Alex sat there for a while, after she left, wondering what she had actually come for, why it was that Rebecca kept such a close eye on him, and why she got so nervous anytime he mentioned Mitsuru. After a few minutes, he decided to put it aside, no closer to a solution than when he had started. He would have to find out what the deal was, eventually. But, he didn’t have to do it right now.
He lay back against the pillows, his eyes half-open, and let his mind drift. It felt good, at that moment, to just lie there, nothing he had to do, nothing to worry about, no expectations to meet. Somehow, Alex felt so tired, and that bothered him, on a fundamental level. What had been the value of all that sleep, if he had not rested?
He frowned, trying to remember, something about sleep, something Eerie had told him. Something about what sleep actually was, what happened while he was asleep…
“The Church of Sleep,” he said softly, turning the phrase over in his mouth like sour candy.
Had he heard someone say that before? Alex wasn’t sure. It still didn’t mean anything to him, but there was a certain… resonance, maybe. A quality of dislocation. A memory from the time before words, like something passing nearby in darkness, evident only in the displacement of air. He felt uncertain, reluctant to follow his thoughts any further in this direction.
Alex wondered if he had slept. Had he dreamed? Had this all happened before?
The headache was so brief, it was over before he realized that it had started, accompanied by a piercing shriek that reverberated in the back of his skull, echoes of a pain he had forgotten. It went on and on, much longer than he could stand, even though it was over before he realized it had begun. The silence that followed was beautiful.
Alex tried to remember what he had been thinking about for the last few minutes for a while, and then he gave up.
He looked down at his hands, blue-veins under the pale skin of his palms, and flexed his fingers. He was awake. Alex ran his fingers along the cold rounded steel of the bed frame, bunched the starched sheets in his hands. This was real.
There was nothing, he thought, opening his eyes and smiling at Eerie, curled in her giant sweatshirt, her head peeking out from the gaping hood, breathing softly, the pink of her slightly parted lips. There was nothing here to worry him, nothing to be afraid of. He had not forgotten anything, nothing important.
She stirred, shifting her hips, drawing her knees up close to her chest, her lips mouthing words that he could not hear, but recognized intuitively, and almost understood. He watched her chest rise and fall, let his eyes linger on the curvature of her white calves, moving against each other with furtive languor. Alex watched Eerie sleep, and felt something like peace, for a little while, wondering what it was that she dreamed of.
In the half-light of the early morning, in a room that was not quite cold, on top of a bed that was not his own, Alex watched Eerie breathe, her face untroubled by whatever passed for a changeling’s dreams. He waited for her to wake, for her to open her eyes and speak to him, to say his name and make everything real.