Under whose vigil had she been pulled from sleep? Whose unseen glare?

  Her brother’s? The unvetted dropout interrogated, tortured and executed in her place?

  How about “hers”? The friend she’d left behind in the First, corpse-swollen and corrupted?

  Perhaps a vessel’s? The illiterate in sunglasses and a surgical mask, bent on reversing a decomposition. The aggrieved religious servant, desperate to save her family’s home. Or the impassive doll sleeved in ribbons and frills, cursed with memories it didn’t know it had. Maybe the expatriate, trapped in a land whose language she couldn’t speak, searching for something she’d lost.

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  Melody, frozen in place, divested of all control, with no clue as to how long she’d been asleep—how long she’d been awake—unsure if she was truly under the active subjugation of the unknowable shadow in front of her, or if the signals of her will were simply being dropped somewhere along the path from mind to limb—could only apologize, in thought, to the looming entity at the foot of the bed, the silhouette heaving in time to what she assumed were breaths.

  I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.

  Not knowing exactly what it was she was apologizing to. Or if it even cared.

  Melody’s eyes welled with tears she couldn’t blink away. They collected, burst and trickled down her face to the pillow below.