--==Chapter 39: The Door --==
Jessica had her face scrunched up in confusion. "Did Nia take Maebe out for some reason? I don't remember Maebe being with her, though. Did we even have Maebe in a wheelchair?"
Memories of Aquarium Guy flashed through my head. Like Maebe, he'd had no aura. Sori seemed to think my Shadow was responsible for both.
"I guess she might have woken up? It wouldn't be any more unexpected than the onset of her acute catatonia," Jessica said, standing up and walking toward me.
I set down my planned weapon and let her squeeze by as she walked over to check the bathroom.
"Maebe?" she said, knocking on the door and poking her head in. "Hmm, well, she's not in the bathroom. Could she have woken up and disconnected Mr. Peterson for some reason?"
Jessica seemed to just be speaking out loud since she didn't look to me for a response; even so, it made me hope that Sori was right that finding my shadow would return my voice.
"Excuse me," Jessica said as she moved past me again, back to her patient, and began checking his vitals.
The IV tubes and heart monitor cables were hanging loosely down to the floor. The monitor wasn't on, presumably because it would be beeping alarm. I'd thought it was odd they weren't keeping a closer eye on their patient, Mr. Peterson. Apparently, they had been until someone disconnected him while I was drugged.
It was far from the only unexplained thing going on with him. He still didn't have an aura, but as I looked at him more closely, I started seeing streaks of light zipping through where his aura should be. It reminded me of a cloud chamber detecting radiation, but in reverse. The whisps weren't coming from Mr. Peterson but were instead going toward him, into him.
I tried to remember if I'd seen something similar with Aquarium Guy. It had been an intense few days of time loops, but even so, I wasn't used to people having auras at all. I'd only noticed Aquarium Guy's lack of glow after the fact, when Sori pointed it out. That encounter had also been extremely short. Either way, I didn't remember seeing anything.
Still, if I had a spider-sense, it'd be tingling.
Maebe had vanished, as if she'd upped and walked out, despite being catatonic. Sori had said the minds of both Maebe and Guy had been locked away, leaving their bodies empty for any wandering horror to possess. Apparently, it wasn't much different than the crow Sori had temporarily stolen from Crowseph.
Although Sori hadn't known the specifics of how the shadow thief had stolen their minds, I'd hoped that by clearing surgery of any monsters, we would keep Maebe from being possessed. After all, she'd been left alone up to that point. Her vanishing act had me worried that she'd been taken and that Mr. Peterson was next.
I kept my eyes locked on Jessica's patient as she squeezed past my empty gurney to reach him, but the man didn't so much as twitch. The room was a shoebox, and there wasn't really space for me to stand over Jessica protectively. If something happened, if Mr. Peterson turned from catatonic into a drone, it would take me long moments to intervene. Jessica said she felt safe around me. I didn't want to lose that.
I sat on the edge of a nearby seat, ready to jump into action if Mr. Peterson suddenly became Mr. Pod-person. It was as close as I could get without getting in Jessica's way. She was tracing wires and separating sensors and draping them on the machine.
As much as I had to question the truth of everything Sori said—he was just so unreliable—I hoped he was right about my regaining my voice with that magic Shadow.
"You didn't see Alice's sister over here messing around, did you?"
I could only tilt my head back and forth like a confused dog.
"It's just so strange. I suppose it's possible he woke up and did it himself?" She said.
I couldn't say if that was possible or not for someone without an Aura. It had been a while since I felt any kind of certainty about what was possible. Six months earlier, I would have been confident saying none of this was possible. A few days of impossible things had left me feeling disconnected from reality.
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I knew there were still patterns and limits. I knew it was still possible to learn about the world around me. Alice had proved it by leaving herself notes over loops. Even with just the hints of memories that she had, she'd managed to learn and adapt to our new reality. Even Crowseph wouldn't be a budding hive mind if he hadn't discovered some foundational truths of this world. And Hands would be a regular Dolphin, not a master of illusion and murder. Even so, my world had been a lot more certain just yesterday.
It reminded me of a quote from an English worker in the 1850s before education was widely available. It was something like, "What do I know about the sun? It must be closer than the moon since it's warmer."
I felt like any guess I made, let alone anything Sori told me, was about as informed as that person's understanding of the sun. What do I know about possible? It must be the same as the impossible; they both seem to happen.
My worldview had crumbled before, more than once. To an extent, I saw value in it. If you don't discover your life is built on shifting sands at least once, how could you ever learn appropriate skepticism of strongman certainty? I'd learned to doubt bare-faced statements of 'fact' without sufficient supporting evidence. None of that changed how terrifying and painful it was to find yourself tumbling through doubt, looking for anything to depend on, to ground yourself.
My certainty was gone again, and I had to expand what I thought was possible or likely. So sure, maybe Mr. Pod-person had disconnected himself and then gone back to sleep. Or perhaps some alien or other impossible being had possessed Maebe and disconnected Peterson. Or maybe she just woke up confused and disoriented and disconnected him as part of that confusion.
Someone had been in the room with me when I first came to, but I'd assumed that was Nia. Now, I wondered if that had been Maebe.
Jessica pulled out a pen light and flashed it in Peterson's eyes, looking for doctors-know-what.
If the guy did wake up, one of the first things he'd see, after blinking the spots from the penlight out of his eyes, would be a glowing werewolf in a doctor's coat. If his mind wasn't empty, that would probably freak him out or at least confuse him. Either way, it might be best to put on a glamour. Empathizing with someone I never met wouldn't give me the best results, but we've all woken up groggy.
Inspired by the feelings of uncertainty and doubt that were plaguing me, I decided to apply that to myself. The goal was to make Peterson think I was a delusion, at least in part. Usually, it might be a bit ambitious, but Peterson should be groggy and unsure—if he was aware at all. I would just be one more confusing piece he couldn't make fit.
If Denis was in here with us, it probably wouldn't work, since Denis never stopped giving me the side eye. On the other hand, Jessica wasn't nervous about me in the least. Mr. Peterson would hopefully focus on her and other reasonable things and ignore me.
I was betting his confusion would make him grasp for certainty. I was already wearing a doctor's lab coat. Looking around, I saw a clipboard used by families to fill out paperwork while their loved ones fought for their lives. I could pretend I was filling out Mr. Peterson's chart while Maebe checked on him. He'd be confused, and I'd try to amplify that confusion. I'd play into the doctor role. With luck, he'd either think I was a total delusion or at least that my werewolf appearance was.
Of course, he'd have to wake up for that to matter. Jessica was checking his vitals and gave me a bemused look when I grabbed the clipboard, but didn't say anything. Mr. Peterson wasn't waking up or reacting to her exam, so my preparation seemed to be for not.
Then, the streaks of light streaming a few at a time into Mr. Peterson started to come quicker, less scattered. They began to focus. Though fewer in number, the new strands were uninterrupted streams of light with the thickness of kite string.
I lowered the clipboard, the hackles on my neck rising. Something was about to happen. Jessica looked at me with a questioning look, but my eyes were locked on the Drone, looking for any movement.
Something slammed into the wall outside the room, making both of us jump. Dread rose in me as a long, slow scraping sound came from outside the room, as though someone had dug their nails into the plaster and was dragging furls behind them as they slowly moved down the hallway toward the door.
Jessica and I were frozen, my stomach dropped, and my heart raced.
"The door," Jessica hissed. Her voice was quiet but high and tight with stress, kicking me into motion.
I threw myself across the room toward the door. I could almost feel the malevolence through the wall as I raced past the spot where the scraping had reached and crashed into the door, just as the handle began to turn.
Jessica screamed as I fumbled with the deadbolt, which slid into place just before something banged into the door from the other side.
"Sam!" Jessica screamed just as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief.
I'd been distracted.
Whipping around, I saw Pod-patient had sat up and grabbed Jessica by the wrist, but otherwise, he was just looking straight ahead.
Fucking Denis.
--==