Andstarving.
Whatever. She could deal with that later. Walking into the bathroom, she shut the door behind her. The bathroom was dim, and that’s what she needed. A small, dimly lit space. Turning on the hot water tap for the tub, she plugged the hole with an old-fashioned stopper and sat beside the basin, waiting for it to fill.
Hugging her knees to her chest, she let the tears come.
She hated crying.Hated it.It wasn’t so much the tears that were the problem, it was the snorfly-snuffly congestion shit that she despised. Or even worse, the dreaded hiccups.
Book was lying on the floor next to her again. Whatever. She didn’t care. It followed her, that was its thing. At least it gave her something to talk to.
“I’m alone.” She sniffled. Yep. There it was. The worst part about crying. “And no, you don’texactlycount, sorry.” Wiping at her tears, she sighed. “I wish Mom were here.” Her mom always seemed to know what to do. Even in the weirdest situations. Although, this one kind of topped everything that’d happened to her the first three and half years of college.
Her ex-boyfriend problems really didn’t seem that big of a deal anymore.
The ache in her chest was almost overwhelming. She knew she couldn’t trust Serrik. Sheknewshe couldn’t. She was supposed to be working against him—Book had warned her already. Everyone had warned her.
But she had started towantto trust him. She’d started towantto believe him.
She’d started to look forward to talking to him, in the stupidest of ways.
It felt more real now than ever that she was on an island, alone. Even the Web had warned her that she couldn’t even trustit.And if she couldn’t trust a cosmic horror warning her not to trust anybody, then what the fuck was she supposed todo?
Who was lying?
Nos? Ibin? Serrik? The Web? Book?
The answer was obvious.
Obvious and simple.
Everyone.
Everyone was lying. Everyone wanted something. Everyone wanted to use her. Or, more accurately, wanted to use what she was going to become. The reflections of herself in the mirror room haunted her. The images of her dead-eyed and hollow. Inhuman.
Now it all made sense. They really were reflections of her future. All the possible paths she could take, all the ways forward—and yet—which one was real? Which one was going to be the one that came true?
She should’ve taken the image that Book showed her more seriously. She should’ve listened when it warned her the first time.
She should’ve taken a class in…like…theoretical physics or something. But she was a goddamn architectural major. Climbing off the floor with a grunt, she flipped off the hot water tap and stripped off her clothes to climb into the tub. Bathing,washing her hair—it’d make things feel a little better, even if it didn’t do shit.
Serrik really should’ve taken a math major for this nonsense, not somebody who knew too much about design codes.
Sorry, Serrik—your mystical torture prison doesn’t meet the ADA requirements. You need at least three feet to the right of all doorknobs so that a person in a wheelchair can approach and open it.
Does your mystical torture prison design include properly illuminated fire exit signs with battery backup emergency lighting? I’ll need to see a reflected ceiling plan that calls out all the egress lighting.
That’ll be a violation. Sorry, your mystical torture prison has had its certificate of occupancy revoked.
It made her laugh. The abject farce of it all. The laughing was better than the crying. She stayed in the tub until the water started to go cold, and the benefit of its soothing warmth turned into a reverse boiling frog moment. She didn’t want to leave because it was making her feel better. But now, it was just going to make things worse.
Climbing out, she dried herself off, wrapped a towel around herself, and scooped Book up off the floor. She studied it for a moment. She wondered whose side it was really on. Hers? Serrik’s?
What a stupid question.
The answer was obviously both.
Or, rather, it was going to be both, if she didn’t do something about it. Like…what. Kill Serrik? That’s what Book had told her to do, after all. Rip his heart out. The idea of getting more of the keys and losing more and more of her humanity was terrifying. She didn’t want to become some creepy, hollowed-out, vessel for some cosmic horror.
And she definitely didn’t want to then be used as a nuclear weapon because of it.
