It was his nightmare—at least part of it—playing out during the day.
Sure, his dreams had been whacked for weeks now, even months off and on. But the one from last night—the one that had bled into the cafeteria during the day, the one that had detonated a bomb inside his brain—that dream could not be his subconscious at work, no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise.
He didn’t believe in telepathy, so there was no way, no fucking way, his subconscious would sense that telepathy was in play on base.
Nor had he seen indications that the warriors on base were communicating without their tongues. He’d never noticed the periodic glazing of eyes. He’d never witnessed a warrior doing something without a verbal request. And then there was Kait and Cosky. They’d been on base foryears.Yet neither had mentioned that the warriors on base acted...oddly.
If the warriors of Shadow Mountain could communicate without using their goddamn mouths, wouldn’t someone notice? Wouldn’t they mention it?
When he awoke that morning with Benioko’s telepathy allegations ricocheting around his head, he’d dismissed the claims as nonsense. Dream nonsense. Like the freaky woman who’d turned into a mountain lion and screamed in his face.
He stopped walking long enough to scrub his palms down his face. At least the second half of that nightmare hadn’t leaked into the day. He could do without a cougar stalking him across base.
It wasn’t until he entered the isolation chamber that he realized where his feet had taken him. Not a surprise. When he had a free moment, he found himself here more often or not.
Squirrel broke away from the rest of his zombified brothers and sidled toward him. The coiled rattlesnake flashed as he halted in front of the window, directly across from where Aiden stood. The cottony substance was more pronounced, filling the missing portions of his face and skull. It looked like someone had packed the wounds with wads of gauze. Even his eye sockets were full of white.
“I see that one still responds to you. Has it said anything yet?” O’Neill asked from behind him.
Which was a dumbass question. If Squirrel had spoken, everyone on base would know.
“Seriously bro? That’s what you want to ask me?” Aiden scoffed without turning around.
“For now. We’ll get to the rest later,” O’Neill drawled as he stepped up to Aiden’s side.
Aiden focused on Squirrel, watched the rattler flash as his former best friend cocked his head. And he wished, with an intensity that left him hollow, that he could talk to the dude—lay out all his problems, all his uncertainty, at his best friend’s feet.
Squirrel had been more than his buddy, more than his brother. He’d been his sounding board. Someone who listened without judgement, without interruptions.
Aiden missed that. He wished he could dump this whole fractured reality at Squirrel’s feet. He couldn’t discuss what happened with Wolf. To Wolf, there was no fracture. To Wolf, telepathy and ghost shamanswerereality. At least his reality. His brother served a different truth than Aiden. And O’Neill?Hell, the dude was born and raised on the Kalikoia reservation. Indoctrinated into the culture of the Kali people.
He would be no help either.
“Who told you about theNeealaho?” O’Neill asked.
“Pretty sure you already know the answer to that,” Aiden said flatly, staring hard into Squirrel’s gauze-packed eyes.
“Probably,” O’Neill agreed.
There was a hint of tension in the dude’s voice, rather than the gloating Aiden had expected.
“Did Benioko speak of my daughter? Of her spirit animal, or why it was gifted to her?”
The question penetrated Aiden’s daze. He turned slightly to the right, catching the tautness on O’Neill’s face. For the first time, annoyance didn’t flare at the question. Just exhaustion. “No. He didn’t speak of Gracie.”
O’Neill frowned. “What of Wolf’s Jillian?”
“No.”
Before O’Neill had a chance to continue with his questions, a sound came from behind the glass. A voice. Or more like the approximation of a voice. One robotic and grinding...like metal on metal.
Aiden jolted, his attention flying back to the isolation chamber. His gaze landed on Squirrel, on his dead friend’s open mouth.
“Aiden Winchester. This existence identifies you.” That grinding, robotic voice came out of Squirrel’s gaping mouth.
Aiden jolted again, his scalp tightening in horror. That was not the voice of a human. Not the voice of his best friend.
Had he gone crazy? Considering what happened in the cafeteria, it was a fair question.
