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He knew it. He knew it. He knew this was going to happen. 18 victims. 12 were saved. 12 were hunted down even though they were in completely different places, suffering alone and with no way of escaping. Those 12 were lucky enough to have been found by the dogs and the authorities were able to rescue them.
It was a miracle, wasn't it? How many months had it been that these people were suffering? Maybe 10. Maybe a year. They were finally getting the help they deserved.
And he was happy for them.
Just...why couldn't he be one of them? Why was he one of the six who were lost? Forgotten? Were these Visions just meant to taunt him?
He leaned back against the cold steel wall. The captors were caught already, this much he saw as well. They were caught...but the ones who knew where he and the other 5 were had died in the struggle. No information would come out of them.
God. He was just too unlucky.
With only a few stinging tears dripping down his face, he slid down to his side and laid his head down on the cinder block beside him. Pitch black for months. He might as well be blind, he could be. But the Vision could have fooled him. Or maybe he could only see the images because they were in his head. It didn't matter if he could see or not. As long as he remembered.
Hell, he could feel the tremble of desperate weakness in his veins. The cold was seeping out and warmth replaced it but he had long learned that this was not a good sign. And this time no one would be coming to give him rations to keep him from teetering over that edge into oblivion.
This wasn't hopeless pessimism speaking. It was a fact. He always knew when they were coming to see him. The Vision showed him. But this time, no one would come.
Who knows why he still made the effort of preventing worse dehydration by not crying right now. Those first few tears were enough to make him ache. He sucked it up anyway.
Why did he have to be one of the six? If only he were one of the 12....but that would mean someone else would suffer in his place. Then what would he do?
Even as the concrete pillow crunched against his hair, he could hear the phantom police sirens in the Vision, see the flashing lights and catatonic faces of those rescued. Some were blind, in the physical sense that they couldn't see anymore, some were Seeing, like him, in the sense that they had the Visions as well, and some were neither. They hadn't been down long enough to lose their sight, nor had they ever had The Sight.
And worse yet, he saw one with eyes cloudy as a dead woman, blind, crying as she locked onto him and his Vision, knowing he was there, feeling his sight and feeling so much worse for the fact that she had survived while he watched them from below, still in the darkness. She could not help him, she could only see what was there, and there was nothing around him but darkness.
He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could shut himself away from her, not let her see him being left behind, but of course that wouldn't help.
She cried for him, held out her palms as if to show him she could feel his Sight and was with him. But she wasn't with him. He was alone. He was cold - although he felt hot - and he knew hypothermia would set in soon. She was not with him. She was above, while he was below. She would live, while he would die.
And although it made his weak heart twist with hatred and regret, he still loved her and all the others who suffered this fate. He was happy for her. At least he could let her know that. Show her that she had no reason to feel guilty before he felt his Vision close off with his mind as he fell asleep. Probably his last.
• • •
Aboveground, god knows how many miles away from he in desperate need, the white-eyed woman closed her eyes, grief clawing at her, making her skin burn and her heart boil. It felt like she was steaming away into nothing but a hardened husk, like the male tarantula, dried up and dead in an unfortunate corner of the dark caverns of his mates home. Eaten away by his own kind and left to rot. What she felt now could not compare to what she knew the Seeing man below had felt. Was feeling right before she lost sight of him, like a whisper in the thunder.
There was prodding at her shoulder, physical contact she hadn't felt in so long she had almost forgotten the sensation. She was here. She was alive, above ground, under daylight, although it didn't feel like it with the rolling clouds above. She couldn't see them, but she had the Sight. She knew that the sky above her was as washed out of sun as her eyes were. They used to be green. Bright and shining, before she was taken and lost them. She knew that the ambulance beside her, with a man waiting with a shock blanket, was white with red stripes and a logo she didn't care to assess.
And she knew beyond all doubt that the room that man was in was black. The cinder block could have been black, what did it matter when you couldn't see it? But his eyes? His eyes were just as cloudy as hers. He was blind, Seeing, and alone. But he knew that.
She quaked, tilting her head down. Her skin was clammy from the rain and it felt glorious. The air smelt of wet grass and overturned dirt and it was heaven. The ugly sound of civilization, and of first-responders talking frantically was...it was beautiful. Almost spiritual.
"Ma'am..." And even the voice of the police officer beside her was like music she thought she could only hear once she was dead and gone, hopefully above the clouds. None of the rationers ever spoke. Even if she had managed to get some pained grunts out of them when she fought. That's why they fed her through a slot in the door. On the floor.
"Please sit down. There is a chair just under you. You're safe now. You don't have to be afraid anymore." The officer said to her. She could smell his breath, it kindled the memory of coffee, and though her Vision was dark now, she had seen it with that man and knew this officer had dark hair like the blessed dirt beneath her feet and his eyes were as crystal blue as the shimmering waters of the Red Sea. Even his hands on her shoulder were like lapping waves, however thick and stubby they seemed.
She sat down and pulled the shock blanket bestowed upon her around her shoulders. She was not cold, but she shivered anyway. She was conscious, but she felt hazy anyway. And it wasn't shock since she knew this would happen months ago. It was sharing. It was the gaze she shared with that man. One of the six. It was his wavering, soft breaths as he slept through his last hours. It was the body shutting down as it realized there was no sustenance for it left. The buzzing of the brain filling in the absence of sound.
It was her ally, her friend, her partner in suffering...dying.
She knew she had to do something. But what could it be? He was so close. He had to be. How else would he have seen her? How else would she have caught him? The Sight could see far, but she wasn't locked in a cellar anymore where all her energy could be used to see far. She could only see close right now, and she had seen him.
"Officer," She said in her grating voice, sounding like a smoker of decades or one who was diseased. She was ailed with disuse, but it didn't matter how much it hurt for her to speak right now. He mattered. He had shown her that she didn't have to feel guilty, she didn't have to fight. He showed her that he was happy for her. And she would have to repay his right to freedom just like hers. "There are six more. But only one I can help you find."
He was a professional. He did not waste time on shock, so the officer took out his notepad,
"Tell me." and he waited for her to speak.