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It’s strange—she’d thought she couldn’t speak.
Jane?
Strange, and the shape’s all wrong—a big man, staring. Bulky in a way that’s too haphazard, too messy, for the types she’s—dimly—become aware of and used to. Lab coats or fatigues. Plenty of those in the beginning, not so many since.
Now—just him. This big guy, this man. A poised, furious shape ready to charge through the doorway until, suddenly, he was only in the doorway, lodged barely past the threshold, the bearlike span of his shoulders outlined, flash by flash, in bloody red. Power’s cut; another dim thought. A looming figure, here and then gone.
Jane—
“Wait.”
She doesn’t answer. That wasn’t meant for her: anyway she can’t speak.
“Dammit, just a minute, wait—"
Here and gone. The doorway yawns wide. Unblocked for a moment, but could she reach it in a moment, even if...Somebody will be coming.
Which isn’t a thought, it’s instinct, past experience its own strobing red murk. The Noise—but the Noise was cut with the power. She hears a smaller, shriller sound. A pounding. Someone at the door. He’ll be back, and he won’t be alone.
The man. She knows him. And knows she isn’t dreaming, though she knows, too, that her eyes are closed. She shouldn’t be able to see and she can’t speak. Her body may be dreaming and the pictures—flash by bloody flash; the face, staring—have a dreamlike quality, a frailty as if, once her eyes open, she’ll forget them completely.
But. His face. And another, one of the handful of faces she hasn’t, and couldn’t, forget.
“Wait.”
She says, Yes, though he won’t hear. Yes, she’ll wait. Yes— “Jane.”
“Jane.”
“I’m here.”
“You—”
“I’m here.”
Her eyes open, her mouth opening. The Noise gone like his Voice faded not long ago, unless it has been long. Long years strapped into the Rig and her blood all changed, sluggish, her body shifted until at last it isn’t her own.
She isn’t herself. She’d smiled, for one, and she shouldn’t have. No messages escape the Noise. Nothing can; she’d sent nothing.
I’m here.
The vines, the crushing dark. Here— “He led you. He brought you here, Jane—”
“Kali—”
Her feet hit the floor. Bare.
“Take it easy, hey—hey! Easy.”
Her knees follow—the floor’s bare, too, bare rock or more likely bare concrete poured down fast, a rush job already warped by cold and moisture. Bruising, but it steadies her. She’s on her knees, on solid ground. She feels her weakness, feels Jane’s, too, Jane’s force plucking and tugging like a breeze, not a hand or a familiar touch. Nothing strong enough to lift Kali upright, and her own legs—
“Easy,” he repeats himself. And grunts, hoarse; stoops, gets an arm around her waist, hefts her. Her feet dance, scrabble for purchase. Plant themselves and falter, lurching the rest of her body sideways. Into his. The impact’s solid, both of them bruised again, grunting again in muffled pain.
“You’re weak.” Kali’s voice is short, her breath shorter. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Jane, long and pale. “We came for you.”
She’s lying. Has to be. Nothing gets through the Noise, no messages escape. “You need to leave. This place is wrong, it’s rotting—”
Long—no, tall. Jane’s grown tall, her curls longer and pulled back, baring a face older than Kali remembers. Older and harder, for all she’s drained her power to its dregs. She hasn’t changed. She’s more herself, less someone Kali can attempt to bend or mold, though those attempts had been bound to fail.
Weak. Kali’s been given the time to recognize how weak she was and is. That and not much else.
“Go. You shouldn’t be here.”
Jane steps towards her.
“I’ve got her,” the man says. His arm jostles at Kali’s waist, keeping her pinned upright. “Take it easy,” an order to them both. “She’s right,” he continues, not addressing Kali, his eyes, like hers, fixed on Jane. “Let’s go. Move. Gotta get clear of this place.”
The doorway yawns red and wide. “What did she do.” Kay. What, and worse— “What did he tell you? Jane? Jane, he’s lying. I’ve seen—you can’t believe him, he lies, Mr. Whatsit—”
“Jesus.” He makes a harsh barking sound. “It’s Hopper, all right?”
She’d seen what he’d done and was about to do, his coat bloodstained and unzipped. And in Chicago Jane had told her about him; Kali knew immediately what he was, how badly he must want to protect Jane, how clearly he couldn’t, and how he must know just enough to really know nothing.
“No,” she snaps. Kali’s voice, like his, is harsh. Hoarse, though in her case it’s unused, and in his? Sounds like something—hands, vines—closed around it and squeezed. “Not you. I know you.”
The base lab seems deserted, which seems lucky. Luck can’t be a good sign. Down a shuttered access corridor Kali has no memory of Jane says, “You’re hurt.”
She is. They all are.
“The blood. What was she doing to you?”
The bruised skin in the crooks of both elbows creeps, crawls. Kali tugs at the coat draped loose across her shoulders: Camo, bloodstained, cuffs and collar frayed with bullet holes. There’s a weight to it which, unlike Hopper’s, sways her off-center.
“The secret.”
“What?” Suspicion, or something close to it, slithers wet and wounded across Jane’s face, uncomfortable but unhidden.
Kali had no instinct to hide from her before, so she repeats, “The secret. You understand, to what we are? Our gifts are in our blood. She—Kay—she thinks it was in his blood. Henry's, somehow. I don’t know—” She can’t find words for the substance of what she means. She has her voice but still can’t speak.
Can’t read the shifting expression on Jane’s face, either, a wearier expression than any of hers from before, any Kali could call to mind, which, really, are so few.
She shouldn’t, and yet she stops. “I wasn’t told.”
Jane pulls up short beside her.
“All that time,” Kali says, “they kept me dreaming, or he did, I don’t know—I don’t know how I can help you. Kay took her fill. He took the rest, there’s nothing left.”
His voice behind them: “Keep moving.”
Abruptly, in a strike she didn’t see coming, Jane’s hand is on her wrist, circling it. That immovable pull halts Kali and draws her gaze backwards, over her shoulder to follow Jane’s.
Hopper, his jacket still unzipped and a gun in his arms, following them. He’d pulled the catheters out of Kali’s arms with pinching, callused fingers—he’d seen it done or done it himself before. Not recently; Hopper had been clumsy, the grip of his hands rough. But those hands hold a memory of how the job should be done.
He’s an unhappy person. Deeply, probably dangerously unhappy. That’s no surprise. She’s rarely found help from people who felt they had much to lose; in this way, if few others, Jane’s no different.
“You.” Her sister’s voice is pointed, and it points down the shadowy hall and towards Hopper’s unreadable face. “You’re hurt, too.”
Here and gone, Kali thinks. His face wasn’t unreadable then, halted in the doorway with his thumb on the switch. She with her eyes closed and his intention—and the bomb—clear as day.
The look on his face then was one she felt and feels. Her years in the Lab, her years after; the unmarked waste of time in the Rig. A desire to end things. To even the score or, just as well, burn the slate clean.
It occurs to Kali that they’ve hardly met, she and this man she knows. It would have been a shame, and she would have been sorry, to have lost him so soon.
Now, Hopper meets her look. Recognizes it.
“I’ll live.” His voice is hoarse like hers, gruff and almost angry. “Come on.” He steps forward. Quickly, Kali thinks, pick it up, there’s no time. But—she’ll wait. Yes, in the darkness she’ll wait, in the darkness she’ll wait with Jane, who’s waiting for him.
“Keep moving,” he orders.
They wait for him.