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"Ptolemaea is a circle of Hell in Dante's "Inferno," specifically designated for those who betray their guests, reflecting themes of treachery and moral corruption."
The school bus rattles its way down the road in a noisy clamor, and yet, it feels so deathly silent inside, like the racket can’t quite break through the cracked windows and dented metal. The only thing that truly pierces that veil is Hood’s voice rising from across the aisle, hoarse and worried but firm at the same time, and her words somehow sound louder than anything he’s heard yet.
“Does she remember?”
Brother lifts his head slowly to look over at Hood. Even with her face obscured, he knows she’s staring directly at his sister, who is balled up in the same seat as him, her head in his lap.
He doesn’t know what to call what happened at the bus stop. An attack? An episode? Something else entirely? They’ve all been sick before, such is the manner of life during war, but the way she acted, how she shook and coughed and curled in on herself like an animal shriveling up to die—the pain she was in at that moment transcended anything natural. All of that suffering cast under a bloody red light.
He can’t even begin to try to conceptualize what it must have felt like, for the noises she had made were ones he had never heard her produce before. It was the wretched lowing of a calf before its skin was flayed off, the garbled moan of a fox kit as the wire trap closed tighter around its airways.
The pitiful squeak of a baby bunny while the knife dragged slowly across its neck.
Like a coward, he had recoiled from her. He wished he could say he leapt to comfort her like a good sibling would, but he hadn’t. Instead, he cowered away from her, awaiting some kind of punishment to finally be set loose upon them—because that was what they deserved.
But that didn’t happen.
It stopped as quickly as it began, but all was not well. He could tell his sister at least knew something was wrong with her, and the way they were all shied away like they were scared of her certainly didn’t help. When the bus rolled up, she had staggered, the remnants of the ‘attack’ still lingering like a potent toxin, aftershocks of pain hindering every breath, every movement, and he offered to let her rest for a little while. She didn’t seem to have the energy to say no.
“No,” he finally answers Hood. “I don’t think so.”
“Does she know?” Hood presses. “Anything at all?”
“No,” he says again.
Hood slumps back against her seat, exhaling what almost seems to be a sigh of relief. A small part of Brother wants to throttle her for it, but that would be hypocritical of him, for he, too, had felt a small amount of consolation when he realized that his sister didn’t remember the injustice they had imposed upon her.
“Why is she alive then?” Hood questions.
“I don’t know,” Brother responds.
“But we—”
“I know.”
His words come out as a sort of growl, but even his anger feels weak, like a candle caught in a fierce winter wind, struggling to not be put out. He doesn’t deserve to even feel vexation towards their actions. Because what is there to be mad about? At himself, maybe, but fury would have been worth a lot more back then at the Well. At the others, perhaps, but it isn’t like that stopped him.
No, this isn’t anger he’s feeling. It’s guilt. A thick, sickening guilt that makes it hard to even breathe.
The bus bumps hard over a pothole. Hood is jostled into the window with a grunt. Sister groans weakly, and Brother’s eyes immediately snap down to her. One of her shaking hands grips tightly at his trousers, while the other clutches her belly. She doesn’t wake up from whatever merciful daze she’s drifted off into.
“I’ve got you,” he says to her softly. He holds her steady, not letting her slip off, stroking her messy black hair with his free hand. Then, he looks back up at the other two. “I found her. Out in the ocean. She was just…floating there. I thought she was dead…”
“She should be dead,” Hood says. “I would know.”
Although her harsh tone needles something sensitive in Brother, he can’t say he blames her. Their actions had been a finale for his sister. There was so much blood, more than anyone, even an adult, could survive losing. And even if she had, the fall into the Well surely would have done her in. So to see her alive, breathing, is bewildering to say the least.
“I’m the one who did it because no one else had the stomach to,” Hood continues. “And yet, somehow, there’s not even a scar on her neck! So what the hell happened?”
“You have a gut of iron, you say, and yet you spent so long trying to run from us,” Brother says.
Hood immediately bristles at that. She puffs herself up in the way she always does when one of them gets under her skin, trying to make herself look bigger.
“I—” she attempts to speak, to explain herself, but Brother continues, cutting her off.
“You kept running,” he says. “Kept dodging us. Dodging her. Because you never planned on facing what you did. You thought you’d buried it deep enough that it would stay dead. Dropped it far enough down that Well so it couldn’t crawl back out.”
Hood makes a low, growling sound. “You don’t know shit about me,” she spits.
Brother doesn’t raise his voice. That almost makes it worse.
“Your actions speak loud enough.”
The bus suddenly lurches hard around a curve, tires screaming against cracked pavement. Everyone is thrown sideways. Dead branches rake across the roof with a shriek like metal tearing open, the sound vibrating through the frame and into their bones.
Hood’s body jerks violently with the turn. She grabs the back of a seat at the last second, fingers digging so hard into the torn vinyl her knuckles surely blanch white. For a split second, it looks like she’s about to launch herself across the aisle at him- shoulders coiled, breath sharp, rage flashing bright and reckless in her eyes—if he could see them.
But the motion steals the chance from her.
Behind her, Bandage folds inward, pulling his knees tight against his chest as if trying to make himself smaller, quieter, invisible.
“It’s our fault,” he murmurs, finally speaking up. His voice is soft enough it almost disappears beneath the rattling windows.
Hood snaps around so fast it’s a wonder her head doesn’t fly off. “No.” The word comes out sharp, immediate—too fast. Defensive. Fragile. “No,” she repeats, louder now, like she’s trying to convince the air itself. “We were trying to help. We were stopping the war. We had good intentions.”
Her voice wavers at the edges. The certainty doesn’t quite hold together.
Brother exhales slowly through his nose. “Good intentions don’t erase harm.”
Silence crashes down for half a second- thick, suffocating.
He can’t see her face fully, but he feels her glare hit him like the heat of a brand when she turns back.
“Oh, get off your damn moral high horse,” Hood snaps. Her voice cracks, anger spilling over into something uglier, closer to panic. “Stop acting like you’re so innocent or that you’re so much better than us. You stand there acting like you’re better than us, like you’re clean, when your hands are just as filthy!”
Brother’s jaw tightens. Something hot and bitter twists in his chest, climbing up his throat before he can stop it.
“I don’t think I’m innocent,” he says, sharper now. Honest in a way that hurts. “I know exactly what I’ve done. I know I’m just as monstrous as you. As Bandage. As Bucket.”
The bus rattles violently over a pothole, the impact punctuating his words.
“But I’m not hiding from it,” he continues, voice roughening. “I’m not pretending we didn’t choose this. That we didn’t cause this.”
His hands curl into fists at his sides.
“We did this to her,” he says, quieter now—and somehow heavier for it. “And now, she’s the one paying for it.”
The engine roars. Branches scrape overhead again. No one speaks for a moment.
The accusation lingers in the cramped air of the bus, unavoidable, breathing with them.
Then, Hood draws a breath inward, words sharp behind her teeth—but they never make it out.
A sudden, broken whimper cuts through the bus.
Sister’s body folds inward as if something inside her has yanked tight. Her knees drag toward her chest, muscles locking, a thin, wounded sound leaking from her throat. It isn’t loud. That’s what makes it worse. It sounds small. Helpless. Wrong.
The overhead lights flicker.
Once.
Twice.
Then, they flare a deep, pulsing red.
The entire aisle floods with the color of fresh blood.
Hood recoils instantly, anger evaporating like it never existed. She presses herself hard against the window, shoulders hunched, as though distance alone might protect her. The glass rattles beside her with the movement of the road.
Behind her, Bandage’s breathing turns sharp and shallow. His eyes dart wildly toward the emergency exit window, fingers twitching against his sleeves like he’s calculating whether he could survive the jump at this speed.
Brother stiffens.
He can’t help it.
His hands freeze in Sister’s hair as her head rolls heavily across his lap, neck slack, mouth falling open. Another sound forces its way out of her: a wet, garbled bleat that dissolves into violent dry heaving. Her body jerks with each convulsion, ribs straining beneath the thin white fabric of the dress they had forced her into.
“Hey— hey, easy—” he starts, but the words crumble halfway out.
For one horrifying second, he feels it.
Movement.
Not muscle.
Not breath.
Something deeper.
Something wrong.
A faint, rippling writhes beneath her skin, traveling under his palm like something alive is trying to turn over inside her. The sensation is subtle but unmistakable- a shifting pressure that makes his stomach drop straight through the floor.
Brother’s breath catches. Every instinct screams at him to pull away.
But he doesn’t.
He holds her tighter instead.
Sister coughs suddenly, a wet, sputtering sound, and the tension snaps. The red lights blink out, fading back into the bus’ weak, sickly white glow. The world returns all at once: engine rumbling, tires humming against asphalt, branches scratching faintly overhead.
Her body goes limp.
Completely limp.
Only a thin line of reddish-black blood trails from the corner of her mouth, dark against her pale skin.
For a moment, no one moves.
Brother forces himself to breathe again. Slowly. Carefully. Like sudden motion might shatter something fragile.
“Shh… shh… it’s okay,” he murmurs, voice barely above a whisper.
He wipes the blood away with the edge of his sleeve, movements gentle, practiced. His other hand resumes its slow motion through her hair, fingers threading carefully, rhythm steady and grounding.
He isn’t sure who he’s trying to calm.
Her.
Or whatever waits beneath her skin.
Or himself.
A quiet sigh slips from him, heavy with exhaustion that feels older than the road beneath them. He lifts his gaze toward Hood and Bandage.
Both of them look smaller somehow.
“I…” His voice falters before he steadies it again. “I can’t say I entirely blame you for how you’re acting.”
The bus rattles over uneven pavement, the sound filling the silence between them.
“You’re scared,” he says. “We all are.”
His eyes drift back down to Sister’s unmoving face, to the faint smear of dark blood he hadn’t quite cleaned away.
“But do you really think running will help?” he asks quietly. “That it’ll save you from the bloom?”
The word hangs in the air.
Heavy.
Unavoidable.
Hood swallows hard. Her arms cross tight over her chest, fingers digging into her sleeves. The anger that burned in her moments ago has nowhere to go now; it sits trapped behind her ribs, sour and trembling.
“The bloom,” she finally says, hissing the word. “What the hell is that even supposed to mean?”
Brother shrugs. “I don’t know yet. I don’t know if I want to know.”
Bandage shudders. “There was something— something moving,” he says.
Hood’s gaze snaps to him. “Don’t start,” she warns.
“I’m being serious,” Bandage says, his voice tinged with panic. “I saw it at the bus stop as well, and I know you did, too! Don’t act like you didn’t! It was like— like something was trying to come out.”
Hood exhales roughly. “Goddamnit…” she mutters, thunking her head against the window.
“Is there any hope at all?” Bandage beseeches them.
Hood doesn’t respond.
Brother doesn’t have an answer, either.
The rest of the ride is silent. That thick, unsettling quiet, despite the noise outside, returns once again.
Eventually, the bus screeches to a halt in front of a huge, imposing building framed in shadows. Hood stands up before they’ve even fully stopped and hurries out, shortly followed by Bandage.
Brother gently shakes his sister awake.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “Sorry. Time to get up. We gotta go.”
Sister shifts, delirious. She raises her head weakly and looks around, like she doesn’t quite remember where she is.
“Oh,” she rasps. “Okay.”
Without argument, she slides out of the seat and hobbles toward the exit. Brother follows her.
She’s still holding her stomach.
“Why does it hurt?” she asks hoarsely.
“I don’t know,” he lies through his teeth, and he pulls the wool further over her eyes.
(But the Lamb knows when its fleece is being tugged on.)