LITMIR.BIZ

       Three

      In my dream, my mother held my hands—both of them—but she looked like Meghan Notting, the gritty old woman who’d died helping me escape Earth. I shook my head, trying to fix her face back, and in response, she offered me a screen stem.

      It was almost black, like graphite, but harder, and bluntly tapered on one end. I recognized it immediately because it was covered in blood: Jorin’s. I pictured his ugly, sneering face and backed away. I didn’t regret killing him. I didn’t. But that didn’t stop me from thinking on the moment in horror whenever I fell asleep.

      My mother-Meghan moved toward my face, and I resisted the urge to run. I could not account for her appearance as Meghan, but I knew that she was my mother all the same. Did this version of her have an open wound where Cassa had shot her? I looked away. I didn’t want to know.

      Perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps the dead felt no pain.

      “Your leg, sweetheart,” she said softly, pressing the stem into my palm. I picked it up with my other hand, the one from my bad arm.

      “Mom, no.”

      “Use this hand.” She put it back in my other hand, the one on my good arm, and closed my fingers around the sticky weapon.

      “That’s gonna hurt. I stabbed someone with a stem before, Mom. It hurts.”

      “Only the dead feel no pain, Charlotte. Your life was never meant to be so precious.”

      A flare of anger. “You’re just saying what I’ve been thinking. You’re not even real.”

      She started at a noise, then looked behind her. Her hair in my face was suddenly like my mother’s, long and dark, and I needed her to hold me. “Now, Charlotte,” she said. “Do it now.”

      “Mom. I’m afraid.”

      And then she did embrace me, and I was warm, and her hair smelled like I remembered.

      But she was only a dream.

      In real life, I had no mother. I had no right hand, either.

      I lifted the screen stem in my left hand. She nodded approvingly.

      I drove it deep into my leg, and when the pain came, I sucked it in through every pore. When I screamed, I breathed out the scent of her hair forever. It was my mother’s voice that shrieked, but I held fast to the red sensation taking root in my thigh, and my dream-mother grew distant.

      This pain was mine alone.

      “Charlotte. Hey. Wake up.” Eren’s face hovered over mine, awash in concern. “You’re having a nightmare.”

      I rubbed my face and tried to get my bearings. I was sitting precariously on the edge of a bed, half-wrapped in a warm comforter. Navy blue. “Not exactly.”

      “You okay?”

      “How did you get in here? How did you find me?”

      He was unsurprised by the question and spoke slowly, as if I were a child. “I live here. We live together, remember? Officially, anyway. You’re in our bed.”

      I raised an eyebrow. “Our—what now?”

      He reevaluated my coherency and adopted a less irritating tone. “I’ve been sleeping next door. The rooms are connected through the kitchen.” He waved an arm.

      I stood up, intending to investigate, but he stopped me immediately.

      “Woah.” His eyes here huge, and I followed his gaze to my thigh.

      An empty syringe dangled from my bare leg.

      I took a breath and pulled it out.

      His eyes bulged nearly out of his head, but he put a finger to his lips, shushing me. I nodded wearily and began to limp around the room. It was cold, so I dragged the comforter with me. I lacked the energy to wrap it around me, so I just hugged it to my chest. It felt good.

      The kitchen was just as I remembered it, but I did not recall the door, or the little room behind it.

      It was pale yellow, with a generic-looking painting of a lamb grazing in a green pasture. There was a fluffy white rug in the center, just next to a tiny bed surrounded by bars. I frowned. The bars on the bed were decorated with ribbons.

      Wait, that wasn’t a bed. Not exactly.

      I turned back to Eren, who’d followed me. “You sleep in a crib?”

      “I kinda put the mattress on the floor, and my legs hang over the—you know what? That’s not important right now.”

      “Why?”

      “Because you get a little stabby when you’re sleeping.”

      “That.” I pointed. “That is a nursery.” My hand went to my belly, and I searched my memory for evidence of a pregnancy. Not that I knew what that might involve, but nothing came to mind.

      “You never—we never—Char, nothing happened. They made it a nursery for appearances. This was a long time ago.”

      “You’re not that naïve. It’s just a matter of time, Eren. Adam gets bored. He’ll want a new toy.”

      “He insisted,” Eren said. “He controls everything.”

      “Yeah. Kinda worked that one out already.” I leaned in and lowered my voice. “Eren, this room is bugged. It’s gotta be.”

      He shrugged and spoke normally. “It is. I found four.”

      “That means there are at least eight, and two of them probably aren’t even electronic.”

      “That’s what you said last time,” he said mildly.

      “Last time? Catch me up a little faster, here.”

      He shrugged, and I had the impression that he was trying to force his voice to sound bored. “You wake up like this every so often. We talk, and you go back into stasis. I don’t think it bothers him.”

      I slid the door to the nursery firmly shut and leaned against the formica counter in the kitchen. A cold prickle waved through the back of my skull. “Eren, how long have I been… asleep?”

      He rubbed the side of his head, looking pained. “Well, technically, it’s not sleep; it’s more like stasis. The body ages, but the mind—”

      “How long, Eren.”

      “You always ask this. It’s not going to—”

      “How. Long.”

      He met my eye. “Five years.”

      Reeling, I put out a hand. He grabbed it, steadying me, but released me as soon as I had my balance.

      Five years.

      Five years of droning on through meaningless, mindless tasks in Central Command, unable to form memories or connections, while the Arks barreled on toward Eirenea. Five years of listening to Adam talk, of hearing his taunts. Of watching him build

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