I can't just lie here, wallowing in my grief, my anger, my despair. I have to do something. I have to understand. I have to know why.
I open my eyes, the dim light of the glow-sticks a welcome distraction from the darkness behind my eyelids. I scan the small crowd, my eyes searching for a face, a name, a story that might offer a clue, a glimmer of understanding.
My gaze falls on a woman I don't recognize. She's older than me, maybe in her late twenties, with a gaunt, haunted look that speaks of a long, hard journey. She's sitting by herself, her arms wrapped around her knees, her body rocking back and forth in a slow, rhythmic motion. She's mumbling to herself, her words a low, indecipherable murmur.
I push myself up, my body protesting with a chorus of aches and pains. Hestia stirs beside me, her eyes fluttering open. I place a hand on her shoulder, a silent reassurance, and she settles back down, her breathing slow and even.
I make my way over to the woman, my movements slow, cautious. I don't want to startle her, to intrude on whatever private world she's retreated into.
"Excuse me," I say, my voice a low, hesitant murmur.
I don't really know what I want to say, I just-
I need to say.
I need to speak to someone, and all of the people I've been speaking to are dead.
Or...
Worse.
She doesn't look up, doesn't even acknowledge my presence. She just keeps rocking, her muttering a steady, unbroken stream of words.
I crouch down beside her, trying to catch a few of her words, to make sense of the jumble of sounds.
"...the whispers... they get inside your head... they tell you things... make you do things... you don't want to do..."
"Whispers...?" I ask, my curiosity piqued, a spark of interest igniting in the vast, barren wasteland of my mind.
She stops rocking, her head snapping up. Her eyes are wide, vacant, a chilling sight in the dim light of the glow-sticks. They're the color of storm clouds, a flat, featureless grey that seems to absorb the light rather than reflect it.
"You hear them too?" she asks, her voice a low, conspiratorial whisper.
"I... no, I don't think so," I say, my brow furrowed in confusion. "I just... what are you talking about?"
"The language," she says, her gaze darting around the cave, as if she's afraid someone might be listening. "The training. They say... they say it can change you. From the inside out. They say it can make you... something else."
"Something...else?" I repeat, the words a foreign taste in my mouth.
"Not...us." She whispers. She's looking at something, but I don't think it's me or anything else in the cave. "Not us anymore. Not when you speak. When you speak and then they speak and...the whispers. Scream. Over you." She clutches her head, her thin fingers digging into her temples. "They take...they take everything. Leave only the shape."
She's rambling.
She's delusional, crazy, paranoid. It's not even surprising that she is, because the fact that more of us aren't is some kind of miracle.
But still.
It's disturbing enough for me to...
Not have anything else to say.
To just sit in the silence.
She begins to rock again. Slowly, like she's trying to calm a baby in her arms that only she can see. And the more she rocks, the smaller the world seems.
But what she said...is a little too close to home.
Too close.
Maybe it's the exhaustion. Maybe it's grief, or fear. Maybe it's anger. Maybe it's something more, something darker, something more primal.
Whatever it is, it's like a spark in a room filled with gas. A sudden, brilliant flash of insight, a horrifying, dawning realization that changes everything.
The training.
The language.
Mia and Eric... they were always the best at it. They picked it up so quickly, so easily, their minds absorbing the complex, guttural sounds of the alien tongue with an ease that was almost unnatural. I could never get it. No matter what I tried, I never learned it.
I....
But then even if it were true, why am I still here?
Is it really -
I'm only still me because I was too inept? Because I couldn't master it?
The thought is a cold, hard knot in my stomach, a chilling realization that sends a shiver down my spine.
It's the rambling of a woman who's lost her senses. A woman who I might not be far off from being myself.
Maybe I'm just being desperate. Desperate that our friendship wasn't a lie, and that Mia and eric wouldn't just betray us like that willingly.
But it-
It doesn't feel any better, thinking that they were stolen from us.
That their bodies are still out there, walking around, but their minds... their souls... are gone. Replaced by something else, something alien, something...
Them.
But not them.
I look at Hestia, who is still curled up beside me, her small body a bundle of tightly wound nerves and fear. She never learned the language either. She never even tried. She just... she's always been here, in this strange, silent world of her own.
Is that why she's still her?
Is that why I'm still me?
How many times did she see it happen?
Did she understand what happened then? Did she have friends who left her before, too...?
No-
She would have warned us somehow, probably. Besides that, it's probably less noticeable when there's not a rebellion escape and...
I...
Am thinking far too long on the rambling words of a woman who might not even be aware who she's talking to.
I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes.
The only answer I can find that can make this nightmare feel better to me is if I open my eyes and find it was all a dream.
...But I've been waiting to wake up for more than a year.