According to the sun, it was around three o'clock in the afternoon. According to my energy levels, it was closer to ten at night. I wandered around the dining room aimlessly, slowly closing in on my bedroom as my subconscious led me toward one thing and only one thing: sleep. The minute I was in my bedroom, though, my mind flashed back to my sister and how she'd laid on this very bed when she'd drawn her final breath.
There was a quilt at the foot of the bed that I had been forced to create when I was about ten, so I grabbed it and closed myself in the parlour. I curled up on the futon and breathed out unsteadily. The force of the fact that I hadn't slept since the death of my sister hit me fully and I sank into a deep sleep... but then the nightmares came.
Melanin was hovering over me, her eyes black against her pale skin.
"I was first..." she whispered, and I could feel the warm breath against my ear, "and you'll be next..."
I jerked awake, biting into my palm to block the scream that was forcing its way up from my chest. I rolled over, falling back to sleep quickly.
Now it was Scoutfield who was the figment of my nightmares, his gun pointed directly at my forehead.
"Your fault, Nova. This is your fault."
"Killing me won't help fix it!" I shouted at him.
"Actually, it will..."
My eyes snapped open again as I woke to find Calix curled up beside me, his breathing soft against my neck. I was careful not to wake him as I closed my eyes to go to sleep again.
By the time I woke up for real, it was well into the afternoon and my parents and brother were in the kitchen eating dinner. I joined them, never saying a word to any of them, finished before all of them, and went back to sleep on the couch, too exhausted even to dream.
I snapped awake to find the house dark and quiet, my heart thudding in my chest. I climbed off the couch and retrieved my cloak and knife from the closet before leaving the house, closing the door quietly behind me. I inhaled the fresh air, clasping my cloak around my throat and pulling it in tightly.
The wind was even more freezing than the night before... we were very close to the first snowfall that would mark my new adulthood, but my sister would never see it.
I knew I should cry at the thought, but it just made me feel... numb. She had never been especially happy concerning my existence. We had been nothing alike: I was dark and she was blond. I was educationally focused and she would have preferred having a different date every week than a good grade card. And yet Mother had preferred her, and it just wasn't fair.
I took the West Road away from town and prayed I wouldn't find any gifts the sickness had left behind. The bodies appeared to have been removed, but they had been permanently burned into my mind. Tens of thousands of victims dead from this killer that had appeared out of nowhere. What had Scoutfield called it? Taipei Mortem? I shook my head and kept walking, my thoughts turning to Echo and Scoutfield.
Since when did they know each other? Since when did they work together? I had absolutely no idea. They seemed to be somehow connected, and they seemed to have an equal interest in me. I decided I would ask Echo about it the next day.
I turned around to head back towards home, but took a detour off the road and into the empty fields of dead grass, laying flat and brown. I found myself wishing Scoutfield would catch me unaware, provoke me until I was irate enough to attack him, and then I would ultimately cool down, usually with an arm twisted behind my back.
Good times...
I focused on the dry crunch of the ground under my feet and the feel of it through my leather boots. A white owl flew out of a tree and over my head, screeching, and I glanced up at the stars, pausing to watch. One of them shot through the sky, all the way across, and I smiled a little.
I'd never seen a shooting star before, but I knew Echo made a wish whenever she'd seen one. I closed my eyes for a moment, dismissing any thought of how stupid it was. My family would be safe, I told myself. They would be safe, and my brother would live to see his next birthday, and this dreadful epidemic would come to an end.
I wanted it. I wished it.
And then when I opened my eyes again, the falling star was gone, and I imagined it smashing into a planet, dashing my wishes to pieces along with it. Who was I deceiving? Wishes didn't come true.