Fallon and Luca took the guest room with only one twin bed to sleep in, and Grover and Ax decided to remain in the living room. The new girl was sleeping on the couch, and I gave them blankets to put on the ground. It was the best I had, and I wasn't exactly feeling sorry for Ax after he'd flat out told me he didn't trust me. Did I give him any reason not to? I didn't think so, but if he was just trying to be an asshole, he'd get treated like one, no problem.
I was supposed to be asleep an hour ago but it was impossible to shut my brain up. Imagining what it was going to be like to actually have somebody who understood what it was like to not understand anything was the topic of the day. I kept preparing mental lists on what to say to them once we woke up, and how to teach them everything I knew. It was exhausting, and at some point, I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, my bladder was screaming at me, and the clock on my phone said it was nine pm.
Tiptoeing to the bathroom to not wake the others up was no easy feat; I was used to living on my own for so long that I just now noticed how clumsy I'd gotten. Everything I touched seemed to make noise. Taking in deep breaths worked only half way, and before going out to wake them up, I washed my face with some cold water. My bathroom was small, but pretty. Just how I liked it. And the oval shaped mirror with the golden outline above the sink made me look more alive than any other mirror, or so I liked to think. My eyes, a mess of brown and yellow around the pupil, fading into a dark blue-grey color, were wide, as if I hadn't slept at all. My cheeks were flushed and my bottom lip painted with dried skin.
I must have chewed on it the entire time without realizing. The deep red color of my hair, which started right above my ears and blended perfectly with my natural dark brown, looked a bit faded. I hadn't dyed it in a couple weeks out of pure laziness. Not like I had a whole lot to do. I combed through my hair with my fingers until I got it to look decent, and checked myself for one last time before I walked out of the bathroom...
To find everybody wide awake.
When the hell had that happened? I looked back to the bathroom. How long had I been in there?
Grover strode fast toward me, and I almost reached for my knives-I'd taken everything else off me when I went to bed-but he practically pushed me to the side and threw himself inside the bathroom. His bladder must have been screaming, too.
Clearing my throat, I walked over to the others. The girl we'd found in the alley had finally woken up. She held her knees tightly to her chest, and sat at the corner of the couch, refusing to look at anything but the floor. She looked scared-traumatized.
"She doesn't know," Luca whispered, nodding at her.
That wasn't a surprise. "Neither of us really do." Everything we knew was a guess, at best.
"No, I mean she grew up with humans. She doesn't know anything," Luca said, and I smiled.
"She couldn't have grown up with humans." It just didn't work that way. Humans forgot about us, and if she'd really been with them as a baby, they'd have forgotten to feed her on the first day.
"Apparently, it's possible," Luca said with a sigh, nodding at Fallon, who cautiously sat on the couch next to the girl.
I looked at her, at the long brown hair falling in waves around her shoulders. At her pale skin. I didn't doubt that she was like us, or the mindless thingie wouldn't have gone after her. But did I doubt that she'd really been raised by humans? Very much.
"Come on, let's get you a shower," Fallon said to her when Grover walked out of the bathroom. The girl jumped when Fallon touched her, and she immediately stood up and ran to the bathroom by herself. Slamming the door shut, she turned the lock and we didn't hear from her for a long hour.
"Something's not right," said Ax, looking at the door.
"She could be lying. There's just no way she would have survived humans, even as a baby."
"She could be with the ECU," Luca said, though his heart wasn't in it. "How would the ECU know about us?" Grover asked.
"I don't know but they killed a kid last night, right in front of me," Ax said, looking a bit offended.
"Grover's right, they don't know we're here," Luca said and took a seat on the couch next to Fallon.
"I still think we should leave while we can," she said, grabbing Luca's hands in hers. "It's too dangerous here."
I'd already made up my mind not to try and stop them if they wished to leave, but something in my gut was telling me that that wasn't going to happen. Could have been false hope, but it didn't even let me worry.
"Why do you have those?" Ax said, nodding his head at my three computer screens.
"To watch movies," I said with a shrug. "And to hack into the ECU."
"Get out of here," Grover said, laughing, and slowly stepped in front of the computers. I went and sat on my chair, and touched the mouses to turn the screens on proudly.
"I don't exactly hack the ECU, but I hack someone who is connected to them and gets jobs from them all the time. It keeps me calm to know what those people are up to." And if, for some rea
son, my name popped up on the wanted list.